Entity Framework, how to avoid serializing my whole database when there is a many-to-many relationsh-CodePudding

I am using entity framework in a .NET Framework 4.6.1 API project.

I have a database with 3 tables like so :

When serializing my entities to JSON, everything is fine on the left side, but because I have a many-to-many relationship on the right side (The 3 could be replaced with n), and C can contain many different Bs, I end up, when trying to retrieve a single A Serializing the A's Bs and thus, the Bs' Cs, which in turn serializes pretty much my whole database when, really, I just want a single entity.

The problem is even worse when getting the whole collection of As, as it serializes my database multiple times, making it very slow and memory inefficient.

I have the following bit of code as reference handling :

config
    .Formatters
    .JsonFormatter
    .SerializerSettings
    .PreserveReferencesHandling = Newtonsoft.Json.PreserveReferencesHandling.Objects;

Can't find anything related or similar to that problem anywhere on the web.

CodePudding user response：

You can either use DTO or change JSON converter setting like below

JsonConvert.DefaultSettings = () => new JsonSerializerSettings
{
    PreserveReferencesHandling = PreserveReferencesHandling.All,
    ReferenceLoopHandling = ReferenceLoopHandling.Ignore
};