LUKE PUPLETT

Another short post to remind myself for when I inevitably forget some of the nuances of my nemesis, WCF. This one regards the error below:

Warning 1 Custom tool warning: Cannot import wsdl:portType Detail: An exception was thrown while running a WSDL import extension: System.ServiceModel.Description.DataContractSerializerMessageContractImporter Error: List of referenced types contains more than one type with data contract name 'Recorder' in namespace 'http://schemas.vuplan.tv/2008/11/vuserv/entities/core/user'. Need to exclude all but one of the following types. Only matching types can be valid references: "S26.Vuplan.Core.User.ClientRecorder, S26.Vuplan.Client.MediaCenter, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null" (not matching) "S26.Vuplan.Core.User.Recorder, S26.Vuplan.Core, Version=1.0.2.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=80726da9f797f65e" (matching) XPath to Error Source: //wsdl:definitions[@targetNamespace='http://schemas.vuplan.tv/2008/11/vuserv/user']/wsdl:portType[@name='IUserService']etc. yeah yeah.

I don't know why the WCF team didn't add a proper UI to this. To see and configure the mappings between a service and your client app, as well as a more wizardy interface and perhaps a more verbose "here's what I'm doing now" style feedback system would save hours.

I have a core library in which a Recorder object lives. This core library is used on server and client and defines many entities and other pan-application helpers and types. The problem comes when I define a derived type of Recorder for the client to use, which has more client specific logic in it. I want to new up a ClientRecorder and then pass the thing back up to the cloud, so I add its Recorder DataContract, and that's when it all falls apart.

The SvcUtil has been instructed to reuse types in all referenced assemblies, so when it tries to map a Recorder contract to one of my types, it can't tell if I want to use the one in the core lib or the new client one.

I could rem out the DataContract line and reimport, this'd work, but the fix is to make sure that I don't try and reuse types in my client assembly.

The config page for the Service Reference doesn't allow excludes, so I have to tick almost all assemblies except the ones I definately know don't contain serializable classes. See pic:

By doing it this way, I should be able to hit Update at any point in the future and not suddenly be thrown out by the error and the massive knock on effect it has to compilation.