Entity Framework 5 foreign key values not updating (VB.NET) - vb.net

I realise many similar questions have been asked but after attempting tens of examples I still cannot get this to work. The problem I am having involves the updating of foreign key values in the Users table.
I am creating a website using ASP WebForms, .net 4.5, Entity Framework 5, SQL server 2012.
I created the EF using database first, here you can see a sample of the model:
I am using a 3 tier architecture - my data access layer queries the database using LINQ and returns a User object (as defined by T4).
This means the object is disconnected from the context when it is modified. (right?)
I modify the object in the page's code behind, updating the UserRole by doing this:
(in page load)
Dim _userAcces As UserLayer = UserLayer.getInstance
mUser = _userAcces.getUserWithCustomerAndRole(_ID)
Dim _rolesAccess As UserRolesLayer = UserRolesLayer.getInstance
mRoles = _rolesAccess.listUserRoles
(on button click)
mUser.UserRole = mRoles.Item(dropDownRole.SelectedIndex)
At this point the mUser object holds the correct (updated) UserRole object. I then pass the mUser object back into my data layer to update the database. The simnplest examples I have seen do this:
Using _context As New SaasPortalContext
_context.Entry(updatedUser).State = EntityState.Modified
_context.SaveChanges()
End Using
I have also tried using:
_context.users.attach
getting the original from the context using _context.users.find(id) and updating the original from the updated User object
getting the dbentityentry object from _context.entry(updatedUser) and setting the property("UserRole").isModified property to true
Using any of these methods I expect the foreign key value for UserRole in the Users table to update to be the ID of a different role in the UserRole table, reflecting the changes in the mUser object, but this does not happen and the value does not change.
What am I doing wrong? Why will the ID not update in the Users table?
Any help would be greatly appreciated

I finally worked out what I was doing wrong, I did not check the box for "include foreign key relationships" when setting up the model, meaning the relationships were not properly defined (I assume).

Related

Saving related entities in EF with transient dbContext fails

I have a asp net core 3.1 web application. We use repository pattern with entity framework.
services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>(options => options.UseSqlServer(_configuration.GetConnectionString("MyConnString")), ServiceLifetime.Scoped);
Made up scenario, just bec everybody knows the "Customer-orders"-scenario:
When I create a new Order and want to connect it to an existing Customer I write something like this. Works ok.
var order = new Order(){...}
order.Customer = _dbContext.Customers.FirstOrDefault(c=>c.CustomerId = 42);
_dbContext.Orders.Add(order);
_dbContext.SaveChanges();
However. For other reasons we need to have dbContext transient, initiated like below:
services.AddDbContext<MyDbContext>(options => options.UseSqlServer(_configuration.GetConnectionString("MyConnString")), ServiceLifetime.Transient);
This makes the code above fail. Error message is the Customer is already attached to dbContext ("The instance of entity type 'Customer' cannot be tracked because another instance with the same key value for {'CustomerId'} is already being tracked. When attaching existing entities, , ensure that only one entity instance with a given key value is attached")
or, if I test setting order.Customer = null:
The error message says "cant insert Id on identity column" (which it shouldnt, the customer already exists). ("Cannot insert explicit value for identity column in table 'Users' when IDENTITY_INSERT is set to OFF.")

