Changes not saved when using inherited DbContext - silverlight

I'm using a loosely coupled model between my Silverlight client and my DomainService.
I'm using POCO with EF 4.1
I'm not using any of the scaffolding the tooling offers.
The DomainService class is declared as:
public partial class MyDomainService : DbDomainService<MyContext>
{
...
}
in the update method I have the following:
public UpdatePerson(PersonInfo source)
{
var person = DbContext.People.Find(source.Id);
person.Name = source.Name;
DbContext.SaveChanges();
}
But when I manually check the database the change is not saved. However if I modify the code to look like this --- all is fine:
public UpdatePerson(PersonInfo source)
{
using(var context = GetDbContext())
{
var person = context.People.Find(source.Id);
person.Name = source.Name;
context.SaveChanges();
}
}
I suppose I don't mind creating my own local context variable, but I'm curious what's going on under the covers that the first approach doesn't work.

Since you are not using the DomainService the way that it is designed to work you may find it doing several weird things. DbContext.SaveChanges is never supposed to be called by your code, it will get called by the DomainService in the PersistChangeset method after all of the CUD methods in the changeset have been processed.
The DbContext held by the DomainService has several properties changed. ProxyCreationEnabled, ValidateOnSaveEnabled, AutoDetectChangesEnabled, and LazyLoadingEnabled are all set to false. In your case, since AutoDetectChangesEnabled is set to false just changing the person.Name will not trigger the DbContext to know that there are any changes to person.Name.

Related

Should a repository class using EF initialize context in the constructor only or for each methods?

Should it be like this
public class DataAccess
{
MyDbContext ctx;
public DataAccess()
{
ctx = new MyDbContext();
}
public List<entity> GetAll()
{
return ctx.entities.ToList();
}
}
or this
public List<entity> GetAll()
{
using (var ctx = new MyDbContext())
{
return ctx.entities.ToList();
}
}
Thanks a lot and if there is a problem in my questions, please inform me so that I may improve it.
The optimal lifetime of a DbContext depends on your requirements and may vary from case to case but in general you should prefer short-lives contexts (the second code snippet in your sample code):
Entity Framework’s contexts are meant to be used as short-lived instances in order to provide the most optimal performance experience ...
https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-gb/data/hh949853.aspx#9
if i have a viewmodel for adding new item and another viewmodel for displaying all or filtered items (the second viewmodel's view must always reflect any changes in the collection source), should the change be communicated from viewmodel to viewmodel directly, or viewmodel to repository to the second viewmodel?
The first view model could for example add the new item to an ObservableCollection of the second view model that the view binds to. So it should add the new item to the database using the respository and also add the new entity object to the source collection of the second view model one way or another.

SQL Server Session Serialization in ASP.Net MVC

I am new to ASP.Net MVC . Any help is greatly appreciated in resolving my problem.
I am using a LINQToSQL db in my MVC application. For one of the auto generated partial class (Example MyClass assume for table MyClass) , I created another Partial class as MyClass and added DataAnnotations Like following...
namespcae NP
{
[MetadaType(typeof(myData))]
[Serializable()]
public partial class MyClass
{
}
public myData
{
[Required]
public string ID { get ; set ;}
// Other properties are listed here
}
}
In my controller class example MyHomeController
I have a code as follows:
List<MyClass> list = new List<MyClass>();
list = dbContext.StoredProcedure(null).ToList<MyClass>()
session["data"] = list.
above code works fine if I use inProc session state. But if I use SQLServer mode then I get error as
"Unable to serialize the session state. In 'StateServer' and
'SQLServer' mode, ASP.NET will serialize the session state objects,
and as a result non-serializable objects or MarshalByRef objects are
not permitted. The same restriction applies if similar serialization
is done by the custom session state store in 'Custom' mode. "
Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here..?. I can see the data is getting populated in ASPState database tables. By application throws error as follows.
Just mark as Serializable all classes whose instances you want to store in Session.
Finally I was able to resolve the issue.
Solution:
Add the below statement before querying the database. In my case I was calling LinqToSQl context( dbContext).
dbContext.ObjectTrackingEnabled = false;
Sample Code:
List empList = new List();
dbContext.ObjectTrackingEnabled = false;
empList = dbContext.SomeStoredProcedure().ToList()
Session["employee"] = empList.

