.net XML Serialization - Storing Reference instead of Object Copy

Question

In .Net/C# Application, I have data structures which have references to each other.
When I serialize them, .Net Serializes all references with separate object copies.
In Following Example, I am trying to serialize to Array of 'Person'

A 'Person' may have reference to another person.

public class Person
{
    public string Name;
    public Person Friend;
}

Person p1 = new Person();
p1.Name = "John";

Person p2 = new Person();
p2.Name = "Mike";

p1.Friend = p2;

Person[] group = new Person[] { p1, p2 };
XmlSerializer ser = new XmlSerializer(typeof(Person[]));
using (TextWriter tw = new StreamWriter("test.xml"))
    ser.Serialize(tw,group );

//above code generates following xml


  
    John
    
      Mike
    
  
  
    Mike

In above code, the same 'Mike' object are there on two places, since there are two references for the same object.
While deserializing, they become two different objects, which is not exact state when they are serialized.
I want to avoid this and have only copy of object in serialized xml, and all references should refer to this copy. After deserialization , i want to get back, same old data structure.
Is it Possible ?

.net XML Serialization - Storing Reference instead of Object Copy

2 Answers