In this article I will present an easy to understand example when to use Data Contract Known Types, e.g. the KnownTypeAttribute class, to make a WCF Service serialize and a service consumer deserialize types when using inheritance. The MSDN has the complete documentation on this, take a look here: KnownTypeAttribute Class.
In this example I will use a hierarchy of different types of vehicles, e.g. a base vehicle type, a car type, a bike type and a kid’s bike type. I will use WCF 4 (.NET 4), Visual Studio 2010 and the WcfTestClient to test the service.
The great thing with KnownTypeAttribute is that WCF can expose one method supporting all types in a class in a hierarchy.
WCF 4 comes with a bunch of new features where I find the service announcement and service discovery really cool. In this article I will implement a couple of services using these new features.
In a previous article,