How to deal with custom types in webservice

[MrNorth]

I have a webservice which returns a complextype

<Serializable()> _
Public Class Player
Public Name As String
Public Age As Integer
End Class


If I then want to write a client program which uses this webservice, and I don't ahve the "Player" dll file installed. How will I be able to tell which kind of object the webservice returns? This information is not available in the wsdl file. Can I typecast the returned object to something and then de-serialize it?

All I get is an object... the client doesn't know what a "Player" type is... but it need the data within that type. How do I handle it?? Basically, there two questions:

1) How can I find out what kind of complex data a webservice returns?

2) How can I recreate that complex type in my app?

This applies to using webservices not created by me... I have no definition of the complex type.

kind regards
Henrik

[plenderj]

There are only a set number of types that are serializable. Specifically; DataSets, XML, Intrinsic Data Types, Arrays etc.
I've had this problem myself and the way I deal with it is I create a serialize method that converts the data into a dataset or some xml, pass that through, and then piece it back together again on the other side.

[MrNorth]

I kinda forgot that this Person class is defined in the proxy class, since it is described in the wsdl file. I did it like this at client side (without person.dll)


dim proxy as new localhost.PersonService

dim myPerson as new proxy.Person


myPerson = proxy.GetPerson(456734)




works like a charm... since the Person class is serializable

But sadly it doesn't work for arraylists and collection types... they are returned as simple arrays...


/Henrik