Json and Circular Reference Exception

Question

I have an object which has a circular reference to another object. Given the relationship between these objects this is the right design.

To Illustrate

Answer 1

Since, to my knowledge, you cannot serialize object references, but only copies you could try employing a bit of a dirty hack that goes something like this:

1. Customer should serialize its Machine reference as the machine's id
2. When you deserialize the json code you can then run a simple function on top of it that transforms those id's into proper references.