WCF WTF

Today I was working on a WCF application integration layer for my framework. For some bizarre reason, no matter how many times I updated the service contract and rebuilt my client service references, I never got the latest version.

Specifically, I was trying to call the following method:

public void CreatePages(IList<WebPageDTO> pagesToCreate)

The WebPageDTO was declared (temporarily) in the WCF project. I put DataContract and DataMember on it, the project built fine, and I could even add a reference to it from a client application. However, I could never update the reference from my clients, and when trying to view the service directly I would get this error:

The type '[namespace].[servicename]', provided as the Service attribute value in the ServiceHost directive could not be found.

Finally, I had to modify the method signature to RETURN WebPageDTO – which I didn’t want to do. However, that fixed the service reference and now I can update it. Now I have switched the method stub back to return a custom ServiceResponse object, and that also works.

Bit of a head scratcher. I don’t fully understand why this is happening. Anyone know?