MsmqIntegrationBinding Serialization with Unknown Message Body Types

Question

I'm looking to use the MsmqIntegrationBinding to integrate with a legacy queue which has a serialized object as the message body. Has anyone come up with a way to obtain the "metadata" of the message body and create a service side class to use within the service?

For example, if I put in a serialized Product object from System A and my service needs to consume it, how do I provide MsmqMessage the type if I do not have the Product class on my side? I was thinking of reading off a message in a separate program, deserializing, and then emitting via the code dom. Ideas?

Answer 1

Hmm... in WCF, you can define service methods which take (and optionally return) an untyped Message type. This seems to fit your bill quite nicely.

Other than with strongly typed messages, you'll have to do all the putting together of the message on the client and the taking apart on the server by means of reading the raw XML - but that seems to be what you're looking for, right?

Find more information and samples here:

• WCF - Handling Generic Messages
• How to pass a generic object through WCF
• Untyped messages on WCF

Untyped messages have some restrictions, e.g. you can only read them once on the server, but you should be able to manage your scenario with this, I think.

Marc

Answer 2

I wholeheartedly recommend against attempting to emit the deserialized type at runtime in the message destination. Either work with the XML at the destination to obtain the data you desire, or build data contracts that both the source and destination can adhere to.