Problem with MessageContract, Generic return types and clientside naming

Question

I'm building a web service which uses MessageContracts, because I want to add custom fields to my SOAP header. In a previous topic, I learned that a composite response has to be wrapped. For this purpose, I devised a generic ResponseWrapper class.

[MessageContract(WrapperNamespace = "http://mynamespace.com", 
                    WrapperName="WrapperOf{0}")]
public class ResponseWrapper<T>
{
    [MessageBodyMember(Namespace = "http://mynamespace.com")]
    public T Response
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
}

I made a ServiceResult base class, defined as follows:

[MessageContract(WrapperNamespace = "http://mynamespace.com")]
public class ServiceResult
{
    [MessageBodyMember]
    public bool Status
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [MessageBodyMember]
    public string Message
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [MessageBodyMember]
    public string Description
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
}

To be able to include the request context in the response, I use a derived class of ServiceResult, which uses generics:

[MessageContract(WrapperNamespace = "http://mynamespace.com",
                WrapperName = "ServiceResultOf{0}")]
public class ServiceResult<TRequest> : ServiceResult
{
    [MessageBodyMember]
    public TRequest Request
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
}

This is used in the following way

[OperationContract()]
ResponseWrapper<ServiceResult<HCCertificateRequest>> OrderHealthCertificate(RequestContext<HCCertificateRequest> context);

I expected my client code to be generated as

ServiceResultOfHCCertificateRequest OrderHealthCertificate(RequestContextOfHCCertificateRequest context);

Instead, I get the following:

ServiceResultOfHCCertificateRequestzSOTD_SSj OrderHealthCertificate(CompType1 c1, CompType2 c2, HCCertificateRequest context);

CompType1 and CompType2 are properties of the RequestContext class. The problem is that a hash is added to the end of ServiceResultOfHCCertificateRequestzSOTD_SSj. How do I need define my generic return types in order for the client type to be generated as expected (without the hash)?

Answer 1

We have also had problems returning a generic list over WCF.

The solution that works for us is to create a class that has a single property, and that property is a generic list.

Then we send that class over WCF. If you have many such lists you can create a class that has a list of type T. So that when you create the class you can specify which type of list you want.