Is there a way to force the ID value for a new entity in EF when we have an auto-incrementing ID column, i.e. use SET IDENTITY_INSERT behaviour through EF?
Our requirement is that our create form must always show a new, unique ID for the object we're creating on the empty form before it is filled in or saved. The idea is that this ID can be out read to someone over the phone and then the user can complete and save the form after the call is complete. We could reserve an ID by inserting an empty row into the database there and then, but we have unique columns and FKs; instead I've made a 'next ID' table that we increment with locks for safety, and I test this against the top ID in the object table too to be careful. The idea was to then force the use of this new ID when we write back the entity - but I can't see how to get EF to do it.
Is that possible - is it just something I've missed? I don't think the ID even makes it down to the insert so I don't think manually calling SET IDENTITY_INSERT around the SaveChanges would help.
Or do I have to do something else? I can see alternatives:
Change our ID column to not be an identity and take manual control of it all: there's a table ID inheritance here so this is potentially tricky too.
Separate DB ID and user-visible ID into a separate column, and record our unique ID there.
Empty row to reserve the ID, as above; might need some nullability changes, and amending our data read code to ignore these records.
Thanks! This is EF4 (using an EDMX and generated classes not POCOs), and against SQL Server 2008 in case that matters.
Why not use a Guid as primary key. Nothing to do with auto-increment, no concurrency pitfalls etc. You just create the Guid at the moment you create the form. Hand it over to a caller and fill in the form afterwards. When the form is cancelled, no problem. When the form is finished create the entity with the created Guid set the other values of the entity object, apply it to the (a) context and SaveChanges()...
Alternatives that wont alter your schema
Use EF Transaction
You can call context.SaveChanges() and get the autoincremented primary key. Once the process is completed you can commit the transaction. If the transaction is cancelled or there is an error/exception, you can always rollback so you wont have holes/dirty-data in your rows. I suggest you use the singleton pattern and pass the same transaction/context to whatever methods or screens to complete the process.
Just add an additional status: Draft
Save empty form as draft with saved ID, then proceed to edit the form with the information. Once complete save the form as final/ready. If you wont proceed to save the form, you can always recycle the draft.
Related
I get the error "Cannot insert explicit value for identity column in table 'UserPermission' when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to OFF" trying to insert a record as follows:
dbContext.User.Add(someUser);
dbContext.SaveChanges();
That being said, the User file has the custom class UserPermission as one of its parameters, and someUser's UserPermission is not null and has a set ID parameter. Why does this happen and is it possible to avoid getting this error without having to explicitly add a UserPermissionID foreign key parameter in my User model and setting the UserPermission parameter to null?
Thanks in advance.
This issue typically happens when deserializing entities that have related entities in the object graph then attempting to add them. UserPermission is likely an existing record that in the DB is set up with an identity PK, but EF doesn't appear to recognize that in the entity definition. (I.e. set to DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Identity). If it had been you would most likely be seeing a different problem where a completely new duplicate UserPermission was being created.
If someUser, and it's associated someUser.UserPermission are deserialized entities then you need to do a bit of work to ensure EF is aware that UserPermission is an existing row:
void AddUser(User someUser)
{
var existingPermission = _context.UserPermissions.Local
.SingleOrDefault(x => x.UserPermissionId == someUser.UserPermission.UserPermissionId);
if (existingPermission != null)
someUser.UserPermission = existingPermission;
else
_context.Attach(someUser.UserPermission);
_context.Users.Add(someUser);
_context.SaveChanges();
}
In a nutshell, when working with detached entities that a DbContext may not be tracking, we need to check the Local state for any existing tracked instance for that ID. If we find one, we substitute the detached reference for the tracked one. If we don't find one, we attach the detached one before Adding our user.
This still isn't entirely safe because it assumes that the referenced UserPermission will exist in the database. If for any reason a non-existent UserPermission is sent in (row deleted, or fake data) you will get an exception on Save.
Passing detached entity references around can seem like a simple option at first, but you need to do this for every reference within a detached entity. If you simply call Attach without first checking, it will likely work until you come across a scenario where at runtime it doesn't work because the context happens to already be tracking an instance.
I have some Hibernate code running against a Postgres 9.5 DB, which looks like roughly like below (anonymized) -
Integer myEntityId = myEntity.getId();
getCurrentSession().evict(myEntity);
myEntity.setId(null);
MyEntity clonedMyEntity = (MyEntity)getCurrentSession().merge(myEntity);
myEntity.setMyBooleanField(false);
getCurrentSession().save(myEntity);
I have an entity myEntity with a large number of fields. I want to create a duplicate of the record with only 1 field value changed. To achieve this, I evict the entity from session, set Primary Key to null, merge it back to session, set the field I want to change, and then save the entity to DB. However, this code (which was working correctly for some time), is not working now. It sees incorrect value for the boolean field I am trying to modify - as a result violating some database constraints. Please help me fix this or suggest a better way to achieve what I am trying.
The error was happening not on adding this record but on add of another record to an audit table, triggered by the addition of this record. A coworker suggested me to use Eclipse Breakpoint view and use the add breakpoint option there and select the ConstraintViolationException class - this helped me to see the error for which trigger was failing and why and accordingly modify the data to suit the database constraint.
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;
I have a SalesOrder table with columns for ID and OrderID. ID is an auto-generated int. OrderID is a non-nullable string with a max length of 20, and we use it to store the customer's order number for reference.
After adding my new SalesOrder and calling SaveChanges, I get the following error:
Cannot insert the value NULL into column 'OrderID', table 'SalesOrder'; column does not allow nulls. INSERT fails.
The statement has been terminated.
Problem is, the object that I'm saving actually does have an OrderID! It's almost like it's trying to save the entity first before it saves all the values. Is this how EF handles things?
My setup is EF4.1, using an EDMX model-first approach. StoreGeneratedPattern is set to None. Default Value is currently set to (None) but I've tried various values. Entity Key is False, since it's not part of the key. I've also tried deleting the SalesOrder entity and regenerating it from the database.
I would also like to see your code...I had similar problems when filling objects in a loop then saving them with savechanges. I thought all the fields were populated, but they were not.
I'd have to see your code that executes before the save changes before I can offer anything really helpful.
If your problem is like mine and you are calling savechanges after using an iterator to populate your objects, then you can find the bad data by moving savechanges into the iterator so that it is called with each iteration...but this is all hypothetical guesswork without seeing your code...
I do this to save new invoince in my Invoices database table:
// insert invoice into EDM
edmx.AddToInvoices(newinvoice);
// save EDM changes to datastore
edmx.SaveChanges();
I have a trigger on one of the columns that gets computed dynamically by the database. What is the 1) easiest way to get that value out of the database immediatelly after it changes, 2) What is the fastest way?
Thanks
You can either call Refresh:
MyEntities.Refresh(RefreshMode.StoreWins, someEntity);
...or configure the column in SSDL as store-generated if you never set it on the client.
Since the Entity Framework can't know anything about the trigger, you'd have to reload the entity with a new query.
I strongly recommend finding a different solution, if possible. Triggers can be evil.