Serializing references to other serialized objects

Question

I have two serializable Classes:

[Serializable]
public class Word
{
    public List<string> similes;
}

.

[Serializable]
public class Lexicon
{
    public List<Word> words;
}

both classes are stored as XML files separately, however the XML files for Lexicon comes out like this:

<Word>
    <Similes>
        <string>Hello</string>
        <string>Hi</string>
    </Similes>
</Word>

<Word>
    <Similes>
        <string>Goodbye</string>
        <string>Bye</string>
    </Similes>
</Word>

<Lexicon>
    <Words>
        <Word>
            <Similes>
                <string>Hello</string>
                <string>Hi</string>
            </Similes>
        </Word>
        <Word>
            <Similes>
                <string>Goodbye</string>
                <string>Bye</string>
            </Similes>
        </Word>
    </Words>
</Lexicon>

And that's just with two words! You can see how this would quickly get out of hand as more Words were added, additionally the "Hello, Hi" Word, when deserialized, is a different object to the one stored inside the deserialized Lexicon - when they should reference the same object.

So essentially is there a way to make the serialized Lexicon file reference the files produced by serializing the Word instances instead of duplicating the xml?

Possible duplicate of [.net XML Serialization - Storing Reference instead of Object Copy](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1617528/net-xml-serialization-storing-reference-instead-of-object-copy) — dotNET, Nov 19 '16 at 16:54

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 31 '16 at 13:42

2

You could add a wordID to your serializable Word and reference this ID it in your Lexicon class

[Serializable]
public class Word
{
    public string WordID;
    public List<string> similes;
}

Your Word Class..

<Word>
    <WordID>1</WordID>
    <Similes>
        <string>Hello</string>
        <string>Hi</string>
    </Similes>
</Word>

Lexicon class

public class Lexicon
{
    public List<string> wordIDs;
}

Lexicon could be like

<Lexicon>
    <WordIDs>
        <string>1</string>
        <string>2</string>            
    </WordIDs>
</Lexicon>

edited Aug 31 '16 at 13:42

Bart

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answered Aug 19 '13 at 00:42

Venkata Krishna

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1

That seems really obvious in hindsight. I feel quite stupid now, thanks! – Nick Udell Aug 19 '13 at 01:00

Serializing references to other serialized objects

1 Answers1