EF Core 7: implementing Lazy Loading and Circular References in Navigation Properties
I'm working with Entity Framework Core 7 in a project that manages a hierarchical structure of categories and products. Each `Category` has a collection of `Products`, and each `Product` references its parent `Category`. I've enabled lazy loading and am working with a `StackOverflowException` when trying to load a `Category` with its related `Products` due to circular references in navigation properties. Here's the relevant code: ```csharp public class Category { public int Id { get; set; } public string Name { get; set; } public virtual ICollection<Product> Products { get; set; } } public class Product { public int Id { get; set; } public string ProductName { get; set; } public virtual Category Category { get; set; } } ``` When I try to access a `Category` and its associated `Products` like so: ```csharp var category = await _context.Categories.FindAsync(categoryId); var products = category.Products; ``` This leads to a `StackOverflowException`. I suspect it’s due to the lazy loading trying to recursively load the `Category` for each `Product`. I've attempted to disable lazy loading and use explicit loading instead, but I'm still running into issues with the data context being disposed prematurely. To avoid this, I tried eagerly loading the products with: ```csharp var category = await _context.Categories.Include(c => c.Products).FirstOrDefaultAsync(c => c.Id == categoryId); ``` However, this still leads to a circular reference serialization question when returning the category to a JSON API response. I’ve read about using DTOs to break the circular reference, but I’m not quite clear on the best way to implement that in this scenario. How can I effectively manage lazy loading and prevent these circular references in my Entity Framework Core setup without running into `StackOverflowException`? Any guidance or code examples would be appreciated! My development environment is Ubuntu.