In a WCF service, I have a situation where there is a datacontract (object) that contains a collection of child items (where the collection has a datamemeber attribute). The objects in the child collection have a reference to the parent as a property. If the parent object child collection is empty or contains a null parent reference, all is good, but if the parent reference is populated and parent children are populated, it serializes for ever.
Here's a set of test console code to show you what I'm talking about.
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
MyParentObject parent = BuildParent();
string xml = Serializer<MyParentObject>.Serialize(parent);
System.Console.Write(xml);
System.Console.ReadKey();
}
static MyParentObject BuildParent()
{
MyParentObject parent = new MyParentObject();
parent.MyParentObjectId = 123;
parent.MyParentObjectName = "Test Parent Object";
parent.MyChildren = new List<MyChildObject>();
for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++)
{
MyChildObject child = new MyChildObject();
child.MyParent = parent;
child.MyChildObjectId = i;
child.MyChildObjectName = string.Format("Test Child Name {0}", i.ToString());
parent.MyChildren.Add(child);
}
return parent;
}
}
[DataContract]
public class MyParentObject
{
[DataMember]
public int MyParentObjectId { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public string MyParentObjectName { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public List<MyChildObject> MyChildren { get; set; }
}
[DataContract]
public class MyChildObject
{
[DataMember]
public MyParentObject MyParent { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public int MyChildObjectId { get; set; }
[DataMember]
public string MyChildObjectName { get; set; }
}
public class Serializer<T>
{
public static string Serialize(T entity)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
DataContractSerializer dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T));
using (XmlWriter writer = XmlWriter.Create(sb))
{
dcs.WriteObject(writer, entity);
writer.Flush();
}
return sb.ToString();
}
}
Other than clearing out child/parent references that cause this infinite serialization loop, are there any ways around this?
EDIT: I know I can just remove the datamember attribute, but I'd like to keep it, and simply not serialize infinitely.