ISerializable Circular Reference

Question

I've been trying to understand how to correctly implement a circular reference using the ISerializable interface. But i have not been able to work out even in a simple form, I have read the explanation here

But I have not been able to implement it, I've also tried looked for an example to no avail. I've checked the documentation on MSDN, but i unable to any reference to how to handle custom serialization with circular references.

The simplest form i've been trying with is a doublely linked list.

I don't believe this is possible without handling the *entire/outer* object-graph yourself and manually breaking/linking references. That is, instead of serializing `Node`, serialize `LinkedList` (which represents a list from such nodes) and handle serialization manually in there. — user2864740, Feb 02 '14 at 00:25

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 02 '14 at 01:18

Serialize circular reference just need an strategy to serialize the whole object graph nothing more. for double link list you can start from the first node and then just serialize the next one, (previous is already serialized so nothing to do ) then when you wanted to build the list again do the same just set previous node for each one sequentially(recursively) something like this

public class LinkList : ISerializable
{
    public Node First { get; set; }

    public Node Tail { get; set; }

    public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        info.AddValue("Firts", First);
    }
    public LinkList(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        First = info.GetValue("First", typeof(Node)) as Node;
        First.PrevNode = null;
        //do one one while set the Tail of this class  and LinkList proeprty for each node
    }
}
public class Node : ISerializable
{
    public LinkList LinkList { get; set; }


    public Node(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        Name = info.GetString("Name");
        NextNode = info.GetValue("NextNode", typeof(Node)) as Node;
        if(NextNode != null)
            NextNode.PrevNode = this;

    }
  public  Node PrevNode
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    public Node NextNode
    {
        get;
        set;
    }
    public string Name
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        info.AddValue("Name", Name);
        info.AddValue("Next", NextNode);

    }
}

This is exactly what i needed to get my head around it, I assume the same basic approach for a Directional graph would also work (trying it as i post)? — TigerChan, Feb 02 '14 at 04:43
@Nuku if you store your graph in linked list structure you can use the same strategy try to serialize recursively (something like before ) to deal with circles you can have one flag that show if a node is serialized before and if so for the next time to serialize a node you can just put one id there then after deserializing you should remake the relations.(notice to the performance how many times you should iterate nodes of graph ) but if you use structure with Adjacency matrix http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjacency_matrix then you can serialize each node and then the matrix itself easily. — Mojtaba, Feb 02 '14 at 12:19

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Feb 02 '14 at 00:22

One option to get this to work would to be to add an ID field to the the class. Make a linked list of integers which will tie to the ID of the field, and a readonly linked list property which will be populated based on finding references to the IDs in the linked list.

The one constraint on this is that each object in the list of IDs must be available when it is deserialized.

ISerializable Circular Reference

2 Answers2