Youssef M's Blog

Helping computers make friends since 2008

Paging with ASP.NET Web API OData

A common requirement for web applications is to expose partial results from a larger set of data....

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 02/19/2013

Writing tests for an ASP.NET Web API service

It's important to test any service you write to make sure that it's behaving the way you expect it...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 01/28/2013

Building Real-time Web Apps with ASP.NET WebAPI and WebSockets

WebSocket is a recent technology that provides two-way communication over a TCP connection. This...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 07/17/2012

Error Handling in ASP.NET WebAPI

WebAPI is a brand new framework that makes it easy to build HTTP services. As such, it provides...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/28/2012

Writing a Lightweight Web Service using WebApi Building Blocks

Don’t you wish you could write a web service this easily: LiteWebServer server = new...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 02/24/2012

Using the [ContractNamespace] attribute to customize the namespace for POCO types

In .NET 3.5 SP1, DataContractSerializer was enhanced to support POCO types that weren’t marked...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/30/2011

Loading WCF Client Configuration from Different Files with ConfigurationChannelFactory

One pain point with configuration that WCF developers have run into in previous versions of the...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 09/02/2010

Turning XML into XmlSerializer CLR Types with xsd.exe

Here’s a common dilemma .NET developers encounter when working with XML: I have some XML that...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/01/2010

Using XML Schema Import and Export for XmlSerializer

In a previous post, I outlined how you could import and export the XML schema for a type that you’re...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 05/13/2010

How to get minOccurs = 0 in the schema for XmlSerializer struct members

If you try exporting the following type into an XML schema: public class Employee { public DateTime...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 03/22/2010

How to Change .NET Configuration Files at Runtime (including for WCF)

One of the most common issues people run into with WCF configuration, and .NET applications in...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 01/21/2010

Behavior Merge in WCF 4.0 Configuration

One of the brand new configuration features you can find in the Beta 2 release of .NET 4.0 is the...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 12/22/2009

Separating out WCF Configuration Into Multiple Files with configSource

WCF configuration files can sometimes be very, very long. And there’s a good reason for that too:...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 11/03/2009

WCF 101: The Simplest WCF Example You'll Ever See

Every once in a while, I’ll encounter a developer that thinks that WCF is too complicated to use....

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 11/02/2009

Beta 2's out!

Ok, so a bit late, but the Beta 2 release of Visual Studio 2010 was released two weeks ago. With...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 11/02/2009

Reusing Types in Referenced Assemblies with svcutil's /r Switch

Everyone’s entitled to their own personal favorite svcutil switch, but mine is the “/reference”...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 10/09/2009

Serializing Plain Old CLR Object (POCO) types with DataContractSerializer

When version 3.0 of the .NET framework shipped, DataContractSerializer could only support a few...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 08/10/2009

Optimizing Away Repeat XML Namespace Declarations with DataContractSerializer

For performance reasons, DataContractSerializer can’t always figure out what namespaces will be used...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 07/24/2009

Comparing the Performance of .NET Serializers

The .NET framework comes with a variety of different serializers. Hopefully, my overview of these...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 07/10/2009

Setting Configuration Defaults with Nameless Elements in WCF 4

This is my second post about Beta 1 features in WCF 4.0 after introducing the DataContractResolver....

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/26/2009

Customizing the XML for collections with XmlSerializer and DataContractSerializer

One of the most common requests I get about serialization is to explain how to get collections to...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/12/2009

Configuring Known Types Dynamically - Introducing the DataContractResolver

This post has been updated to account for the changes to the DataContractResolver in the Beta 2...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 06/05/2009

Configuring the Client Endpoint for svcutil

One of the more common questions I get is along these lines: I want to configure svcutil to use a...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 05/12/2009

Using XML Schema Import and Export for DataContractSerializer

For many WCF developers, service metadata import and export is a magical thing. You start your...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 04/29/2009

Testing the performance of known types

In my last post, I claimed that one of the reasons you should try to avoid known types is that it...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 04/24/2009

Understanding Known Types

Probably the aspect of WCF serialization developers have the hardest time with is known types. In...

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 04/22/2009

An overview of .NET serializers

A common question developers have about serialization in .NET is what serializer they should use....

Author: Youssef Moussaoui - MSFT Date: 04/15/2009