I'm not sure if I should work directly with the EntityObject, or if I should make som wrapper methods for selecting, updating and deleting EntityObjects? I would like to use the last option, but I can't really figure out how to return an EntityObject (so I still can call context.SaveChanges();) and not for example a List<Worker> (which is stupid since I can't make changes to the Workers in the list and then easily submit the chages to the database.
For example, I have a Worker table. I could get a worker by using my context:
var worker = context.Worker.Where(w => w.WorkerID == 1).FirstOrDefault();
Or, I could create a wrapper method:
public static RETURNTYPE GetWorkerByID(int id, context)
{
var worker = context.Worker.Where(w => w.WorkerID == 1).FirstOrDefault();
return worker;
}
What kind of returntype should I work with, if I still wish to work with the context (allowing me to alter the data)?
Thanks!
If you make a wrapper type you will not be able to use it with context anymore. Using wrapper means that your return type will represent a new instance filled from the entity object and when you push that instance back you will again need to create / fill entity object to work with.
Have you considered using POCOs (EF 4.0 and newer only)? That would solve your problem because there is on EntityObject base class.
Related
Im writing an web application with MVC using Entity Framework for my backend logic. My problem is that I have an entity that has certain fields that should never be changed on an update. I am not really sure what the best way to solve this problem would be. There is going to be a lot of data processed in my application, so I cant afford to just hack up a solution.
Is it possible to just define the fields as readonly in the POCO entities ? Or should I write and entity framework extension class that validates all updates. Could it be done in the mapping files between EF and the actual database?
I am relatively new with EF, so I hope some of you might be able to give me some pointers!
Thanks!
If you are using .NET 4.5 and EF 5 (i.e. MVC 4), you can simply set IsModified = false on the individual properties in question. This has the benefit of sticking close to the default out-of-the-box MVC conventions.
For example, if you have a CreatedBy field that shouldn't be touched when the record is updated, use the following in your controller:
[HttpPost]
public ActionResult Edit(Response response)
{
if (ModelState.IsValid)
{
db.Entry(response).State = EntityState.Modified;
db.Entry(response).Property(p => p.CreatedBy).IsModified = false;
db.SaveChanges();
return RedirectToAction("Index");
}
return View(response);
}
Note that the IsModified line is the only change from the default controller action.
You MUST put this line AFTER setting .State = EntityState.Modified (which applies to the record as a whole and adds the record into the db context).
The effect is that EF will not include this column in the SQL UPDATE statement.
I am still (very) shocked that there are no [InsertOnly] or [UpdateOnly] attributes similar to [ReadOnly]. This seems like a major oversight by the MVC team. Am I missing something?
I'm not fully satisfied with this solution because it's a hack: You're telling EF that no change was made when what you really mean to say is "HANDS OFF". It also means that you have to use this code anyplace where the field could be updated. It would be better to have an attribute on the class property.
(Apologies for posting to an older thread, but I've not see this solution anywhere else. ViewModels are robust but a lot of work, and EF was supposed to make things easier, not harder...)
Well I would advice against ever using the EF classes in the View. You're best bet is to construct ViewModel classes and use Automapper to map them from the EF classes.
When you are updating records in the database though, you can control which fields in the ViewModel are used to update the existing fields in the EF class.
The normal process would be:
Use the Id to get the latest version of the existing object out of the database.
If you are using optimistic concurrency control then check that the object has not been updated since the ViewModel was created (so check timestamp for example).
Update this object with the required fields from your ViewModel object.
Persist the updated object back to the database.
Update to include Automapper examples:
Let's say your POCO is
public class MyObject
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public string Field1 {get;set;}
public string Field2 {get;set;}
}
and Field1 is the field you don't want updating.
You should declare a view model with the same properties:
public class MyObjectModel
{
public int Id {get;set;}
public string Field1 {get;set;}
public string Field2 {get;set;}
}
and Automap between them in the constructor of your Controller.
