I have a similar problem.
I want to make two inserts in the same transactionscope. The objects are related and have a FK relationship between them, but for several reasons I do not want to connect them via the navigation property, but only by ID.
This is a simplification of what I what I want to accomplish:
Order o = new Order();
OrderDetails d = new OrderDetails();
new Repository().SaveNew(o, d);
class Repository{
void SaveNew(Order o, OrderDetails d){
using (TransactionScope transaction = new TransactionScope())
{
_context.Connection.Open();
// order
_context.Orders.ApplyChanges(o);
_context.SaveChanges();
// details
d.OrderID = o.ID;
_context.OrderDetails.ApplyChanges(d);
_context.SaveChanges(); <--- UpdateException
_context.Connection.Close();
transaction.Complete();
}
}
}
The problem is that I get an UpdateException because the FK evaluation fails. I tried to remove the FK relationship and running the exact same piece of code, and it worked fine, and both objects had the right properties set. So why does this approach fail? And how should this instead be done? Again, I do not want to attach the entites via their navigation properties.
Thank you!
I would leave the FK relationship in the database, but delete the AssociationSet and Association from the SSDL. The designer won't let you do this, you have to edit the XML manually.
I am using EF 4 btw.
Then use AddObject and SaveChanges in your SaveNew method to add the first (parent) object. Set the foreign key Property on the child and add it with AddObject and SaveChanges.
I do not have development environment running to test this, but what I think is happening is:
Assuming that the id is generated in the database. At the point when you save the order you do not know the ID.
Then the order ID of the order detail is set to the ID of the order, but the order was not reloaded from the database. I suspect that the value is 0.
When you try to save the order detail with FK of 0, you get an error.
Either save both at the same time so that EF does the work for you, or reload the order.
Related
I have an EF7 DbContext with disabled change tracking because I want to mark all changes explicitly:
var entry = context.Entry(changedEntity);
entry.Property(propertyName).IsModified = true;
This works exactly as I want it to.
However, this does not work when a reference (navigation property) has been updated.
For example, let's say my entity has two properties - ParentId and Parent where ParentId is a foreign key and Parent is the reference to the parent entity.
Calling
entry.Property("Parent").IsModified = true;
does not work and throws ModelItemNotFoundException because Parent is not a property of the entity in terms of EF (it is a navigation instead).
In EF6, this could be done as follows:
var reference = context.Entry(changedEntity).Reference("Parent");
reference.CurrentValue = reference.CurrentValue;
IN EF7, there is no such function. I can get to the INavigation object with
entry.Metadata.GetNavigation("Parent")
but cannot see any way to mark it as modified.
So, how should I do it?
Note:
I know that setting ParentId would work, but this is not suitable for me because the referenced entity does not have ID yet as it has just been created and will get its ID from database when saved. Thus, I need to set it through the reference Parent.
Edit:
The note above was true for EF6 but is no longer valid for EF7 which I was not aware of. Thus, the solution is just as described in the note and answer below.
Wow, it seems that when a new entity is attached to the DbContext, it actually gets ID (-1 in my case). So, I can set ParentId even when the target entity is new and has not been added to the database yet.
I wonder whether there are any checks that the new ID is unique (there could already be an entry with ID -1 in database).
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 rare case where the call of DbSet<T>.Add() changes some properties of other entities that are already in the DbSet<T>. Unfortunately, it happens very rarely, and the only evidence I have are some log files, so I have not yet been able to reproduce it locally.
The behavior is like this:
First, we load some entities from the DbSet using a LINQ query.
Then, some of these entities are changed. No SaveChanges() yet.
Now we add some entities by calling DbSet<T>.Add().
Some of the entities of step 2 are changed in step 3 (one foreign-key property of them is set to null).
Any idea? Is that something that can happen on a EF 6 Code-First model?
The only possibility I can think of is that the DbContext refreshes some data from the database, but we don't want it to do that at this point.
EDIT: The code is currently scattered with log statements, since we have been chasing this bug since weeks. These are the relevant code sections:
// parameter: List<Entry> entriesFromUser
var entriesFromDb = db.Entries
.Where(...)
.OrderBy(...)
.ToList();
var newEntries = MergeEntries(entriesFromDb, entriesFromUser);
var propertyBefore = entriesFromDb[0].MyForeignKeyId;
for (var i = 0; i < newEntries.Count; i++)
{
// make sure that the "new entry" is not a modified one
if (entriesFromDb.Contains(newEntries[i])
{
throw new Exception();
}
db.Entries.Add(newEntries[i]);
}
var propertyAfter = entriesFromDb[0].MyForeignKeyId;
Debug.Assert(propertyBefore == propertyAfter); // <=== fails sometimes
db.SaveChanges();
Please note that the changed foreign key is NOT on the entity being added to the DbSet. It's on an entity that comes from the database, but has been changed in the same transaction.
D'oh. Found the reason. Hope it helps someone else.
