I'm writing a Web API project in C# that uses Entity Framework to pull data from a DB, serialize it and send it to a client.
My project has 2 classes, Post and Comment (foreign key from Post).
These are my classes.
Post class:
public partial class Post
{
public Post()
{
this.Attachment = new HashSet<Attachment>();
this.Comment = new HashSet<Comment>();
}
public int PostId { get; set; }
public string Title { get; set; }
public string Content { get; set; }
public System.DateTime Created { get; set; }
public Nullable<System.DateTime> Modified { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Attachment> Attachment { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Comment> Comment { get; set; }
}
Comment class:
public partial class Comment
{
public int CommentId { get; set; }
public string Content { get; set; }
public System.DateTime Posted { get; set; }
public bool Approved { get; set; }
public int AnswersTo { get; set; }
public int PostId { get; set; }
public virtual Post Post { get; set; }
}
My problem is that when I try to get via Web API a Post, it spits me the following error:
Object graph for type 'APIServer.Models.Comment' contains cycles and cannot be serialized if reference tracking is disabled.
And when I try to get a Comment via Web API, the error is as follows:
Object graph for type 'System.Collections.Generic.HashSet`1[[APIServer.Models.Comment, APIServer, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null]]' contains cycles and cannot be serialized if reference tracking is disabled.
If I annotate the Comment class with
[DataContract(IsReference = true)]
the errors disappear, but the serialization only returns the ID of the comment and ignores the other fields.
Any suggestions on how to solve this?
Thanks in advance,
Léster