How to send a subset of POCO data object to Client WCF

Question

I'm building an n-tier application and using this class to comunícate server side layers(DAL Layer -> BusinessLayer Layer -> WCF Service Layer:

     public class Ohmio: IOhmioService
        {
            public IEnumerable<Pedidos> Pedidos_Listar()
            {           
                using (var context = new OhmioEntities())
                {
                    var query =
                        from Pedidos in context.Pedidos                    
                        select Pedidos;
                    query = query.Where(i => i.ID_Cliente == 25);                
                    return query.ToList();
                }
            }        
        }

The class expose an POCOs object to share between layers. This is ok for server side layers, but i need to control de info exposed on WCF Service. In WCF service layer, I use this class to expose the data to WCF client:

public class Ohmio : IOhmioService
    {  
        public IEnumerable<Pedidos> Pedidos_Listar()
        {
            BusinessLayer.Ohmio _pedidos = new BusinessLayer.Ohmio();
            return _pedidos.Pedidos_Listar();                
        }
    }

My question: Can i expose only a sub-set of POCOs class field to WCF client instead of the whole object Pedido. I need to specify field to be exposed to WCF Client. Thanks!

Answer 1

You could define a class containing only the fields you want to expose to use as return type for the service, and use Automapper to automatically generate an instance of the stripped-down class from a Pedido instance.

Answer 2

Only decorate those properties of the POCO class with the DataMember attribute that you want to be exposed to the WCF client.