with azure brokeredmessage get the body without knowing the type

Question

When you are using the brokered message in the Azure Service Bus, you can retrieve the body of the message with the call .GetBody. The code is simple:

var msg = subscription.Receive();
MyPayload payload = msg.GetBody<MyPayload>();

However, is there a way to retrieve the Body without explicitly knowing the class of the body object?

var msg = subscription.Receive();
Type bodyType = Type.GetType( msg.ContentType);

var payload = msg.GetBody<bodyType>();

Answer 1

If the intent is to only grab the message body regardless of the content you can get it as a stream.

Stream stream = message.GetBody<Stream>();
StreamReader reader = new StreamReader(stream);
string s = reader.ReadToEnd();

Answer 2

In sample before ContentType utilized to detect body type. I believe ContentType should be set by sender. I do similar logic, I set one of message properties to type of object on sender side and call GetBody<>() on receiver with type retrived from message property. like this:

public void SendData(object payloadData)
    {
        if (payloadData == null) return;

        var queueClient = QueueClient.CreateFromConnectionString(ConnectionString, _queueName);

        var brokeredMessage = new BrokeredMessage(payloadData);
        brokeredMessage.Properties["messageType"] = payloadData.GetType().AssemblyQualifiedName;
        queueClient.Send(brokeredMessage);
    }

Message property "messageType" has full name of type.

On receiving side I do like this:

 var messageBodyType = Type.GetType(receivedMessage.Properties["messageType"].ToString());
                if (messageBodyType == null)
                {
                    //Should never get here as a messagebodytype should
                    //always be set BEFORE putting the message on the queue
                    Trace.TraceError("Message does not have a messagebodytype" +
                                     " specified, message {0}", receivedMessage.MessageId);
                    receivedMessage.DeadLetter();
                }


                //read body only if event handler hooked
                    var method = typeof(BrokeredMessage).GetMethod("GetBody", new Type[] { });
                    var generic = method.MakeGenericMethod(messageBodyType);
                    try
                    {
                        var messageBody = generic.Invoke(receivedMessage, null);
                         DoSomethingWithYourData();
                        receivedMessage.Complete();
                    }
                    catch (Exception e)
                    {
                        Debug.Write("Can not handle message. Abandoning.");
                        receivedMessage.Abandon();
                    }
                }