Serialize Object with list of the same Object

Unity Engine
1

So, in my game I have a class which looks like this:

[System.Serializable]
public class Part{
//
}

This then becomes a BinaryFormatted file.

However, I need it to be able to hold a List in case new parts are attached to it:

[System.Serializable]
public class Part{
List<Part> attachedParts;
//
}

This of course doesn’t work properly because of the depth limit.

Constraint 1: It can’t become a monobehaviour.
Constraint 2: It can’t become a ScriptableObject.

Note 1: When I instantiate a part, the list of parts attached to it can be null or have a count of 0.
Note 2: The depth will never exceed 5 in my the game. So it is not infinite.
Note 3: I don’t care about which formatter to use (binary, xml, json)

Question 1: Is there a way to “hard” set a limit so that I get around this problem?

EDIT 1: Accidentally pressed hotkey and published the thread before finishing to write it. According to this we can’t delete posts. So I suppose this will stay published until I finish writing it. Sorry for the trouble.

EDIT 2: Done.

2

Ok.

The solution I found was to not use BinaryFormater. Instead, I am using XmlSerializer