Mapper.CreateMap<MyObject, MyObjectModel>();
you can if you wish (although I prefer to do this manually, automap the other way too:
Mapper.CreateMap<MyObjectModel, MyObject>().ForMember(dest=>dest.Field1, opt=>opt.Ignore());
When you are sending date to your website you would use:
var myObjectModelInstance = Mapper.Map<MyObject, MyObjectModel>(myObjectInstance);
to create the viewModel.
When saving the data, you'd probably want something like:
public JsonResult SaveMyObject(MyObjectModel myModel)
{
var poco = Mapper.Map<MyObjectModel, MyObject>(myModel);
if(myModel.Id == 0 )
{
//New object
poco.Field1 = myModel.Field1 //set Field1 for new creates only
}
}
although I'd probably remove the exclusion of Field1 above and do something like:
public JsonResult SaveMyObject(MyObjectModel myModel)
{
var poco;
if(myModel.Id == 0)
{
poco = Mapper.Map<MyObjectModel, MyObject>(myModel);
}
else
{
poco = myDataLayer.GetMyObjectById(myModel.Id);
poco.Field2 = myModel.Field2;
}
myDataLayer.SaveMyObject(poco);
}
note I believe that best-practise would have you never Automap FROM the ViewModel, but to always do this manually, including for new items.
I just asked a very similar question, and I believe the answer to that one may help out a lot of folks who stumble across this one as well. The OP mentions that these are fields that should never change, and using PropertySaveBehavior.Ignore ensures this. With the existing answers to this question, you need to make custom save methods or introduce mapping where it might not make sense. By setting the AfterSave property behavior instead, you can prevent this from being possible in EF altogether.
In my project, I am generically accessing a property that is on an abstract class so I have to set it like this:
MyProperty.SetAfterSaveBehavior(PropertySaveBehavior.Ignore);
If you're accessing it directly on a known class, you'd use this:
...
.Property(e => e.YourProperty)
.Metadata.SetAfterSaveBehavior(PropertySaveBehavior.Ignore);
We have a scenario in our code when only a few properties of an entity are allowed to be changed. To guarantee that, we have code similar to this:
public void SaveCustomer(Customer customer)
{
var originalCustomer = dbContext.GetCustomerById(customer.Id);
if (customer.Name != originalCustomer.Name)
{
throw new Exception("Customer name may not be changed.");
}
originalCustomer.Address = customer.Address;
originalCustomer.City = customer.City;
dbContext.SaveChanges();
}
The problem with this code is that the call to dbContext.GetCustomerById does not always gives me a new instance of the Customer class. If the customer already has been fetched from the database, Entity Framework will keep the instance in memory and return it on every subsequent call.
This leads us to the actual problem - customer and originalCustomer may refer to the same instance. In that case, customer.Name will be equal to originalCustomer.Name and we will not be able to detect if it differs from the database.
I guess the same problem exists with most other ORMs as well, because of the identitymap design pattern.
Any ideas how this can be solved? Can I somehow force EF to always give me a new instance of the customer class?
Or should we refactor the code instead? Does anyone know of any good design patterns for this scenario?
you can try by detaching the entity from the context, this will remove all the references to the context (as well as the identitymap behaviour).
So, before passing the Customer to your method you can detach it:
yourContext.Detach(customer);
I was getting an error
An object with the same key already exists in the ObjectStateManager.
The ObjectStateManager cannot track multiple objects with the same
key.
After i googled it i found IsAttachedTo extension method there:
Is is possible to check if an object is already attached to a data context in Entity Framework?
here is my code:
foreach (string s in types)
{
Subscription subscription = new Subscription { Id = Int32.Parse(s) };
if (service.repository._context.IsAttachedTo(subscription))
service.repository._context.Detach(subscription);
service.repository._context.AttachTo("Subscriptions", subscription); //error here
horse.Subscriptions.Add(subscription);
}
But when the subscription with the same key appeared in the foreach loop the extension method IsAttachedTo returning false every time, it is does not detect that there is already such entity attached. And in result i am getting the same error:
An object with the same key already exists in the ObjectStateManager.
