WCF Data Contract with Hierarchical Data in Object Graph

Question

I'm writing a WCF service to return information about a person from Active Directory. As well as returning the person's details I also want it to return their manager's username and full name.

I began coding this as:...

[DataContract]
public class ADPerson
{
    Guid objectGuid;
    Guid managerObjectGuid;
    string username;
    string displayname;

    [DataMember]
    public string Username 
    { 
        get { return this.username; }
        set { this.username = value; }
    }
    [DataMember]
    public string DisplayName
    { 
        get { return this.displayName; }
        set { this.displayName = value; }
    }
    [DataMember]
    public ADPerson Manager
    { 
        get { return new ADPerson(this.managerObjectGuid); }
        set { this.managerObjectGuid = value.objectGuid; }
    }

    /* ... */

}

...but then realised that this has no stop condition; i.e. it will traverse all the way up the object graph until it reaches a user for whom no manager is defined (i.e. the CEO).

Is there a good way to put this stop condition in place whilst still being able to reuse the ADPerson class, or do I need to provide an alternative way of getting the manager's details (e.g. putting those details I want to be visible into their own fields and removing DataMember from the Manager property, or creating an ADManager class which presents a subset of the ADPerson fields which doesn't the manager's manager?

This is another case where solving the problem is simple, but knowing what the best solution to the problem is is vexing me.

Thanks in advance,

JB

Answer 1

In my opinion, based on the information given, the best solution is to make the properties you want serialized visible on the class at hand and remove the DataMember attribute from the manager, like this:

[DataContract] 
public class ADPerson 
{ 
    Guid objectGuid; 
    Guid managerObjectGuid; 
    string username; 
    string displayname; 

    [DataMember] 
    public string Username  
    {  
        get { return this.username; } 
        set { this.username = value; } 
    } 
    [DataMember] 
    public string DisplayName 
    {  
        get { return this.displayName; } 
        set { this.displayName = value; } 
    } 
    public ADPerson Manager 
    {  
        get { return new ADPerson(this.managerObjectGuid); } 
        set { this.managerObjectGuid = value.objectGuid; } 
    } 
    [DataMember] 
    public string ManagerUsername
    {  
        get { return this.Manager.Username; } 
    } 
    [DataMember] 
    public string ManagerName
    {  
        get { return this.Manager.DisplayName; } 
    } 
} 

And they don't even have to be public if you don't want them to.