WCF: Use JSON to encode a SOAP Message Body

Question

We have SOAP implementations of our services and up till now we had some legacy code that was wrapping our args and returns in another object to get around some serialization / generics on RPC methods.

After optimization, we had implemented this class so that it Json serialized (DataContractJsonSerializer) and GZipped our complex request params and response objects.

I now want to push this stuff down into the WCF stack. What I really want is the ability to encode the message body as GZipped Json on a standard SOAP service. We need transactional support and security etc so we need to be able to support the standard bindings.

I have managed to implement an Operation Behavior to Json serialize so that the message infoset will contain json compatible XML. I then wanted to add a MessageEncoder to turn the xml into json in the message body. This is where I have issues. I can't serialize the whole message as we still have standard soap headers etc and the s:body still contains a root Request or Response object before the json compatible xml. I figure I can use the JsonReaderWriterFactory just not sure how to apply to the correc portion of the message.

I know I can do the GZIP later if I can just figure out reading and writing this Json section.

Any ideas? Pete

OK. So some clarification.

My service looks like this

[ServiceContract]
public interface IMyService {
  [OperationContract]
  Person SavePerson(Person personToSave);

  [OperationContract]
  Person GetPersons();
}

and the output from the GetPersons() method would look something like this:

<s:Envelope xmlns:s="http://www.w3.org/2003/05/soap-envelope" xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/2005/08/addressing"&gt;
  <s:Header>
    <a:Action s:mustUnderstand="1">http://www.petegoo.com/wcf/MyService/IMyService/GetPersonsResponse&lt;/a:Action&gt;
    <a:RelatesTo>urn:uuid:a18ccf1c-0793-4240-ba6f-9e86b6f2fdf6</a:RelatesTo>
  </s:Header>
  <s:Body>[{"DateOfBirth":"\/Date(286801200000+1300)\/","FirstName":"Foo","Id":1,"LastName":"Bar"},{"DateOfBirth":"\/Date(333720000000+1200)\/","FirstName":"Foo","Id":1,"LastName":"Bar"}]</s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Note: The above was ad hoc so may not be syntactically or semantically correct.

Answer 1

My understanding is you like embed JSON into XML infoset in the SOAP? It'd be easier to write some sample request and response that you want to achieve.

I don't see a good reason to coexist JSON infoset with XML infoset. However you can return JSON data as a string value of a XML element/attribute in the SOAP.