I want to pass a fairly generic set of data through a WCF method. The data is basically just a hierarchical set of key/value pairs, but it's nested to an arbitrary level. I originally considered passing it though as a single string and doing XML or JSON or similar encoding/decoding at either end, but since the WCF transport is XML anyway that seemed a little silly, so I'm hoping there's a way to pass it through "naturally".
The method is fairly straightforward:
[OperationContract]
void ProcessData(DataTree tree);
with:
public class DataTree : Dictionary<string, DataTree>
{
}
This all compiles fine, but when I try to run the service it crashes with a StackOverflowException under DataContract.GetStableName.
I've tried putting a [CollectionDataContract]
attribute on the DataTree
class and explicitly specifying all the names, but that didn't seem to make any difference.
I've also tried putting a [DataContract]
on it, but then it fails even earlier because Dictionary
is ISerializable
.
Any ideas? Is there a better way to do this?
For large object trees in the past I have serialized the data myself to a byte array which is sent over with WCF (and WCF don't have to be SOAP/XML if you have WCF in both ends), and then deserialized it manually on the receiving end.
Basically create a Serialize(BinaryWriter writer)
and DeSerialize(BinaryReader reader)
for the classes in question which serializes itself, and passes the writer/reader down to the child objects for recursive serialization.
You could also look into using protobuf-net for serialization/deserialization. Either as the transport on your WCF call, or manually, and passing a byte array over the wire.
As it turned out, another requirement came up (specifying a simple value for a node in addition to a list of children), so I ended up defining a child type for it anyway, which appears to have made WCF happy with it:
[CollectionDataContract(IsReference = true, ItemName = "Param",
KeyName = "Name", ValueName = "Data")]
public class DataTree : Dictionary<string, DataTreeEntry>
{
}
[DataContract]
public class DataTreeEntry
{
[DataMember]
public string Value { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public DataTree Children { get; set; }
}