How to remove circular reference in Entity Framework?

Question

Hi,

The circular reference between my Customer and Order entities caused a exception during serialization. Is there anyway to force EF to generate one-direction reference between these two entities? Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

When you create an association in model designer (right click add->association) you'll get a popup windows which looks like this:

Notice the navigation property check boxes, you can deselect them if you don't want them to be generated. To solve your circular reference problem, make sure only one or none are checked, not both.

Answer 2

When I need to serialize, I generally project onto other types. This eliminates circular references, plus other data I don't want serialize. For example:

var q = (from c in Repository.Customers()
         where c.Id == id
         select new 
         {
             Name = c.Name,
             Orders = from o in C.Orders
                      select new
                      {
                          Date = o.Date
                      }
         }).First();
return Json(q);