Can I pass a System.Net.MailMessage to a WCF service?

Question

I'd like to setup a WCF service to send emails. The System.Net.MailMessage doesn't seem to be serializable, and cannot be passed in a [DataContract]

The error I receive is

Type 'System.Net.Mail.MailAddress' cannot be serialized. Consider marking it with the DataContractAttribute

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

Whatever you pass to a WCF service needs to be either XML or binary serializable.

A "classic" messaging approach would be:

1. Create a simple DataContract class that has all the required properties of MailMessage
2. Prior to calling the service, set all the properties for the MailMessage in a new instance of your DataContract class
3. Call the service, passing the DataContract
4. Inside the service, create a new instance of MailMessage and assign the properties into it, then send it