What type of serialization uses Wcf behind the scenes?

Question

I know there\'s 3 type s of serialization in .net :

Soap , Xml , Binary.

Wcf instructed the DataContract attribute which also serialize ... bu

Answer 1

It is the binding defined for the given endpoint which specifies the serialization mechanism. For example:

• basicHttpBinding and wsHttpBinding use SOAP
• netTcpBinding uses binary serialization
• webHttpBinding could use XML, Json, ...

You can read more about the different built-in bindings and their properties on this article. Thanks to the extensibility of WCF you could of course write your own custom bindings.

Answer 2

You are messing two techniques together.

• Serialization - how objects are converted to messages - we have XML and JSON formatters available out of the box (DataContractSerializer, DataContractJsonSerializer, XmlSerializer)
• Encoding - how the message is transferred - we have three encoders out of the box
  • TextMessageEncoder - for SOAP messages transferred as text - also supports MTOM and POX (Plain old XML) if message version is set to None
  • BinaryMessageEncoder - for XML/SOAP messages transferred as binary data
  • WebMessageEncoder - for XML and JSON messages in REST services

These features are used by standard bindings. WCF support as many serializations and encoding as you want => you can build your own.