Convert sequences to Generic Lists with svcutil

Question

I am trying to auto generate some code with svcutil. I have the following within an xsd:

<xs:complexType name="ForsikringstilfelleDetalj">
    <xs:sequence>
        <xs:element name="detaljID" type="xs:string" minOccurs="0" maxOccurs="1"/>

I then run the following command:

svcutil xx.wsdl yy.xsd  /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1

I then get the following C# code:

public ForsikringstilfelleDetalj[] forsikringstilfelle

What I wanted was:

public List<ForsikringstilfelleDetalj> forsikringstilfelle

According to the info on the net the /ct option should tell svcutil to use generic lists for collections. Can anyone see what I am doing wrong?

score 5 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 21 '12 at 13:36

5

To download metadata (incluing xsd schemes) to the current directory use:
```
svcutil /t:metadata http://.../.../service?WSDL
```
To generate the client code use:
```
svcutil *.wsdl *.xsd /language:C# /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1
```
Note: *.wsdl and *.xsd because there could be a lot of service definitions and schemes.

To generate the client code in one step use:

svcutil http://.../.../service?WSDL /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List`1

answered Aug 21 '12 at 13:36

Sergey Vyacheslavovich Brunov

17,291
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Thanks for the answer, but this looks to be the same as what I have tried – Shiraz Bhaiji Aug 21 '12 at 13:59
@ShirazBhaiji, have you tried to open Command prompt inside some directory and execute the first two commands from my answer? Does the `List` type appear in .cs file? If not, what's the output? – Sergey Vyacheslavovich Brunov Aug 21 '12 at 14:20
I have the wsdl and xsd on disk so I just ran the second command, the output I got is in the question. – Shiraz Bhaiji Aug 21 '12 at 14:52
Must be something special with my xsd. In your test did the wsdl come from a .net web service? In the xsd did the name of the list have a prefix of "ArrayOf"? – Shiraz Bhaiji Aug 22 '12 at 13:19
@ShirazBhaiji, yeah, there is "ArrayOf" in the downloaded xsd files. I am using WCF (.NET 4.0) service to test the command lines. In the generated cs file there are `List` (I've used the second command of my answer). – Sergey Vyacheslavovich Brunov Aug 23 '12 at 07:21
Thanks, I will post info here if I find out what the difference is – Shiraz Bhaiji Aug 23 '12 at 07:25

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 30 '17 at 18:32

I may be a little late to answer this question, but I'll leave it here in case someone else has the same issue.

The reason SvcUtil is not generating Generics based classes is because it is only supported with the DataContract Serializer and not the XML Serializer. The WSDL/XSD you have is probably not supported by the DataContract Serializer. Something as simple as having an attribute(xsd/xml not "DataContractAttribute") will default to using the XMLSerializer since DataContracts do not support attributes.

Read the following:

"In addition, the /r and /ct switches for referencing types are for generating data contracts. These switches do not work when using XmlSerializer."

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa347733(v=vs.110).aspx

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 03 '16 at 16:17

I could not figure out why the /ct switch does not work properly in my case. Hopefully, they fix it soon; meanwhile, I added the following powershell command to the batch file to replace the generated array with a List:

powershell -Command "(gc ServiceRef.cs) -replace 'ForsikringstilfelleDetalj\[\]', 'System.Collections.Generic.List<ForsikringstilfelleDetalj>' | Out-File ServiceRef.cs"

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 21 '19 at 07:28

-1

svcutil xx.wsdl yy.xsd /ct:System.Collections.Generic.List will only work if you have a return type of List or a generic class. Check your methods' return types to see whether all are generic or not.

edited Jan 21 '19 at 07:28

chb

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answered Jan 21 '19 at 05:28

Suraj Verma

21
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Convert sequences to Generic Lists with svcutil

4 Answers4