I have three tables Job, Contact and a reference table between them named JobContact. When I delete a record from JobContact table, so record is deleted from database, but it is still present in code. I mean, when I do a select Job by key and when I'm accessing job.JobContact, so record is still there.
How can I force EF to get the current data from this table?
Edited:
I'm using EF to delete the record. Here is a code sample how I'm doing it:
Step 1: delete record from JobContact:
var jobContactRepos = RepositoryFactory.GetRepository<JobContact>();
var jobContact = jobContactRepos.SelectByKey(jobContactId);
jobContactRepos.Delete(jobContact);
jobContactRepos.Save();
Step 2: get the job record from DB after step 1 is done:
var jobRepos = RepositoryFactory.GetRepository<Job>();
var job = jobRepos.SelectByKey(id);
After Step 1, record is deleted from DB: it is OK.
After Step 2, record is still present in the job.JobContact entity: it is not OK.
RepositoryFactory creates already a new context. So I don't understant. In which place in my code should I use Refresh() method?
thanks
You can dispose your EF context and create a new one, this will force EF to get fresh data from the DB instead of using possibly cached data. Alternatively you can call Refresh() on your context using RefreshMode.StoreWins.
But the real question is why do you delete this record from the database directly and don't use EF for it? Had you used the EF context to remove the Contact entity from the Contacts navigation property collection of your Job entity, this problem shouldn't be there in the first place.
Edit:
The reference table should be represented in EF as a navigation property Contacts in your Job entities, and a navigation property Jobs in your Contact entities. Are you using an older version of EF (I am probably not familiar enough with previous versions) or have a custom repository layer that introduces this reference entity?
Related
I am new to Breeze.js, but really enjoy it so far. I ran into an issue with updating a database with Breeze.js, when selecting only portion of columns of a model.
When I ran this statement:
$scope.emFac.entityQuery.from('Company');
the company entity matches my EF entity, retrieves all columns, creates entityAspect, and all is working fine when updating database:
However, when I retrieve only portion of corresponding Model's columns, Breeze.js returns anonymous object with specified properties (retrieving data works, but not updating does not), without the entityAspect, which is being used for tracking changes.
Here is the code with select statement:
$scope.emFac.entityQuery.from('Company').select('companyId, displayName');
Is there a way to retrieve only some columns of EF Model columns, and still track changes with Breeze.js, needed for database updates?
As you've discovered, Breeze treats the incoming data as plain objects instead of entities when you use select.
Your choices are:
On the server, Create a CustomerLite or similar object, and have a server endpoint that returns those without the need for select; OR
On the client, get the results from the query and create entities from each object, with status Unchanged
Example of #2:
var entities = [];
em.executeQuery(customerProjectionQuery).then(queryResult => {
queryResult.results.forEach(obj => {
// obj contains values to initialize entity
var entity = em.createEntity(Customer.prototype.entityType, obj, EntityState.Unchanged);
entities.push(entity);
});
})
Either way, you will need to ensure that your saveChanges endpoint on the server can handle saving the truncated Customer objects without wiping out the other fields.
I am using Entity Framework 6.1.1.
I am deleting single record from table as following but i am not sure whether its the only way or could further rewrite it in an efficient way.
Can someone share comments?
Reason: I am asking because many solutions in earlier posts are referring to EF 4.0 and not using the latest version 6.1.1.
Guid studentId = student.Id;
StudentReportDetail stuDetails = _context.StudentReportDetail.Find(studentId);
if (stuDetails != null)
{
_context.StudentReportDetail.Remove(stuDetails);
_context.SaveChanges();
}
There are no changes about how to delete an entity between EF 4 and EF 6. To delete an entity using Entity Framework, you need to use the Remove method on DbSet. Remove works for both existing and newly added entities.
Calling Remove on an entity that has been added but not yet saved
to the database will cancel the addition of the entity. The entity is
removed from the change tracker and is no longer tracked by the
DbContext.
Calling Remove on an existing entity that is being change-tracked
will register the entity for deletion the next time SaveChanges is
called.
