wcf - WcfTestClient.exe not able to handle circular reference?

Question

I'm working on a wcf project. Some of my services return objects that contain circular references. The serialization of these objects is handled through setting IsReference to true on DataContract attribute, so everything works fine if i write code to call those services. But for simple testing, it seems more preferable to me to use the GUI interface WcfTestClient.exe, and it turns out that WcfTestClient fails to display circularly referenced objects.

I know trying to display objects which contain references to each other will cause infinite recursion if nothing special has been processed. I just wonder does that mean it is impossible to test services that return circularly referenced objects via WcfTestClient ? Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi I had the same problem with WCF test client , which cannot able to handle this circular reference even the IsReference =true. An unhandled exception of type 'System.StackOverflowException' occurred in mscorlib.dll error is happening at the WCFTestClient.exe , but not with your WCF service, that's why it's falling to the visual studio Disassembly with the stackoverflow error. the point is WCFTestClient is not intended or expecting a circular reference like visual studio object tree. Hope you understand. nice question anyway... :)