How to return hierarchical graph with RIA services

Question

I would like a DomainService as follows:

 [EnableClientAccess]
    public class FamilyService : DomainService
    {
        public IQueryable<Person> GetPeople() // for the time being fake out a set of people
        {
            var people = new[]{ new Person(), ... };
            return people.AsQueryable();
        }
    }

The Person class should be simple enough:

public class Person
    {
        [Key]
        public Guid Id { get; set;  }
        public Person Parent { get; set;  }
        public String Name { get; set; }
        public Person[] Children { get; set; }
    }

In the Silverlight client, the Person class that is generated does not include the Parent or Children properties. What am I missing?

(Perhaps I should point out that while this is obviously a mock example, I am planning on using a loosely coupled approach, that this mimics. In fact most of my data doesn't reside in a database at all A significant majority of the RIA samples use an end-to-end parity of model from the database to the UI, which is not an option in my case.)

Answer 1

Try adding the [Include] attribute to the Parent & Children properties.

public class Person
{
    [Key]
    public Guid Id { get; set;  }
    [Include]
    public Person Parent { get; set;  }
    public String Name { get; set; }
    [Include]
    public Person[] Children { get; set; }
}

If the Person class is coming out of the DB (in your real world app) and you are using EF, then you need to force them to be loaded eagerly, using the .Include() method.