Generic WCF JSON Deserialization

Question

I am a bit new to WCF and will try to clearly describe what I am trying to do.

I have a WCF webservice that uses JSON requests. I am doing fine sending/receiving JS

Answer 1

As the name implies, a data contract is a set of rules. If you want to reliably map messages to operations, then those rules need to be followed.

Why can't you guarantee that the casing will be correct? If you just want to use lowercase identifiers from JavaScript instead, you can use the MessageParameter attribute for that - but you still have to choose a specific name.

In theory you could accept raw JSON and deserialize it manually (just take a string parameter and use any JSON library for deserialization), but that is really not in the spirit of WCF.

I think what you really need to fix is not the fact that the data contract is case sensitive, but the fact that the JSON isn't being put together correctly at the client side.

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If you want to accept the raw JSON string in your operation, then change the BodyStyle to WebMessageBodyStyle.Bare, and change your method signature to accept a single string parameter, which will be populated with whatever JSON string was sent by the client.

Note that all you get is a single string out of this, you have to do all the parsing and property mapping and validation and error handling yourself. It's not the route I would choose to take, but if you're willing to take on the effort and risk involved, it's one potential option.