The ObjectStateManager cannot track multiple objects with the same
key.
Why it is could be?
What can i do to fix that?
I have little code review for you because your sample code scares me.
You probably read a lot about fancy design patterns and layered architectures and you started to use them yourselves. Unfortunately you missed the main point. What the hell is this?
service.repository._context.XXX
Why do you bother with any service layer or repository layer if they don't encapsulate their logic? Why do you expose repository on the service? Nobody should know about service internal implementation? Even worse why do you expose context on the repository? That spoiled the whole point of the repository!
There are a lot of supporting rules for writing high quality object oriented code. One of this rules is called Law of Demeter. You don't have to follow each rule, you also don't have to follow rules all the time but in case of layered architecture this law is a must.
If you have three layers A -> B -> C the layer A can call methods on the layer B but it doesn't know about C and it cannot reach its methods. If it can, it is not a new layer but it is the same layer as B and the layer A doesn't need to call it through B, it can call it directly.
In your example you have just exposed D to A because A is current layer, B is service, C is repository and D is context.
One more points about your code. There are well known naming conventions. These conventions are not about I like this and you like that but about the fact that framework you are using follow these conventions strictly so using another one to mix your naming convention with framework naming convention make your code look messy.
I'm sorry, If this was only some example code to make your code structuring clear. I just needed to describe how wrong this code is.
Now to your real problem. The method you have referenced from the related question will not work in your case. I think it will work only if you load the subscription from the database. The reason is that the referenced method uses EntityKey (either internally or directly) to get the entity from context but your new entity doesn't have the entity key yet. I expect that calling TryGetObjectStateEntry for your entity will always return Detached. Entity key it is created during attaching or you have to build it manually.
If you want some IsAttachedTo method try this:
public bool IsAttachedTo<T>(this ObjectContext context, T entity) where T : IEntity
{
return context.GetObjectStateEntries(~EntityState.Detached)
.Where(e => !e.IsRelationship)
.Select(e => e.Entity)
.OfType<T>()
.Any(e => e.Id == entity.Id);
}
And make sure that your entity implements helper interface
public interface IEntity
{
int Id { get; }
}
But to be able to detach attached entity you will need:
public T GetAttached<T>(this ObjectContext context, T entity) where T : IEntity
{
return context.GetObjectStateEntries(~EntityState.Detached)
.Where(e => !e.IsRelationship)
.Select(e => e.Entity)
.OfType<T>()
.SingleOrDefault(e => e.Id == entity.Id);
}
You will have to detach instance returned from this method.
Anyway I would start to think why do you need that for the first place because it looks like your architecture has another wrong concept. Why don't you use attached entities directly? If you don't use them why do you even keep the context with them?
It's likely that IsAttachedTo does not compare by the key (Id) but by object identity. Because you create a new Subscription for every item in the loop the objects are all different instances.
Since you seem to have objects with same Id in your types collection but in the end only want to add one object per key into the context you can perhaps make your life easier by filtering out the duplicates in the first place:
var distinctTypes = types.Distinct();
foreach (string s in distinctTypes)
{
Subscription subscription = new Subscription { Id = Int32.Parse(s) };
service.repository._context.AttachTo("Subscriptions", subscription);
horse.Subscriptions.Add(subscription);
}
This way there should be only one object per key which gets attached to the context.
I have an ADO.Net Data Service that I am using to do a data import. There are a number of entities that are linked to by most entities. To do that during import I create those entities first, save them and then use .SetLink(EntityImport, "NavigationProperty", CreatedEntity). Now the first issue that I ran into was that the context did not always know about CreatedEntity (this is due to each of the entities being imported independently and a creation of a context as each item is created - I'd like to retain this functionality - i.e. I'm trying to avoid "just use one context" as the answer).
