EF many-to-many relationship and data duplication - entity-framework

Question

I have a trouble with EF (6.1.3)
I have created next classes (with many-to-many relationship):
public class Record
{
[Key]
public int RecordId { get; set; }
[Required]
public string Text { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Tag> Tags { get; set; }
}
public class Tag
{
[Key]
public int TagId { get; set; }
[Required]
public string Name { get; set; }
public virtual ICollection<Record> Records{ get; set; }
}
And method:
void AddTags()
{
Record[] records;
Tag[] tags;
using (var context = new AppDbContext())
{
records = context.Records.ToArray();
}//remove line to fix
tags = Enumerable.Range(0, 5).Select(x => new Tag()
{
Name = string.Format("Tag_{0}", x),
Records= records.Skip(x * 5).Take(5).ToArray()
}).ToArray();
using (var context = new AppDbContext()){ //remove line to fix
context.Tags.AddRange(tags);
context.SaveChanges();
}
}
If I use two contexts, the records (which were added to created tags) will be duplicated. If I remove marked rows - problem disappears.
Is there any way to fix this problem without using the same context?

Answer 1

If you can, better reload entities or not detach them at all. Using multiple context instances in application is overall making things much more complicated.
The problem for you comes from the Entity Framework entity change tracker. When you load entitites from your DbContext and dispose that context, entities get detached from entity change tracker, and Entity Framework has no knowledge of any changes made to it.
After you reference detached entity by an attached entity, it (detached entity) immediately gets into entity change tracker, and it has no idea that this entity was loaded before. To give Entity Framework an idea that this detached entity comes from the database, you have to reattach it:
foreach (var record in records) {
dbContext.Entry(record).State = EntityState.Unchanged;
}
This way you will be able to use records to reference in other objects, but if you have any changes made to these records, then all these changes will go away. To make changes apply to database you have to change state to Added:
dbContext.Entry(record).State = EntityState.Modified;
Entity Framework uses your mappings to determine row in database to apply changes to, specifically using your Primary Key settings.
A couple examples:
public class Bird
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
public string Color { get; set; }
}
public class Tree
{
[Key]
public int Id { get; set; }
public string Name { get; set; }
}
public class BirdOnATree
{
[Column(Order = 0), Key, ForeignKey("Bird")]
public int BirdId { get; set; }
public Bird Bird { get; set; }
[Column(Order = 1), Key, ForeignKey("Tree")]
public int TreeId { get; set; }
public Tree Tree { get; set; }
public DateTime SittingSessionStartedAt { get; set; }
}
Here's a small entity structure so that you could see how it works. You can see that Bird and Tree have simple Key - Id. BirdOnATree is a many-to-many table for Bird-Tree pair with additional column SittingSessionStartedAt.
Here's the code for multiple contexts:
Bird bird;
using (var context = new TestDbContext())
{
bird = context.Birds.First();
}
using (var context = new TestDbContext())
{
var tree = context.Trees.First();
var newBirdOnAtree = context.BirdsOnTrees.Create();
newBirdOnAtree.Bird = bird;
newBirdOnAtree.Tree = tree;
newBirdOnAtree.SittingSessionStartedAt = DateTime.UtcNow;
context.BirdsOnTrees.Add(newBirdOnAtree);
context.SaveChanges();
}
In this case, bird was detached from the DB and not attached again. Entity Framework will account this entity as a new entity, which never existed in DB, even though Id property is set to point to existing row to database. To change this you just add this line to second DbContext right in the beginning:
context.Entry(bird).State = EntityState.Unchanged;
If this code is executed, it will not create new Bird entity in DB, but use existing instead.
Second example: instead of getting bird from the database, we create it by ourselves:
bird = new Bird
{
Id = 1,
Name = "Nightingale",
Color = "Gray"
}; // these data are different in DB
When executed, this code will also not create another bird entity, will make a reference to bird with Id = 1 in BirdOnATree table, and will not update bird entity with Id = 1. In fact you can put any data here, just use correct Id.
If we change our code here to make this detached entity update existing row in DB:
context.Entry(bird).State = EntityState.Modified;
This way, correct data will be inserted to table BirdOnATree, but also row with Id = 1 will be updated in table Bird to fit the data you provided in the application.
You can check this article about object state tracking:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/dd456848(v=vs.100).aspx
Overall, if you can avoid this, don't use object state tracking and related code. It might come to unwanted changes that are hard to find source for - fields are updated for entity when you don't expect them to, or are not updated when you expect it.