I'm still learning about Unit of Work patterns, repository patterns, etc.
My app:
I have a list of entities, say customers in a listview
When I select a customer a detail form shows, where their details can be edited
I'm trying to understand the standard MVVM/Entity Framework way of accomplishing the following:
When the user edits a customer it shows as "changed" (but not saved)
The user can chose to either save the current customer, or save all the changed customers
The Save or Save All commands/buttons are disabled if that option is not available (the current customer is unchanged, or all customers are unchanged)
Seems simple enough? But I have no idea how to approach this using MVVM/EF. Do I use UoW, do I detach objects and re-attach to the context so I can save them one at a time? How do I detect if an object is changed or unchanged?
Help! Thanks!
I throw in a few remarks:
The critical point in your requirements is in my opinion the option to save either one single customer or all changed customers. You need to take into account that Entity Framework doesn't have a method to save changes of a single or a few selected objects in the context. You can only save the changes of the whole Unit of Work (which is the ObjectContext or DbContext in EF) by calling myContext.SaveChanges().
This leads to the conclusion that you cannot use the list of all customers and the customer detail form in one single Unit of Work (= EF context) which holds all customers as attached entities. If you would do this you could provide a function/button to save all changes but not an option to save only the current customer in the form.
So, I would either think about if you really need those functions or I would work with the entities in a detached state. This would mean that you have to load the customer list from the database and dispose the context after that. When you save the changes - and now it doesn't matter if all changes or only changes of a single customer - you can create a new context, pull the original entity/entities from the database and update with the changed properties.
But working with either attached or detached entities - or either having one living EF context per view/form or creating only one short-living context per CRUD operation - is an important design decision in my opinion. Generally the possibility to have your entities attached to a context during the lifetime of a view/form exists to make your life as programmer easier because it offers you features like lazy loading and change tracking out of the box. So you might think twice if you want to give this up.
To recognize if a customer object has been changed or not the EF context could be helpful because it tracks the state of an object. You could for instance query the ObjectStateManager for a customer and check if it is in a "Changed" state. But to have this option you would need to work with attached entities as explained above. Since you cannot save (or also cancel) single object changes it is questionable if it would make sense at all to show the user that customer 1 and customer 3 has changed. (I would probably only show "some customers have changed".)
If you are working with detached entities you have to manage by hand which customers have changed or not by implementing some kind of "dirty flag" logic. Here is a thread about this:
Different ways to implement 'dirty'-flag functionality
Related
Consider the following scenario where Jpa is used for persistence.
A student can be associated to different courses with a web form.
So this form displays different entities (student, course).
The Save button is pushed, the business logic modify some fields of the entities, but the db operation fails.
Unfortunately the enities in memory reflects the changes made by the business logic and this may create some inconsistency problem.
Is there a pattern useful in similar scenarios ?
Possible solution I thought and why I don't like them:
Don't want to revert back all the changes made the bussiness logic in case of db exception becuase it is an error prone job.
Don't want to reload the entities after the db exception in order to be sure they are aligned with the db. In fact this operation may fail too.
Otherwise I can clone the entities, make the changes and swap the clone with the original entity after a successful commit.
Anyway I would be more confortable following a well established pattern.
The Memento Pattern is a design pattern intended to offer 'rollback' functionality for the state of objects in memory. You need a Caretaker class, that asks the subject for a Memento, then attempts the persistence. The Caretaker would then give the Memento back to the subject, telling it to roll back to the state the Memento describes, if necessary.
I am using the repository pattern within EF using an Update function I found online
public class Repository<T> : IRepository<T> where T : class
{
public virtual void Update(T entity)
{
var entry = this.context.Entry(entity);
this.dbset.Attach(entity);
entry.State = System.Data.Entity.EntityState.Modified;
}
}
I then use it within a DeviceService like so:
public void UpdateDevice(Device device)
{
this.serviceCollection.Update(device);
this.uow.Save();
}
I have realise that what this actually does it update ALL of the device's information rather than just update the property that changed. This means in a multi threaded environment changes can be lost.
After testing I realised I could just change the Device then call uow.Save() which both saved the data and didnt overwrite any existing changes.
So my question really is - What is the point in the Update() function? It appears in almost every Repository pattern I find online yet it seems destructive.
I wouldn't call this generic Update method generally "destructive" but I agree that it has limited use cases that are rarely discussed in those repository implementations. If the method is useful or not depends on the scenario where you want to apply it.
In an "attached scenario" (Windows Forms application for instance) where you load entities from the database, change some properties while they are still attached to the EF context and then save the changes the method is useless because the context will track all changes anyway and know at the end which columns have to be updated or not. You don't need an Update method at all in this scenario (hint: DbSet<T> (which is a generic repository) does not have an Update method for this reason). And in a concurrency situation it is destructive, yes.