So I have a .AddToCreatedEntityType(CreatedEntity) before attempting to call SetLink. This of course works for the first time, but on the second pass I get the error message "the context is already tracking the entity".
Is there a way to check if the context is already tracking the entity (context.Contains(CreatedEntity) isn't yet implemented)? I was thinking about attempting a try catch and just avoiding the error, but that seems to create a new CreatedEntity each pass. It is looking like I need to use a LINQ to Data Services to get that CreatedEntity each time, but that seems innefficient - any suggestions?
I think you should look at the EntityState property of your entity.
Only if it is of the value EntityState.Detached than you have to add it to your context.
Do not forget the following remark:
This enumeration has a FlagsAttribute
attribute that allows a bitwise
combination of its member values.
I would create a extension method:
public static class EntityObjectExtensions
{
public static Boolean IsTracked(this EntityObject self)
{
return (self.EntityState & EntityState.Detached) != EntityState.Detached;
}
}
When trying to check whether the context was tracking the entity that I wanted to update (or add) I was pretty disapointed when I found that the context.Entites.Contains(currentItem) didn't work.
I got around it using:
if (context.Entities.Where(entities => entities.Entity == currentItem).Any())
{
this.service.UpdateObject(currentItem);
}
I am using the entity framework and I'm having a problem with "re-finding" objects I just created... basically it goes like this:
string theId = "someId";
private void Test()
{
using(MyEntities entities = new MyEntities())
{
EntityObject o = new EntityObject();
o.Id = theId;
entities.AddToEntityObject(o);
CallSomeOtherMethod(entities);
}
}
void CallSomeOtherMethod(MyEntities ents)
{
EntityObject search = ents.EntityObject.FirstOrDefault(o => o.Id == theId);
if(search == null)
{
Console.WriteLine("wha happened???");
}
}
(no guarantee the code works btw - it's all from my head)
Why doesn't the query "find" the EntityObject that was just created?
If I call SaveChanges() after the AddToEntityObject it works (which doesn't surprise me) but why doesn't it pull from the cache properly?
I'm still green on this stuff so I'm hoping that there's some really easy thing that I'm just overlooking...
Thanks
The newly added object is in the local DataSource, since it's not persisted yet in the database,
so you may say:
EntityObject search = ents.EntityObject.FirstOrDefault(o => o.Id == theId) ??
ents.EntityObject.Local.FirstOrDefault(o => o.Id == theId);
This happens because ents.EntityObject.WhatEver always queries the datasource. This is a design decision. They do it this way, because else they would have to execute the query against the datasource, against the local cache and then merge the results. As one of the developers pointed out in a blog (cannot remember where exactly) they were unable to handle this consistently.
As you can imagine there are a lot of corner an edge cases you have to handle properly. You could just find a id you created locally, created by someone else in the database. This would force you to be prepared to handle conflicts on (almost) every query. Maybe they could have made methods to query the local cache and methods to query the datasource, but that is not to smart, too.
You may have a look at Transparent Lazy Loading for Entity Framework. This replaces the normal code generator and you get entities that populate their related entity collections and entity references automatically on access. This avoids all the
if (!Entity.ReleatedEntities.IsLoaded)
{
Entity.RelatedEntities.Load();
}
code fragments. And you can query the collections because they are always implicitly loaded. But this solution is not perfect, too. There are some issues. For example, if you create a new entity and access a collection of related entities, you will get an exception because the code is unable to retrieve the related entities from the database. There is also an issue concerning data binding and may be some more I am not aware of.
The good thing is that you get the source code and are able to fix the issues yourself and I am going to examine the first issue if I find some time. But I am quite sure that it will not be that easy to fix, because I expect some case were just not hitting the database if the entity has just been created is not the expected behavior.
