[c#] Entity framework self referencing loop detected

I have a strange error. I'm experimenting with a .NET 4.5 Web API, Entity Framework and MS SQL Server. I've already created the database and set up the correct primary and foreign keys and relationships.

I've created a .edmx model and imported two tables: Employee and Department. A department can have many employees and this relationship exists. I created a new controller called EmployeeController using the scaffolding options to create an API controller with read/write actions using Entity Framework. In the wizard, selected Employee as the model and the correct entity for the data context.

The method that is created looks like this:

public IEnumerable<Employee> GetEmployees()
{
    var employees = db.Employees.Include(e => e.Department);
    return employees.AsEnumerable();
}

When I call my API via /api/Employee, I get this error:

The 'ObjectContent`1' type failed to serialize the response body for content type 'application/json; ...System.InvalidOperationException","StackTrace":null,"InnerException":{"Message":"An error has occurred.","ExceptionMessage":"Self referencing loop detected with type 'System.Data.Entity.DynamicProxies.Employee_5D80AD978BC68A1D8BD675852F94E8B550F4CB150ADB8649E8998B7F95422552'. Path '[0].Department.Employees'.","ExceptionType":"Newtonsoft.Json.JsonSerializationException","StackTrace":" ...

Why is it self referencing [0].Department.Employees? That doesn't make a whole lot of sense. I would expect this to happen if I had circular referencing in my database but this is a very simple example. What could be going wrong?

I know this is an old question but here is the solution I found to a very similar coding issue in my own code:

var response = ApiDB.Persons.Include(y => y.JobTitle).Include(b => b.Discipline).Include(b => b.Team).Include(b => b.Site).OrderBy(d => d.DisplayName).ToArray();
        foreach (var person in response)
        {
            person.JobTitle = new JobTitle()
            {
                JobTitle_ID = person.JobTitle.JobTitle_ID,
                JobTitleName = person.JobTitle.JobTitleName,
                PatientInteraction = person.JobTitle.PatientInteraction,
                Active = person.JobTitle.Active,
                IsClinical = person.JobTitle.IsClinical
            };
        }

Since the person object contains everything from the person table and the job title object contains a list of persons with that job title, the database kept self referencing. I thought disabling proxy creation and lazy loading would fix this but unfortunately it didn't.

For the that aren't able to do that, try the solution above. Explicitly creating a new object for each object that self references, but leave out the list of objects or object that goes back to the previous entity will fix it since disabling lazy loading does not appear to work for me.

I just had the same issue on my .net core site. The accepted answer didn't work for me but i found that a combination of ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore and PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects fixed it.

//serialize item
var serializedItem = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data, Formatting.Indented, 
new JsonSerializerSettings
{
     PreserveReferencesHandling = PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects,
     ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore
});

If you are trying to change this setting in the Blazor (ASP.NET Core Hosted) template, you need to pass the following to the AddNewtonsoftJson call in Startup.cs in the Server project:

services.AddMvc().AddNewtonsoftJson(options => 
    options.SerializerSettings.ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore
);

The main problem is that serializing an entity model which has relation with other entity model(Foreign key relationship). This relation causes self referencing this will throw exception while serialization to json or xml. There are lots of options. Without serializing entity models by using custom models.Values or data from entity model data mapped to custom models(object mapping) using Automapper or Valueinjector then return request and it will serialize without any other issues. Or you can serialize entity model so first disable proxies in entity model

public class LabEntities : DbContext
{
   public LabEntities()
   {
      Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;
   }

To preserve object references in XML, you have two options. The simpler option is to add [DataContract(IsReference=true)] to your model class. The IsReference parameter enables oibject references. Remember that DataContract makes serialization opt-in, so you will also need to add DataMember attributes to the properties:

[DataContract(IsReference=true)]
public partial class Employee
{
   [DataMember]
   string dfsd{get;set;}
   [DataMember]
   string dfsd{get;set;}
   //exclude  the relation without giving datamember tag
   List<Department> Departments{get;set;}
}

