Question

I’m currently working on serializing in C# for the first time and I’m using the XmlSerializer class, but I’ve come across a problem. I have two classes which refer eachother, and this causes an error when serializing.

The project is a program for class diagram drawing. Each class has a list of the arrows pointing to or from it:

public List<UMLArrow> arrowlist;

And every arrow has a starting and an ending class:

public UMLClass startingClass;
public UMLClass endClass;

I figured that when I try to serialize this, I get into an infinite loop because of this problem:

<UMLClass>
    <List<UMLArrow> >
        <UMLClass>
            <List<UMLArrow> >
                ...
            <List<UMLArrow> >
        </UMLClass>
    </List<UMLArrow>>
<UMLClass>

Does anyone know a solution to this?

Answer 1

The XmlSerializer does not support circular references. You need to use a serializer which does. The DataContractSerializer (if initialized with preserveObjectReferences = true) or the NetDataContractSerializer do support it, so you should consider changing the serializer you use.