Refreshing ViewModel's Entity Framework context

I'm using WPF, MVVM and Entity Framework in my current project.
To keep things simple, let's say I have a viewmodel for CRUD operations towards a list of materials (Solid woods).
My ViewModel's EF context (WTContext) is initialized through property injection, for instance:
SolidWoods_VM newView = new SolidWoods_VM();
newView.Context = new WTContext(SettingsManager.Instance.GetConnectionString());
This way I'm able to test this ViewModel:
SolidWoods_VM swVM = new SolidWoods_VM();
swVM.Context = new FakeWTContext();
Imagine that during a insert operation something goes wrong and the WTContext.SaveChanges() fails.
What is the best way to refresh the ViewModels context?
Create a new bool property in the viewmodel named ForTestingPurposes, and when the SaveChanges method fails:
try
{
Context.SaveChanges();
}
catch
{
if (!ForTestingPurposes)
{
Context = new WTContext(SettingsManager.Instance.GetConnectionString());
}
}
Send a message to the mainviewmodel for context reloading (through mediator pattern):
Mediator.Instance.NotifyColleagues<SolidWoods_VM>(MediatorMessages.NeedToUpdateMyContext, this);
(Yet, this way I'd still need the bool property)
3.A more elegant solution, without aditional properties, provided for you guys :)
Why not abstract the methods/properties you need on your data context onto an interface and then have an implementation of that that handles the exception.
//WARNING: written in SO window
public interface IDataSource
{
void SaveChanges();
//... and anything else you need ...
}
public class RealDataSource : IDataSource
{
private WTContext _context;
public void SaveChanges()
{
try { _context.SaveChanges(); }
catch
{
_context = new WTContext(/*...*/);
}
}
}
This way you can still implement a fake/mock data source but your view model class doesn't need to know anything about how the data is actually retrieved.
My opinion is that your best bet would be the message.
You need a way to indicate that the save went wrong, and it might not serve all consumers of the class to have the context regenerated. If you're binding to your VM in there, for example, resetting the context might have other UI consequences.

XmlSerializer stopped working after updates

I'm using XmlSerializer. I've had no problems with it until now. I updated Silverlight from 4 to 5 and at the same time also updated the WCF RIA Services from v1 SP1 to v1 SP2. Now the following line gives me an error.
XmlSerializer s = new XmlSerializer(typeof(MyCustomObject));
The error is:
System.InvalidOperationException: System.ServiceModel.DomainServices.Client.EntityConflict cannot be serialized because it does not have a parameterless constructor.
The object I'm using (MyCustomObject in the sample) has not changed in any way so I'm starting to think it's either SL5 or the new RIA Services that is breaking my code. I didn't find any breaking changes document or mentions that this could happen. I don't know why it has a problem with EntityConflict since I'm not using any entities within my object.
Has anyone seen an error like this and/or know how to solve it?
UPDATE!
The final property that the error message says before EntityConflict is an Entity. I think that makes a difference but it has been working before. I'd also like to know why the serializer already tries to serialize the object in the constructor?
public static XmlSerializer GetEntityXmlSerializer<TEntity>()
where TEntity : Entity
{
XmlAttributes ignoreAttribute = new XmlAttributes()
{
XmlIgnore = true,
};
// use base class of Entity,
// if you use type of implementation
// you will get the error.
Type entityType = typeof(Entity);
var xmlAttributeOverrides = new XmlAttributeOverrides();
xmlAttributeOverrides.Add(entityType, "EntityConflict", ignoreAttribute);
xmlAttributeOverrides.Add(entityType, "EntityState", ignoreAttribute);
return new XmlSerializer(typeof(TEntity), xmlAttributeOverrides);
}
I am not sure why this would be happening, RIA Services entities are not XmlSerializable objects and the entities themselves are not decorated with the [Serializable] attribute. Have you added partial classes on the client side which decorate the entities with [Serializable] or modified the code generation in some way?
I got around this problem by using intermediary serializable POCO objects which were copies of my custom objects (which were inherited from Entity). The POCO objects did not inherit from Entity. I just updated their values from the original Entity objects. They then serialized quite nicely. Of course, when you de-serialize you need to update your Entity objects from the POCO objects.