We are using Foreign Key Associations, which means that we have both the navigation property entry.MyForeignKey and the Foreign Key property entry.MyForeignKeyId, which has many advantages, but it also means you have to be careful when using sometimes this, sometimes that property.
Turns out we had the following assignment somewhere deep in the code, where all the data of one entry is copied to another one:
entry.MyForeignKeyId = otherEntry.MyForeignKeyId
entry.MyForeignKey = otherEntry.MyForeignKey
However, in many scenarios, you set a foreign key value to an entity's MyForeignKeyId but leave the property MyForeignKey null, because the parent entity is not loaded. This is fine as long as you don't assign null to the entity's MyForeignKey property, because it seems that EF would then set MyForeignKeyId to null too.
So it seems that after our code assigned null to MyForeignKey, the entity lingered in memory with a null MyForeignKey and a non-null MyForeignKeyId. As soon as the next DbSet command was executed (the Add() operation), the DbSet noticed that MyForeignKey has received a null assignment, so DbSet went on and assigned null to MyForeignKeyId too.
My application allows the user to create a hierarchy of new entities via a UI - let's say it's a "Customer" plus one or more child "Order" entities. The user also assigns each Order entity to an existing "OrderDiscount" entity (think of these as "reference"/"lookup" items retrieved from the database). Some time later, the user will choose to save the whole hierarchy to the database, accomplished like this:-
using (var context = new MyContext())
{
context.Customers.Add(customer);
foreach (var entity in context.OrderDiscounts.Local)
{
objectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(entity, EntityState.Unchanged);
}
context.SaveChanges();
}
The foreach loop changes the state of the OrderDiscount entities to Unchanged, and prevents EF from attempting to insert them into the database, resulting in duplicates.
Great so far, but I've now hit another issue. For reasons I won't go into, the OrderDiscount entities can come from different BLL calls, resulting in a situation where two Orders in the graph may appear to reference the same OrderDiscount (i.e. both have the same PK ID, and other properties), but the entities are different object references.
When I save, the above foreach loop fails with the message "AcceptChanges cannot continue because the object's key values conflict with another object in the ObjectStateManager. Make sure that the key values are unique before calling AcceptChanges". I can see the two OrderDiscount objects in the context.OrderDiscounts.Local collection, both with the same PK ID.
I'm not sure how I can avoid this situation. Any suggestions?
This article (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn166926.aspx) describes the scenario and provides one possible solution, which is to set just the FK ID (order.OrderDiscountId), and leave the order.OrderDiscount relationship null. Unfortunately it's not feasible in my case, as further down the line I rely on being able to traverse such relationships, e.g. ApplyDiscount(order.OrderDiscount);.
I'm using .NET4.5/EF5 and have created the model from an existing database.
I'm using the following code:
Order currentOrder = new Order();
using (var db = new ILSEntities())
{
try
{
Event currentEvent = db.Events.OrderByDescending(u => u.EventID).FirstOrDefault();
currentOrder.Event = currentEvent;
db.Orders.Add(currentOrder);
db.SaveChanges();
And I'm seeing that a duplicate record is being created of the Event object I find, which is not what I wanted to happen.
I've read a lot of posts relating to similar problems, but where the context of the two participants in the foreign key relationships are different. Here, I'm saving with the same context I use to find one, and the other object is new.
I've also tried:
currentOrder.Event.EventID = currentEvent.EventID;
but that fails as well as I get an EF validation error telling me it needs values for the other members of the Event object.
I've also tried specifically setting the EntityState of the object being duplicated to Detached, Modified etc. after adding the Order object but before SaveChanges without success.
I'm sure this is a basic problem, but it's got me baffled
In my understanding, both parent and child objects have to be in the context before you assign any relationship between them to convince the entity framework that an entity exists in the database already. I guess you are trying to add new Order object to Database, to add new object you should be using AddObject method, Add() method is used to establish relation between entitties. In your code, currentOrder is not in the context. Try to hook it in the same context and then assign a relation. Your code should look like this :
Order currentOrder = new Order();
using (var db = new ILSEntities())
{
try
{
Event currentEvent = db.Events.OrderByDescending(u => u.EventID).FirstOrDefault();
db.Orders.Attach(currentOrder); //attach currentOrder to context as it was not loaded from the context
currentOrder.Events.Add(currentEvent);//establish relationship
db.ObjectStateManager.ChangeObjectState(currentOrder, EntityState.Added);
db.SaveChanges();
}
}
OK, I did in the end figure this out, and it was my fault.
The problem was that the Order object is FK'd into another table, Shipments, which is also FK'd into Events. The problem was that it was the Event reference in the Shipment object that was causing the new record. The solution was to let EF know about these relationships by adding them all within the same context.
The code assembling the object graph was spread over a number of webforms and the responses here made me take a step back and look at the whole thing critically so whilst no one of these answers is correct, I'm voting everybody who replied up