protobuf-net property indexers

Question

In protobuf-net,
Is there a plan to add support for attribute-less POCOs, to avoid the property indexes (ProtoContact) ?

I have not problem to add indexes for each property on DTO.

I create the DTOs automatically with my utility and there is a configuration flag for protobuf members.

The problem is that using RESTful services with ServiceStack,

I share to customers (who work in .Net) 2 assemblies,

1. the model without any dependencies, nor ServiceStack (not IReturn), nor protobuf-net.

2. The client.requests, which is a thin wrapper to actual service calls, with some validation,

   error handling, etc. Essentially are simplified calls for every service.

   This assembly has dependencies on ServiceStack client and Protobuf-net.

But the model is dependency-free, because customers can use it, directly in their business layer.

In this case, I have problem with protobuf-net, not with ServiceStack as IReturn is not mandatory.

Is there any solution about that, to avoid add protobuf indexers ?

Update: thanks to Mark Gravell, his answer here and in previous related question

the solution is the alternative inline attributes,

[XmlType]/[XmlElement(Order=key)] using only System.Xml,

or [DataContract]/[DataMember(Order=key)] using System.Runtime.Serialization.

So the model is dependency free, without references to protobuf-net.

I should have read better about.

         [XmlType("Person")]
        public class Person
        {
          [XmlElement(Order = 1)]
          public string Name { get; set; }

          [XmlElement( Order = 2)]
          public string Address { get; set; }
       }

thanks

Answer 1

2 options present themselves:

• if the generated code is a partial class, you can create a second partial class file for the same type, and add the attributes there - this is then part of the same type; in particular, note that [ProtoPartialMember(...)] can be added to a type (multiple times), but describes a member; or if you want less maintenance, [ProtoContract(ImplicitFields=ImplicitFields.AllPublic)] can be used to let the model take control of the rules (but please read the intellisense remarks on ImplicitFields before doing this)

• you can configure the type at runtime, using whatever rules you want, via RuntimeTypeModel:

  var metaType = RuntimeTypeModel.Default.Add(yourType, false);
  // TODO: some reflection that decides what members you want to serialize
  // and as what keys
  foreach(...)
      metaType.Add(member, key);