How to get can CanAddNew to be true for a collection returned by RIA Services

RIA Services is returning a list of Entities that won't allow me to add new items. Here are what I believe to be the pertinent details:
I'm using the released versions of Silverlight 4 and RIA Services 1.0 from mid-April of 2010.
I have a DomainService with a query method that returns List<ParentObject>.
ParentObject includes a property called "Children" that is defined as List<ChildObject>.
In the DomainService I have defined CRUD methods for ParentObject with appropriate attributes for the Query, Delete, Insert, and Update functions.
The ParentObject class has an Id property marked with the [Key] attribute. It also has the "Children" property marked with the attributes [Include], [Composition], and [Association("Parent_Child", "Id",
"ParentId")].
The ChildObject class has an Id marked with the [Key] attribute as well as a foreign key, "ParentId", that contains the Id of the parent.
On the client side, data is successfully returned and I assign the results of the query to a PagedCollectionView like this:
_pagedCollectionView = new PagedCollectionView(loadOperation.Entities);
When I try to add a new ParentObject to the PagedCollectionView like this:
ParentObject newParentObject = (ParentObject)_pagedCollectionView.AddNew();
I get the following error:
" 'Add New' is not allowed for this view."
On further investigation, I found that _pagedCollectionView.CanAddNew is "false" and cannot be changed because the property is read-only.
I need to be able to add and edit ParentObjects (with their related children, of course) to the PagedCollectionView. What do I need to do?
I was just playing around with a solution yesterday and feel pretty good about how it works. The reason you can't add is the source collection (op.Entities) is read-only. However, even if you could add to the collection, you'd still want to be adding to the EntitySet as well. I created a intermediate collection that takes care of both these things for me.
public class EntityList<T> : ObservableCollection<T> where T : Entity
{
private EntitySet<T> _entitySet;
public EntityList(IEnumerable<T> source, EntitySet<T> entitySet)
: base(source)
{
if (entitySet == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException("entitySet");
}
this._entitySet = entitySet;
}
protected override void InsertItem(int index, T item)
{
base.InsertItem(index, item);
if (!this._entitySet.Contains(item))
{
this._entitySet.Add(item);
}
}
protected override void RemoveItem(int index)
{
T item = this[index];
base.RemoveItem(index);
if (this._entitySet.Contains(item))
{
this._entitySet.Remove(item);
}
}
}
Then, I use it in code like this.
dataGrid.ItemsSource = new EntityList<Entity1>(op.Entities, context.Entity1s);
The only caveat is this collection does not actively update off the EntitySet. If you were binding to op.Entities, though, I assume that's what you'd expect.
[Edit]
A second caveat is this type is designed for binding. For full use of the available List operation (Clear, etc), you'd need to override a few of the other methods to write-though as well.
I'm planning to put together a post that explains this a little more in-depth, but for now, I hope this is enough.
Kyle
Here's a workaround which I am using:
Instead of using the AddNew, on your DomainContext you can retrieve an EntitySet<T> by saying Context.EntityNamePlural (ie: Context.Users = EntitySet<User> )
You can add a new entity to that EntitySet by calling Add() and then Context.SubmitChanges() to send it to the DB. To reflect the changes on the client you will need to Reload (Context.Load())
I just made this work about 15mins ago after having no luck with the PCV so I am sure it could be made to work better, but hopefully this will get you moving forward.
For my particular situation, I believe the best fit is this (Your Mileage May Vary):
Use a PagedCollectionView (PCV) as a wrapper around the context.EntityNamePlural (in my case, context.ParentObjects) which is an EntitySet. (Using loadOperation.Entities doesn't work for me because it is always read-only.)
_pagedCollectionView = new PagedCollectionView(context.ParentObjects);
Then bind to the PCV, but perform add/delete directly against the context.EntityNamePlural EntitySet. The PCV automatically syncs to the changes done to the underlying EntitySet so this approach means I don't need to worry about sync issues.
context.ParentObjects.Add();
(The reason for performing add/delete directly against the EntitySet instead of using the PCV is that PCV's implementation of IEditableCollectionView is incompatible with EntitySet causing IEditableCollectionView.CanAddNew to be "false" even though the underlying EntitySet supports this function.)
I think Kyle McClellan's approach (see his answer) may be preferred by some because it encapsulates the changes to the EntitySet, but I found that for my purposes it was unneccessary to add the ObservableCollection wrapper around loadOperation.Entities.
Many thanks to to Dallas Kinzel for his tips along the way!

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