A circular reference was detected while serializin

Question

I am trying to do a simple JSON return but I am having issues I have the following below.

public JsonResult GetEventData()
{
    var data = Event.Find(x => x.ID != 0);
    return Json(data);
}

I get a HTTP 500 with the exception as shown in the title of this question. I also tried

var data = Event.All().ToList()

That gave the same problem.

Is this a bug or my implementation?

Answer 1

To sum things up, there are 3 solutions to this:

    private DBEntities db = new DBEntities();//dbcontext

    //Solution 1: turn off ProxyCreation for the DBContext and restore it in the end 
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        bool proxyCreation = db.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled;
        try
        {
            //set ProxyCreation to false
            db.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;

            var data = db.Products.ToList();

            return Json(data, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest;
            return Json(ex.Message);
        }
        finally
        {
            //restore ProxyCreation to its original state
            db.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = proxyCreation;
        }
    }

    //Solution 2: Using JsonConvert by Setting ReferenceLoopHandling to ignore on the serializer settings. 
    //using using Newtonsoft.Json;
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        try
        {
            var data = db.Products.ToList();

            JsonSerializerSettings jss = new JsonSerializerSettings { ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore };
            var result = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(data, Formatting.Indented, jss);

            return Json(result, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest;
            return Json(ex.Message);
        }
    }

    //Solution 3: return a new dynamic object which includes only the needed properties.
    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        try
        {
            var data = db.Products.Select(p => new
                                                {
                                                    Product_ID = p.Product_ID,
                                                    Product_Name = p.Product_Name,
                                                    Product_Price = p.Product_Price
                                                }).ToList();

            return Json(data, JsonRequestBehavior.AllowGet);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            Response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.BadRequest;
            return Json(ex.Message);
        }
    }

Answer 2

add [JsonIgnore] to virtuals properties in your model.