Problem when returning custom object by webservice

[MrNorth]

Im trying to return a collection of objects, the collection object itself inherits from CollectionBase. And somehow the objects need to be serializable...

When Im trying to run the webservice I get this error :

You must implement a default accessor on EasyPrinting.EasyPrinting.CDocumentCollection because it inherits from ICollection.


How can I implement such a default accessor?


kind regards
Henrik

[wossname]

Check out "default keyword" on MSDN for full info on this.

But in the meantime, I wrote a default accessor for one of my classes recently...

<Serializable()> Public Class BoundaryDataStorage
'...
Default Public Property Boundary(ByVal index As Integer) As Boundary
    Get
        '...
    End Get
    Set(ByVal Value As Boundary)
        '...
    End Set
End Property
'...
End Class

Basically it lets the class behave like a wrapper for an array, returning some internal data as pertains to a passed in parameter.

So you can call the above sub with either of the following to get the same result...

dim x as boundary
x = MyBoundaryDataStorageObject.Boundary(i)

or

dim x as boundary
x = MyBoundaryDataStorageObject(i)

[MrNorth]

Yeah, I reminded mysself about that keyword minutes after I posted the question...

Anyway, I put a default accessor... and something strange happened...

I have a webmethod that returns a collection of CDocument objects, a CDocumentCollection object... But when I run this method as a webmethod instead it is created in the proxy class as


CDocument()

My method that is using this can't use this, it works with CDocumentCollection only... not an array of CDocument objects.

Here is my webmethod

<WebMethod()> Public Function CreatePrintList(ByVal OrderNo As String, ByVal OpNo As Integer, ByVal PartNo As String) As CDocumentCollection

And here is the proxy class that was generated:

Public Function CreatePrintList(ByVal OrderNo As String, ByVal OpNo As Integer, ByVal PartNo As String) As CDocument()
            Dim results() As Object = Me.Invoke("CreatePrintList", New Object() {OrderNo, OpNo, PartNo})
            Return CType(results(0),CDocument())
        End Function

Why did this conversion take place???

kind regards
Henrik