However, it is not clear that a "change tracked update" isn't sometimes destructive either. If two users change the same property to different values the change tracked update for both users would save the new column value and the last one wins. If this is OK or not depends on the application and how secure it wants changes to be done. If the application disallows to ever edit an object that is not the last version in the database before the change is saved it cannot allow that the last save wins. It would have to stop, force the user to reload the latest version and take a look at the last values before he enters his changes. To handle this situation concurrency tokens are necessary that would detect that someone else changed the record in the meantime. But those concurrency checks work the same way with change tracked updates or when setting the entity state to Modified. The destructive potential of both methods is stopped by concurrency exceptions. However, setting the state to Modified still produces unnecessary overhead in that it writes unchanged column values to the database.
In a "detached scenario" (Web application for example) the change tracked update is not available. If you don't want to set the whole entity to Modified you have to load the latest version from the database (in a new context), copy the properties that came from the UI and save the changes again. However, this doesn't prevent that changes another user has done in the meantime get overwritten, even if they are changes on different properties. Imagine two users load the same customer entity into a web form at the same time. User 1 edits the customer name and saves. User 2 edits the customer's bank account number and saves a few seconds later. If the entity gets loaded into the new context to perform the update for User 2 EF would just see that the customer name in the database (that already includes the change of User 1) is different from the customer name that User 2 sent back (which is still the old customer name). If you copy the customer name value the property will be marked as Modified and the old name will be written to the database and overwrite the change of User 1. This update would be just as destructive as setting the whole entity state to Modified. In order to avoid this problem you would have to either implement some custom change tracking on client side that recognizes if User 2 changed the customer name and if not it just doesn't copy the value to the loaded entity. Or you would have to work with concurrency tokens again.
You didn't mention the biggest limitation of this Update method in your question - namely that it doesn't update any related entities. For example, if your Device entity had a related Parts collection and you would edit this collection in a detached UI (add/remove/modify items) setting the state of the parent Device to Modified won't save any of those changes to the database. It will only affect the scalar (and complex) properties of the parent Device itself. At the time when I used repos of this kind I named the update method FlatUpdate to indicate that limitation better in the method name. I've never seen a generic "DeepUpdate". Dealing with complex object graphs is always a non-generic thing that has to be written individually per entity type and depending on the situation. (Fortunately a library like GraphDiff can limit the amount of code that has to be written for such graph updates.)
To cut a long story short:
For attached scenarios the Update method is redundant as EFs automatic change tracking does all the necessary work to write correct UPDATE statements to the database - including changes in related object graphs.
For detached scenarios it is a comfortable way to perform updates of simple entities without relationships.
Updating object graphs with parent and child entities in a detached scenario can't be done with such a simplified Update method and requires significantly more (non-generic) work.
Safe concurrency control needs more sophisticated tools, like enabling the optimistic concurrency checks that EF provides and handling the resulting concurrency exceptions in a user-friendly way.
After Slauma's very profound and practical answer I'd like to zoom in on some basic principles.
In this MSDN article there is one important sentence
A repository separates the business logic from the interactions with the underlying data source or Web service.
Simple question. What has the business logic to do with Update?
Fowler defines a repository pattern as
Mediates between the domain and data mapping layers using a collection-like interface for accessing domain objects.
So as far as the business logic is concerned a repository is just a collection. Collection semantics are about adding and removing objects, or checking whether an object exists. The main operations are Add, Remove, and Contains. Check out the ICollection<T> interface: no Update method there.
It's not the business logic's concern whether objects should be marked as 'modified'. It just modifies objects and relies on other layers to detect and persist changes. Exposing an Update method
makes the business layer responsible for tracking and reporting its changes. Soon all kinds of if constructs will creep in to check whether values have changes or not.
breaks persistence ignorance, because the mere fact that storing updates is something else than storing new objects is a data layer detail.
prevents the data access layer from doing its job properly. Indeed, the implementation you show is destructive. While the Data Access Layer may be perfectly capable of perceiving and persisting granular changes, this method marks a whole object as modified and forces a swiping UPDATE.
I'm using Entity Framework 4.1. I've implemented a base repository using lots of the examples online. My repository get methods take a bool parameter to decide whether to track the entities. Sometimes, I want to load an entity and track it, other times, for some entities, I simply want to read them and display them (i.e. in a graph). In this situation there is never a need to edit, so I don't want the overhead of tracking them. Also, graph entities are sent to a silverlight client, so the entities are disconnected from the context. Hence my Get methods can return a list of entities that are either tracked or not. This is achieved dynamically creating the query as follows:
DbQuery<E> query = Context.Set<E>();
// Track the entities in the context?
if (!trackEntities)
{
query = query.AsNoTracking();
}
However, I now want to enable the user to interact with the graph and edit it. This will not happen very often, so I still want to get some entities without tracking them but to have the ability to save them. To do this I simply attach them to the context and set the state as modified. Everything is working so far.