In Json format in global.asax

var json = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.JsonFormatter;
json.SerializerSettings.PreserveReferencesHandling = 
    Newtonsoft.Json.PreserveReferencesHandling.All;

in xml format

var xml = GlobalConfiguration.Configuration.Formatters.XmlFormatter;
var dcs = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(Employee), null, int.MaxValue, 
    false, /* preserveObjectReferences: */ true, null);
xml.SetSerializer<Employee>(dcs);

I only had one model i wanted to use, so i ended up with the following code:

var JsonImageModel = Newtonsoft.Json.JsonConvert.SerializeObject(Images, new JsonSerializerSettings { ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore });

I'm aware that question is quite old, but it's still popular and I can't see any solution for ASP.net Core.

I case of ASP.net Core, you need to add new JsonOutputFormatter in Startup.cs file:

    public void ConfigureServices(IServiceCollection services)
    {

        services.AddMvc(options =>
        {
            options.OutputFormatters.Clear();
            options.OutputFormatters.Add(new JsonOutputFormatter(new JsonSerializerSettings()
            {
                ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore,
            }, ArrayPool<char>.Shared));
        });

        //...
    }

After implementing it, JSON serializer will simply ignore loop references. What it means is: it will return null instead of infinitely loading objects referencing each other.

Without above solution using:

var employees = db.Employees.ToList();

Would load Employees and related to them Departments.

After setting ReferenceLoopHandling to Ignore, Departments will be set to null unless you include it in your query:

var employees = db.Employees.Include(e => e.Department);

Also, keep in mind that it will clear all OutputFormatters, if you don't want that you can try removing this line:

options.OutputFormatters.Clear();

But removing it causes again self referencing loop exception in my case for some reason.

I might also look into adding explicit samples for each controller/action, as well covered here:

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/yaohuang1/archive/2012/10/13/asp-net-web-api-help-page-part-2-providing-custom-samples-on-the-help-page.aspx

i.e. config.SetActualResponseType(typeof(SomeType), "Values", "Get");

Self-referencing as example

public class Employee {
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string FirstName { get; set; }
    public string LastName { get; set; }
    public string Email { get; set; }
    public int ManagerId { get; set; }
    public virtual Employee Manager { get; set; }

    public virtual ICollection<Employee> Employees { get; set; }

    public Employee() {
        Employees = new HashSet<Employee>();
    }
}

HasMany(e => e.Employees)
    .WithRequired(e => e.Manager)
    .HasForeignKey(e => e.ManagerId)
    .WillCascadeOnDelete(false);

I had same problem and found that you can just apply the [JsonIgnore] attribute to the navigation property you don't want to be serialised. It will still serialise both the parent and child entities but just avoids the self referencing loop.

Add a line Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false; in constructor of your context model partial class definition.

    public partial class YourDbContextModelName : DbContext
{
    public YourDbContextModelName()
        : base("name=YourDbContextConn_StringName")
    {
        Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;//this is line to be added
    }

    public virtual DbSet<Employee> Employees{ get; set; }

    protected override void OnModelCreating(DbModelBuilder modelBuilder)
    {
    }
}

This happens because you're trying to serialize the EF object collection directly. Since department has an association to employee and employee to department, the JSON serializer will loop infinetly reading d.Employee.Departments.Employee.Departments etc...

To fix this right before the serialization create an anonymous type with the props you want

example (psuedo)code:

departments.select(dep => new { 
    dep.Id, 
    Employee = new { 
        dep.Employee.Id, dep.Employee.Name 
    }
});

The message error means that you have a self referencing loop.

The json you produce is like this example (with a list of one employee) :

[
employee1 : {
    name: "name",
    department : {
        name: "departmentName",
        employees : [
            employee1 : {
                name: "name",
                department : {
                    name: "departmentName",
                    employees : [
                        employee1 : {
                            name: "name",
                            department : {
                                and again and again....
                            }
                    ]
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}

]

You have to tell the db context that you don't want to get all linked entities when you request something. The option for DbContext is Configuration.LazyLoadingEnabled

The best way I found is to create a context for serialization :

public class SerializerContext : LabEntities 
{
    public SerializerContext()
    {
        this.Configuration.LazyLoadingEnabled = false;
    }
}