Detecting and fixing circular references in JavaScript

Question

Given I have a circular reference in a large JavaScript object

And I try JSON.stringify(problematicObject)

And the browser throws

Answer 1

Here is MDN's approach to detecting and fixing circular references when using JSON.stringify() on circular objects: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Errors/Cyclic_object_value :

In a circular structure like the following

var circularReference = {otherData: 123};
circularReference.myself = circularReference;

JSON.stringify() will fail:

JSON.stringify(circularReference);
// TypeError: cyclic object value

To serialize circular references you can use a library that supports them (e.g. cycle.js) or implement a solution by yourself, which will require finding and replacing (or removing) the cyclic references by serializable values.

The snippet below illustrates how to find and filter (thus causing data loss) a cyclic reference by using the replacer parameter of JSON.stringify():

const getCircularReplacer = () => {
      const seen = new WeakSet();
      return (key, value) => {
        if (typeof value === "object" && value !== null) {
          if (seen.has(value)) {
            return;
          }
          seen.add(value);
        }
        return value;
      };
    };

JSON.stringify(circularReference, getCircularReplacer());
// {"otherData":123}