Deleting with loading from the database
As the example you show in your question, you need to load first the existing entity from your context to delete it. If you don't know the Id, you can execute a query as I show below to find it first:
var report= (from d in context.StudentReportDetail
where d.ReportName == "Report"
select d).Single();
context.StudentReportDetail.Remove(report);
context.SaveChanges();
Deleting without loading from the database
If you need to delete an entity, but it’s not already in memory, it’s a little inefficient to retrieve that entity from the database just to delete it. If you know the key of the entity you want to delete, you can attach a stub that represents the entity to be deleted, and then delete this stub. A stub is an instance of an entity that just has the key value assigned. The key value is all that’s required for deleting entities.
var toDelete = new StudentReportDetail {Id = 2 };
context.StudentReportDetail.Attach(toDelete);
context.StudentReportDetail.Remove(toDelete);
context.SaveChanges();
Other way could be changing the entity's state to Deleted.DbContext has methods called Entry and Entry<TEntity>, these methods get a DbEntityEntry for the given entity and provide access to the information about the entity and return a DbEntityEntry object able to perform the action on the entity. Now you can perform the delete operation on the context by just changing the entity state to EntityState.Deleted:
var toDelete = new StudentReportDetail {Id = 2 };
context.Entry(toDelete).State = EntityState.Deleted;
context.SaveChanges();
Using a 3rd party library
There is another way but is using a 3rd party library, EntityFramework Plus, there is a nugget package you can install. You can use the batch delete operation:
context.StudentReportDetail
.Where(u => u.Id== stuDetails)
.Delete();
I have a legacy database with a particular table -- I will call it ItemTable -- that can have billions of rows of data. To overcome database restrictions, we have decided to split the table into "silos" whenever the number of rows reaches 100,000,000. So, ItemTable will exist, then a procedure will run in the middle of the night to check the number of rows. If numberOfRows is > 100,000,000 then silo1_ItemTable will be created. Any Items added to the database from now on will be added to silo1_ItemTable (until it grows to big, then silo2_ItemTable will exist...)
ItemTable and silo1_ItemTable can be mapped to the same Item entity because the table structures are identical, but I am not sure how to set this mapping up at runtime, or how to specify the table name for my queries. All inserts should be added to the latest siloX_ItemTable, and all Reads should be from a specified siloX_ItemTable.
I have a separate siloTracker table that will give me the table name to insert/read the data from, but I am not sure how I can use this with entity framework...
Thoughts?
You could try to use the Entity Inheritance to get this. So you have a base class which has all the fields mapped to ItemTable and then you have descendant classes that inherit from ItemTable entity and is mapped to the silo tables in the db. Every time you create a new silo you create a new entity mapped to that silo table.
[Table("ItemTable")]
public class Item
{
//All the fields in the table goes here
}
[Table("silo1_ItemTable")]
public class Silo1Item : Item
{
}
[Table("silo2_ItemTable")]
public class Silo2Item : Item
{
}
You can find more information on this here
Other option is to create a view that creates a union of all those table and map your entity to that view.
As mentioned in my comment, to solve this problem I am using the SQLQuery method that is exposed by DBSet. Since all my item tables have the exact same schema, I can use the SQLQuery to define my own query and I can pass in the name of the table to the query. Tested on my system and it is working well.
See this link for an explanation of running raw queries with entity framework:
EF raw query documentation
If anyone has a better way to solve my question, please leave a comment.
[UPDATE]
I agree that stored procedures are also a great option, but for some reason my management is very resistant to make any changes to our database. It is easier for me (and our customers) to put the sql in code and acknowledge the fact that there is raw sql. At least I can hide it from the other layers rather easily.
[/UPDATE]
Possible solution for this problem may be using context initialization with DbCompiledModel param:
var builder = new DbModelBuilder(DbModelBuilderVersion.V6_0);
builder.Configurations.Add(new EntityTypeConfiguration<EntityName>());
builder.Entity<EntityName>().ToTable("TableNameDefinedInRuntime");
var dynamicContext = new MyDbContext(builder.Build(context.Database.Connection).Compile());
For some reason in EF6 it fails on second table request, but mapping inside context looks correct on the moment of execution.
