What is the purpose of the IsWrapped property in WCF

c#, serialization, wcf, xml-serialization

Solution

Unwrapped Messages (MSDN):

By default, the message body is formatted such that the parameters to a service operation are wrapped.

And

MessageContractAttribute.IsWrapped Property (MSDN):

Set the value of IsWrapped to false to suppress the wrapper element into which the message body is serialized.

So, consider this (trimmed) message:

<s:Envelope>
  <s:Body>
    <Add>
      <n1>100</n1>
      <n2>15.99</n2>
    </Add>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

When you set `IsWrapped` to `false`, the message body won't be wrapped in an element with the action name (`Add` in this case):

<s:Envelope>
  <s:Body>
    <n1>100</n1>
    <n2>15.99</n2>
  </s:Body>
</s:Envelope>

Properties like these are meant for interoperability, for example when writing a client to consume a service which doesn't expect messages to be wrapped.

Problem

Original source