I suppose this is possible, though I'm not sure you'd want this. I'd take the following approach (untested, not sure if it works). First create the following project structure in your solution:
ServiceInterfaces
ServiceImplementations
(references ServiceInterfaces
and ModelClasses
)
ModelClasses
Host
(references ServiceInterfaces
and ServiceImplementations
)
Client
(references ServiceInterfaces
and ModelClasses
)
In ServiceInterfaces
you have an interface like this (I skipped the namespaces, etc to make the example shorter):
[ServiceContract]
public interface IMyService<T>
{
T GetObject(int id);
}
In ServiceImplementations
you have a class that implements IMyService<T>
:
public class MyService<T> : IMyService<T>
{
T GetObject(int id)
{
// Create something of type T and return it. Rather difficult
// since you only know the type at runtime.
}
}
In Host
you have the correct configuration for your service in an App.config
(or Web.config
) file and the following code to host your service (given that it is a stand-alone app):
ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(MessageManager.MessageManagerService))
host.Open();
And finally in Client
you use a ChannelFactory<TChannel>
class to define a proxy:
Binding binding = new BasicHttpBinding(); // For the example, could be another binding.
EndpointAddress address = new EndpointAddress("http://localhost:8000/......");
IMyService<string> myService =
ChannelFactory<IMyService<string>>.CreateChannel(binding, address);
string myObject = myService.GetObject(42);
Again, I'm not sure if this works. The trick is to share your service interfaces (in ServiceInterfaces
) and domain model objects (in ModelClasses
) between the host and the client. In my example I use a string to return from the service method but it could be any data contract type from the ModelClasses
project.