WCF Deserialization Issue - XML Control Characters

Hi,

I'm developing a WCF service and the QA department is using Soap UI to invoke methods and send test data. They have reported an error when using an ampersand character in a text field of the request.

Offers.API.Infrastructure.Handlers.ServiceErrorHandler.ProvideFault|notauth::

The formatter threw an exception while trying to deserialize the message: There was an error while trying to deserialize parameter http://namesapce.net/api/offers:model. 

The InnerException message was 'There was an error deserializing the object of type Offers.TransportModel.OfferModel. 

Unexpected end of file. Following elements are not closed: Description, OfferDescriptionModel, Conditions, model, CreateOffer, Body, Envelope. Line 353, position 20.'. 

The request they are sending from SOAP UI looks something like this...

<off:Conditions>
    <off:OfferDescriptionModel>
      <off:CultureFormat></off:CultureFormat>
      <off:CultureInvariantId>0</off:CultureInvariantId>
      <off:Description>QA API & Added Value 15</off:Description>
      <off:IsInvariant>true</off:IsInvariant>
   </off:OfferDescriptionModel>
</off:Conditions>

* If they properly encode the ampersand in SOAP UI, then no error occurs.
* When calling the service from a proxy generated by svcutil, characters are properly encoded and no error occurs.

My Issue:
The error returned isn't the greatest - I'd prefer it to handle a bit more gracefully.

I cannot guarantee how the clients consuming the service are going to be generating their requests - so there's nothing I can do in terms of setting encoding etc on the request. I can only handle in the service.

Question(s):

* Is there anything I can do to help WCF when deserializing content that may not be properly encoded? Is there a simple service setting I'm missing?

If WCF could automagically handle all encoding service side for me, great.

Otherwise, any other options appreciated.


Thanks

Tags: .NET (.NET4), WCF