New Cyclic Data Structures Utility

Back in October I posed a fledgling cycle-safe CFDUMP replacement.  Today, I had need for that same anti-cycle processing in serializeJson, so I abstracted the processing out into a CFC that handles both breaking cycles (for serialization) as well as restoring them (for deserialization).  By running a cyclic data structure through the breakCycles method, you can use CFDUMP, serializeJson, or whatever other context-free recursive algorithm you want on it without fear of infinite looping.  If you later turn that data structure back into an in-memory structure, you can use the restoreCycles method to recreate the cyclic references that breakCycles removed.

You can download the CFC (as a text file) here: cyclicutils.cfc.txt.  If you have the example from the cycle-safe CFDUMP somewhere, save the CFC in the same directory and tack this code on to the end of the test case:

<cfset cu = createObject("component", "cyclicutils") />
<cfset b = cu.breakCycles(b) />
<cfdump var="#b#" label="b" />
<cfset b = cu.restoreCycles(b) />
<u:dump var="#b#" />

You'll see the cyclic structure dumped with the cycle-safe CFDUMP as before, then the cycles are broken and it's dumped with the standard CFDUMP, and then the cycles are restored and it's dumped with the cycle-safe CFDUMP again.

Otherwise, just create yourself a cyclic structure and pass it to breakCycles.