DataContractSerializer and deserializing web service response types
c#, datacontractserializer, wcf, web-services
Solution
Let me answer my own question: The cause of the second error mesasge is that actually, the svcUtil have silently chosen to use `XmlSerializer` insted of `DataContractSerializer`. I've found this by reading the help of `XmlTypeAttribute`- The MSDn states Controls the XML schema that is generated when the attribute target is serialized by the XmlSerializer. ;-) So we are back to old, `XmlSerializer`
Problem
I am using calling web services and using WCF generated service-reference on the client. I have saved XML responses that are received from test service to disk (without SOAP envelope and body tags) I would like to load them from disk and create objects from them. Lets' take the following method from my web service: ``` SomeMethodResponse SomeMethod(SomeMethodRequest req) ``` I manually (through SOAP UI) save the response to disk to file, Sample response: ``` <SomeMethodResponse xmlns="http://myNamespace"> <SomeMember1>value</SomeMember1> </SomeMethodResponse> ``` Then I try to deserialize the object from file using: ``` DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(SomeMethodResponse)) ``` This fails – the serializer complains with the error, that it is expecting element in namespace 'http://schemas.datacontract.org/2004/07', but found element in 'http://myNamespace'. Question: Why does the `DataContractSerializer` not use the namespace, that is declared on SomeMethodResponseType with `XmlTypeAttribute(Namespace="http://myNamespace")`? I can work around this by explicitly providing the namespace and the root element to `DataContractSerializer` constructor. But then it fails with message similar to: Error in line X position Y (last line of the XMLdocument). 'EndElement' 'SomeMethodResponse from namespace 'httpmyNapespace’ is not expected. Expecting element 'someNameField'. `SomeName` is an element in the XSD that web service is using. It is also a property on the `SomeMethodResponse` type, backed by the private field called `someNameField`. It looks like `DataContractSerializer` is trying to deserialize the fields in addition to properties. How can I deserailize XML that I have saved from disk and get back the object of same type that SomeMethod is returning? Thanks, Matra