Question

I have an EF 4.1 POCO class with Vehicle and VehicleOwner.

When i load eager load the VehicleOwner including the Vehicles, the Vehicles still load the VehicleOwner and when you with a Mapper it ends up in a stackoverflow Exception.

Here is the code sample

public class VehicleOwner : IVehicleOwner
    {

    [Key,DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity),ScaffoldColumn(false)]
    public int VehicleOwnerId { get; set; }
    [Required,DisplayName("First Name")]
    public string FirstName{ get; set; }
    [Required,DisplayName("Last Name")]
    public string LastName { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Vehicle> Vehicles { get; set; }

}

public class Vehicle
{
    public Vehicle()
    {
        this.RecoveredVehicles = new HashSet<RecoveredVehicles>();
    }

    [Key,DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity)]
    public int VehicleId { get; set; }
    [DisplayName("Identification Number")]
    public string IdentificationNumber { get; set; }
    [Required]
    [DisplayName("Owner ID")]
    public int VehicleOwnerId { get; set; }
    [Required]
    [ScaffoldColumn(false)]
    public byte[] RowVersion { get; set; }


    public virtual VehicleOwner VehicleOwner { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<RecoveredVehicle> RecoveredVehicles { get; set; }
}

//when i do this the vehicles get populated and when you expand the Vehicles the VehicleOwner is populated again.

public VehicleOwner GetVehicleOwner(int vehicleOwnerID)
{
   objDataContext.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;
   return (from p in objDataContext.VehicleOwners.Include("Vehicles") where p.VehicleOwnerId == vehicleOwnerID select p).FirstOrDefault<VehicleOwner>();        
}

Is there a way i can prevent this recursive loop.

Thanks

Answer 1

There is no recursive loop. The Vehicle points to the original VehicleOwner. It is just back reference and it cannot be avoided (only if you remove back referencing navigation property).