I am auditing any changes by overriding the SaveChanges method. As explained above I may, in some low cases, need to save modified entities that were disconnected. So to audit, I have to retrieve the current values from the database and then compare to work out what was changed while disconnected. If the entity has been tracked, there is no need to get the old values, as I've got access to them via the state manager. I'm not using self tracking entities, as this is overkill for my requirements.
QUESTION: In my auditing method I simply want to know if the modified entity is tracked or not, i.e. do I need to go to the db and get the original values?
Cheers
DbContext.ChangeTracker.Entries (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg679172(v=vs.103).aspx) returns DbEntityEntry objects for all tracked entities. DbEntityEntry has Entity property that you could use to find out whether the entity is tracked. Something like
var isTracked = ctx.ChangeTracker.Entries().Any(e => Object.ReferenceEquals(e.Entity, myEntity));
I am using the Service Layer --> Repository --> Entity Framework (Code-First) w/POCO objects approach, and I am having a hard time with updating entities.
I am using AutoMapper to map my Domain Objects to my View Models and that works good for getting the data, no how do I get that changes back into the database?
Using pure POCO objects, I would assume that there is no sort of change tracking, so I see my only option is to handle it myself. Do you just make sure that your View Models have the EXACT same properties as your Domain Objects? What if I just change a field or two on the View Model? Won't the rest of the fields on the Domain Object get overwritten in the database with default values?
With that said, what is the best approach?
Thanks!
Edit
So what I am stumbling on is this, lets take for example a simple Customer:
1) The Controller has a service, CustomerService, that calls the services GetCustmoerByID method.
2) The Service calls into the CustomerRepository and retrieves the Customer object.
3) Controller uses AutoMapper to map the Customer to the ViewModel.
4) Controller hands the model to the View. Everything is great!
Now in the view you do some modifications of the customer and post it back to the controller to persist the changes to the database.
I would assume at this point the object is detached. So should the model have the EXACT same properties as the Customer object? And do you have to make hidden fields for each item that you do not want to show, so they can persist back?
How do you handle saving the object back to the database? What happens if your view/model only deals with a couple of the fields on the object?
If you're using EF Code First, i.e: the DbContext API, then you still do have change tracking which is taken care of by your context class.
after making changes to your objects, all you have to do is call SaveChanges() on your context and that will persist the changes to your database.
EDIT:
Since you are creating a "copy" of the entity using AutoMapper, then it's no longer attached to your context.
I guess what you could do is something similar to what you would in ASP.NET MVC (with UpdateModel). You can get the original entity from your context, take your ViewModel (which may contain changed properties) and update the old entity, either manually (just modified properties), or using AutoMapper. And then persist the changes using context.SaveChanges().
Another solution would be to send the model entity as [part of] the ViewModel. This way, you'll have your entity attached to the container and change tracking will still work.
Hope this helps :)
You are absolutely right that with a detached object you are responsible for informing the context about changes in your detached entity.
The basic approach is just set the entity as modified. This works for scalar and complex properties but it doesn't work for navigation properties (except FK relations) - for further reading about problems with navigation properties check this answer (it is related to EFv4 and ObjectContext API but same problems are with DbContext API). The disadvantage of this approach is that all fields in DB will be modified. If you just want to modify single field you still have to correctly fill others or your database record will be corrupted.
There is a way to explicitly define which fields have changed. You will set the modified state per property instead of whole entity. It is little bit harder to solve this on generic approach but I tried to show some way for EFv4 and for EFv4.1.
I agree with #AbdouMoumen that it's much simpler to use the model entities at the view level. The service layer should provide an API to persist those entities in the data store (db). The service layer shouldn't dumbly duplicate the repository lawyer (ie: Save(entity) for every entity) but rather provide a high level save for an aggregate of entities. For instance, you could have a Save(order) in the service layer which results in updating more basic entities like inventory, customer, account.
I would like to know when entities in a certain database table are either created or updated. The application is essentially a CMS, and I need to know when changes are made to the content so that I can reindex them for searches.
I know that the autogenerated LINQ to EF class has overridable methods for when certain fields change, but I need to know when the whole object is created/updated, not just a single field. I tried putting it in OnCreated, only to find that meant OnObjectInitialized and not OnObjectInsertedIntoDBTable xD
I did some searching and came across this link. The "Entity State" section looks like its what I want, but I'm not sure how to use this information. Where do I override those methods?
Or perhaps there is a another/better way?
(I also need to know this for another part of the system, which will send notifications when certain content is changed. I would prefer this code to execute automatically when the insert/update occurs instead of placing it in a controller and hoping hoping I always call that method.)
You need to get ObjectStateEntry(s) from the ObjectStateManager property of the ObjectContect.
var objectStateEntries = this.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries();
This entries contain every object state you've pulled down per context and what kind of actions where performed on them.
If you are using EF4 you can override the SaveChanges method to include this functionality. I've used this technique to audit every change that occurs in the database instead of triggers.