None of the many questions on this topic seem to match my situation. I have a large data model. In certain cases, only a few of the fields need be displayed on the UI, so for those I replaced the LINQ to Entity query that pulls in everything with an Entity SQL query retrieving only the columns needed, using a Type constructor so that I got an entity returned and not a DbDataRecord, like this:
SELECT VALUE MyModelNameSpace.INCIDENT(incident.FieldA, incident.FieldB, ...) FROM ... AS ...
This works and displays the fields in the UI. And if I make a change, the change makes it back to the entity model when I tab out of the UI element. But when I do a SaveChanges, the changes do not get persisted to the database. No errors show up in the Log. Now if I very carefully replace the above query with an Entity Sql query that retrieves the entire entity, like this:
SELECT VALUE incident FROM MyDB.INCIDENTs AS incident...
Changes do get persisted in the database! So as a test, I created another query like the first that named every column in the entity, which should be the exact equivalent of the second Entity SQL query. Yet it did not persist changes to the database either.
I've tried setting the MergeOption on the returned result to PreserveChanges, to start tracking, like this:
incidents.MergeOption = MergeOption.PreserveChanges;
But that has no effect. But really, if retrieving the entire entity with Entity Sql persists changes, what logical purpose would there be for behaving differently when a subset of the fields are retrieved? I'm wondering if this is a bug?
Gert was correct, the problem was that the entity was not attached. Dank U wel, Gert! Ik was ervan verbluft!
I just wanted to add a little detail to show the full solution. Basically, the ObjectContext has an Attach method, so you'd think that would be it. However, when your Entity SQL select statement names columns, and you create the object using a Type as I did, the EntityKey is not created, and ObjectContext.Attach fails. After trying and failing to insert the EntityKey I created myself, I stumbled across ObjectSet.Attach, added in Entity Framework 4. Instead of failing, it creates the EntityKey if it is missing. Nice touch.
The code was (this can probably be done in fewer steps, but I know this works):
var QueryString = "SELECT VALUE RunTimeUIDesigner.INCIDENT (incident.INCIDENT_NBR,incident.LOCATION,etc"
ObjectQuery<INCIDENT> incidents = orbcadDB.CreateQuery<INCIDENT>(QueryString);
incidents.MergeOption = MergeOption.PreserveChanges;
List<INCIDENT> retrievedIncidents = incidents.ToList<INCIDENT>();
orbcadDB.INCIDENTs.Attach(retrievedIncidents[0]);
iNCIDENTsViewSource.Source = retrievedIncidents;
Problem: When adding an object "Order" to my dbcontext, all nested objects of the order gets "readded" to the database, though the nested objects is static data and only a reference shoudl be added in the database.
Example:
The database holds 0 orders, and 3 items.
I add one order with 2 items.
Now the database hold 1 order, and 5 items. The two items in the order has been "readded" to the database, even though the items had the right primary keys before db.SaveChanges().
I realize that i may be able to attach the existing items to the dbcontext before saving changes, but is that really the only way to go? Can't EF figure out that to item already exists when the primary key matches an existing item?
Does anyone know if this is different in the new version of EF CodeFirst?
No EF cannot figure if entities are existing one or new one - both Add and Attach commands are graph oriented operations. You call them on one entity in the graph and they traverse all relations (and their relations and so on) and perform the operation for them as well.
You must figure correct state of each entity in the graph for example by using:
dbContext.Orders.Add(newOrder);
foreach(var item in newOrder.Items) {
dbContext.Entry(item).State = EntityState.Unchanged;
}
dbContext.SaveChanges();
You can use the reverse operation by calling Attach(newOrder) and set the order to Added state. The main difference will come with independent associations (for example many-to-many relations). The first approach will correctly add new relation between order and each item whereas second will not unless you manually set each relation to Added state (and changing state for relations is more complex).