Re: circular references

[Aaron Hamid]

I can't answer for Axis, but this is one of the problems with XML being 
a unidirectional tree.  The only way to do this in XML (that I am aware 
of) is use 'id' attributes and then refer to those id attributes in 
subsequent tags (you'll note this problem is similar in 
object-relational mapping).  You could have either User or Group object 
(or both) not contain references to each other but merely unique ids to 
the respective object...or implement custom serializers to perform this 
under the covers.

Aaron

Andrew Hawkes wrote:

I'm having a problem with circular references during serialization.

For example, say I have two types: User and Group. User has a 
getGroup() method, and Group has a getUsers() method which returns an 
array of users.

Since this basically amounts to a circular reference, Axis goes into 
infinite recursion when it tries to serialize the response, and simply 
hangs forever spitting out huge log messages.

It seems like SOAP should have a more intelligent way to handle this. 
Is there a known solution, other than removing the circular reference 
from my objects?

Thanks,
Andrew