wcf - Generic Service Interface

Question

I have a Generic Service Interface:

[ServiceContract]
public interface IService<T> where T : Class1
{
    [OperationContract]
    void DoWork(T class1);
}

Then I have a Concrete Service that inherits from that:

public class Service : IService<Class1>
{
    public void DoWork(Class1 class1)
    {
    }
}

Everything works fine until I add a webHttpEndpoint to expose a JSON WS:

<service name="Service">
    <endpoint 
        address="" 
        binding="webHttpBinding" 
        behaviorConfiguration="webHttpBehavior"
        contract="IService"  />
</service>

<behavior name="webHttpBehavior">
    <enableWebScript />
</behavior>

In fact, I receive this error:

The contract name 'IService' could not be found in the list of contracts implemented by the service 'Service'.

That's beacuse of the generic definition of the interface. Any solution?

Answer 1

In my opinion (and based on what you said), the interface does not need to be generic. The caller just need to know that there is a DoWork operation.

So basically, change the concrete class to be generic instead of the interface.

public class Service<T> : IService where T : Class1
{
    public void DoWork()
    {
    }
}

EDIT after clarifying the question: You need to provide the generic parameter in the config file as well:

contract="YourAssembly.IService`1[[YourAssembly.Class1, YourAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null]]"

Here is a similar question: Inheriting from a generic contract in WCF