svcutil and specified fields

Question

I am generating a datacontract with svcutil from a webservice.

svcutil /language:cs /noConfig /targetclientversion:Version35 
        /out:Generated\ProductService.cs http://example.com/ProductService.svc?wsdl

The fields generated looks like this:

private System.Nullable<System.DateTime> createdField;
private bool createdFieldSpecified;

How can the fields be both nullable and have a specified field?

Answer 1

it depends on the source Wsdl. I bet there is something this (not sure of the syntax):

<xsd:element name="created" type="xsd:datetime" minOccurs="0" xsd:nil="true" />

svcutil.exe use nillable to produce a Nullable<> field, and minOccurs to produce a field + specified combination.

I also bet the WSDL is not a .Net generated WSDL !

Answer 2

The class generation is driven by XSD schema of the web service.

In order to generate nullable fields. The field should be marked as nillable.

<xs:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="created" type="xs:dateTime" nillable="true" />

The XML will look like this.

<root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <created xsi:nil="true" />
</root>

I believe that this field in your schema looks like this:

<xs:element minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1" name="created" />

and it would omit the element completely if createdFieldSpecified = false:

<root xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
</root>

The bottom line: web service schema should be updated in order to generate nullable fields with svcutil.