I was in the same situation. I wrote this extension method that at least for me solves the problem (I don't have issues with i.e conflicts in my context...)
public static IEnumerable<T> WhereInclAdded<T>(this ObjectSet<T> set, Expression<Func<T, bool>> predicate) where T : class
{
var dbResult = set.Where(predicate);
var offlineResult = set.Context.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Added).Select(entry => entry.Entity).OfType<T>().Where(predicate.Compile());
return offlineResult.Union(dbResult);
}
The extension method bellow is to DbSet<>
public static T TryAttach<T>(this DbSet<T> dbSet, T entity, Expression<Func<T, bool>> predicate) where T : class
{
T found = dbSet.Local.SingleOrDefault(predicate.Compile());
if (found == null) dbSet.Attach(entity);
return found ?? entity;
}
How to use:
contextInstance.MyEntity.TryAttach(entityInstance, e => e.ID == entityInstance.ID);
btw: I love generics!
I have recently struggled with this same question. I'm posting this answer 2 years after the question was asked in hopes that this bit of code may help someone searching for an answer.
I have basically implemented an extension method (as suggested by Alex James) called "Find" that operates in the same way that "Where" does, but "Find" also checks the ObjectContext to see if there are any Added entities that satisfy the given predicate. This allows you to find an entity even if it hasn't been saved to the database yet.
Find returns an IQueryable(of T) so that you can use it just like any other LINQ operator.
<Extension()>
Public Function Find(Of T As Class)(ByVal OSet As ObjectSet(Of T), _
ByVal predicate As Expression(Of Func(Of T, Boolean))) _
As System.Linq.IQueryable(Of T)
'Check the object context for Added objects first.
Dim AddedContextObjects = OSet.Context.ObjectStateManager _
.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Added) _
.Select(Function(entity) entity.Entity).OfType(Of T)()
Dim Cpredicate = predicate.Compile
Dim MatchingObjects As New List(Of T)
For Each TObj As T In AddedContextObjects
If Cpredicate.Invoke(TObj) Then
MatchingObjects.Add(TObj)
End If
Next
'Now include a query to retrieve objects from the DB.
Dim DBObjects = OSet.Where(predicate)
If MatchingObjects.Count > 0 Then
'We found some added objects in the context.
'We want to return these objects as well as any Objects in DB
'that satisfy the predicate.
Return MatchingObjects.Union(DBObjects).AsQueryable
Else
'We didn't find any added objects in the context,
'so we just return the DB query.
Return DBObjects
End If
End Function
You have a number of options. You could extend the ObjectContext with another partial class to make your own mechanism for retrieving recently Added information.
Or you could just put an extension method on the ObjectContext that looks through the ObjectContext.ObjectStateManager looking for 'added' ObjectStateEntries, and then use LINQ to Objects to find what you are looking for.
Entity Framework 6
As per EF Docs Dbset always query against the database.
Note that DbSet and IDbSet always create queries against the database
and will always involve a round trip to the database even if the
entities returned already exist in the context. A query is executed
against the database when:
It is enumerated by a foreach (C#) or For Each (Visual Basic)
statement. It is enumerated by a collection operation such as ToArray,
ToDictionary, or ToList. LINQ operators such as First or Any are
specified in the outermost part of the query. The following methods
are called: the Load extension method on a DbSet,
DbEntityEntry.Reload, and Database.ExecuteSqlCommand. When results are
returned from the database, objects that do not exist in the context
are attached to the context. If an object is already in the context,
the existing object is returned (the current and original values of
the object's properties in the entry are not overwritten with database
values).
When you perform a query, entities that have been added to the context
but have not yet been saved to the database are not returned as part
of the result set. To get the data that is in the context, see Local Data
If a query returns no rows from the database, the result will be an
empty collection, rather than null.
Below is a simple snippet with local data:
await dbContext.Entity
.Where(e => e.Title.Contains("Text"))
.LoadAsync();
var locaEntities = dbContext.Entity.Local;
dbContext.Entity.Add(new Entity {});
// call save post atomic operation is finished.
await dbContext.SaveChangesAsync();