I'm writing my own IFormatter implementation and I cannot think of a way to resolve circular references between two types that both implement ISerializable.

Here's the usual pattern:

[Serializable]
class Foo : ISerializable
{
    private Bar m_bar;

    public Foo(Bar bar)
    {
        m_bar = bar;
        m_bar.Foo = this;
    }

    public Bar Bar
    {
        get { return m_bar; }
    }

    protected Foo(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        m_bar = (Bar)info.GetValue("1", typeof(Bar));
    }

    public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        info.AddValue("1", m_bar);
    }
}

[Serializable]
class Bar : ISerializable
{
    private Foo m_foo;

    public Foo Foo
    {
        get { return m_foo; }
        set { m_foo = value; }
    }

    public Bar()
    { }

    protected Bar(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        m_foo = (Foo)info.GetValue("1", typeof(Foo));
    }

    public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)
    {
        info.AddValue("1", m_foo);
    }
}

I then do this:

Bar b = new Bar();
Foo f = new Foo(b);
bool equal = ReferenceEquals(b, b.Foo.Bar); // true

// Serialise and deserialise b

equal = ReferenceEquals(b, b.Foo.Bar);

If I use an out-of-the-box BinaryFormatter to serialise and deserialise b, the above test for reference-equality returns true as one would expect. But I cannot conceive of a way to achieve this in my custom IFormatter.

In a non-ISerializable situation I can simply revisit "pending" object fields using reflection once the target references have been resolved. But for objects implementing ISerializable it is not possible to inject new data using SerializationInfo.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?