Why is ASP.NET trying to generate a temporary class for a Web Service reference?

Question

In Visual Studio 2008 I have a Class Library project (called Media) to which I added a Web Reference (not a Service Reference) to a third-party web service (wsdl). In the Class Library project a proxy class is created for using the service along with several classes for the types used in that service.

I also have a second Class Library (called Sync) that references the first one. And then I have a Web Site project that references the second class library. All of this is .NET 3.5

So Web Site > Class Library (Sync) > Class Library with web service reference (Media)

I want to step into the generated code, so I fire up the web site in IIS 7.5 and trigger the call to a method in the second class library (Sync) that in turn should call the web service proxy. I was fully expecting to hit the breakpoint, but instead got an exception:

Unable to generate a temporary class (result=1). error CS0029: Cannot implicitly convert type Media.WebService.multiValuedAttribute to Media.WebService.multiValuedAttribute[]

Why is ASP.NET trying to generate a temporary class? Don't I already have the generated class from the first Class Library (Media)? What kind of class is it trying to generate?

Thanks!

Answer 1

You have a generated class that allows you to call the web service. ASP.NET is auto-generating a temporary class to serialize/deserialize the XML into.