Question

I have a User class. One of the properties needs to be an “associated” user, so it’s type needs to be User. Right now when I initialize the class, I get a stack overflow when it tries to initialize the Associated property. Current code:

public class User {
    public User() {
        this.Associated = new User();
    }

    public User Associated { get; set; }
}

Is this doable or am I barking up the wrong tree?

Answer 1

You could use a lazy loaded method for your aggregated User class and not initialize it in the constructor:

public class User {
    private User _user;

    public User Associated 
    { 
        get
        {
            if (_user == null)
                _user = new User();
            return _user;
        }
    }
}