Nhibernate QueryOver don't get latest database changes

I am trying get a record updated from database with QueryOver.
My code initially creates an entity and saves in database, then the same record is updated on database externally( from other program, manually or the same program running in other machine), and when I call queryOver filtering by the field changed, the query gets the record but without latest changes.
This is my code:
//create the entity and save in database
MyEntity myEntity = CreateDummyEntity();
myEntity.Name = "new_name";
MyService.SaveEntity(myEntity);
// now the entity is updated externally changing the name property with the
// "modified_name" value (for example manually in TOAD, SQL Server,etc..)
//get the entity with QueryOver
var result = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>();
The previous statement gets a collection with only one record(good), BUT with the name property established with the old value instead of "modified_name".
How I can fix this behaviour? First Level cache is disturbing me? The same problem occurs with
CreateCriteria<T>();
The session in my NhibernateHelper is not being closed in any moment due application framework requirements, only are created transactions for each commit associated to a session.Save().
If I open a new session to execute the query evidently I get the latest changes from database, but this approach is not allowed by design requirement.
Also I have checked in the NHibernate SQL output that a select with a WHERE clause is being executed (therefore Nhibernate hits the database) but don´t updates the returned object!!!!
UPDATE
Here's the code in SaveEntity after to call session.Save: A call to Commit method is done
public virtual void Commit()
{
try
{
this.session.Flush();
this.transaction.Commit();
}
catch
{
this.transaction.Rollback();
throw;
}
finally
{
this.transaction = this.session.BeginTransaction();
}
}
The SQL generated by NHibernate for SaveEntity:
NHibernate: INSERT INTO MYCOMPANY.MYENTITY (NAME) VALUES (:p0);:p0 = 'new_name'.
The SQL generated by NHibernate for QueryOver:
NHibernate: SELECT this_.NAME as NAME26_0_
FROM MYCOMPANY.MYENTITY this_
WHERE this_.NAME = :p0;:p0 = 'modified_name' [Type: String (0)].
Queries has been modified due to company confidential policies.
Help very appreciated.
As far as I know, you have several options :
have your Session as a IStatelessSession, by calling sessionFactory.OpenStatelesSession() instead of sessionFactory.OpenSession()
perform Session.Evict(myEntity) after persisting an entity in DB
perform Session.Clear() before your QueryOver
set the CacheMode of your Session to Ignore, Put or Refresh before your QueryOver (never tested that)
I guess the choice will depend on the usage you have of your long running sessions ( which, IMHO, seem to bring more problems than solutions )
Calling session.Save(myEntity) does not cause the changes to be persisted to the DB immediately*. These changes are persisted when session.Flush() is called either by the framework itself or by yourself. More information about flushing and when it is invoked can be found on this question and the nhibernate documentation about flushing.
Also performing a query will not cause the first level cache to be hit. This is because the first level cache only works with Get and Load, i.e. session.Get<MyEntity>(1) would hit the first level cache if MyEntity with an id of 1 had already been previously loaded, whereas session.QueryOver<MyEntity>().Where(x => x.id == 1) would not.
Further information about NHibernate's caching functionality can be found in this post by Ayende Rahien.
In summary you have two options:
Use a transaction within the SaveEntity method, i.e.
using (var transaction = Helper.Session.BeginTransaction())
{
Helper.Session.Save(myEntity);
transaction.Commit();
}
Call session.Flush() within the SaveEntity method, i.e.
Helper.Session.Save(myEntity);
Helper.Session.Flush();
The first option is the best in pretty much all scenarios.
*The only exception I know to this rule is when using Identity as the id generator type.
try changing your last query to:
var result = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.CacheMode(CacheMode.Refresh)
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
if that still doesn't work, try add this after the query:
NhibernateHelper.Session.Refresh(result);
After search and search and think and think.... I´ve found the solution.
The fix: It consist in open a new session, call QueryOver<T>() in this session and the data is succesfully refreshed. If you get child collections not initialized you can call HibernateUtil.Initialize(entity) or sets lazy="false" in your mappings. Take special care about lazy="false" in large collections, because you can get a poor performance. To fix this problem(performance problem loading large collections), set lazy="true" in your collection mappings and call the mentioned method HibernateUtil.Initialize(entity) of the affected collection to get child records from database; for example, you can get all records from a table, and if you need access to all child records of a specific entity, call HibernateUtil.Initialize(collection) only for the interested objects.
Note: as #martin ernst says, the update problem can be a bug in hibernate and my solution is only a temporal fix, and must be solved in hibernate.
People here do not want to call Session.Clear() since it is too strong.
On the other hand, Session.Evict() may seem un-applicable when the objects are not known beforehand.
Actually it is still usable.
You need to first retrieve the cached objects using the query, then call Evict() on them. And then again retrieve fresh objects calling the same query again.
This approach is slightly inefficient in case the object was not cached to begin with - since then there would be actually two "fresh" queries - but there seems to be not much to do about that shortcoming...
By the way, Evict() accepts null argument too without exceptions - this is useful in case the queried object is actually not present in the DB.
var cachedObjects = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>();
foreach (var obj in cachedObjects)
NhibernateHelper.Session.Evict(obj);
var freshObjects = NhibernateHelper.Session
.QueryOver<MyEntity>()
.Where(param => param.Name == "modified_name")
.List<T>()
I'm getting something very similar, and have tried debugging NHibernate.
In my scenario, the session creates an object with a couple children in a related collection (cascade:all), and then calls ISession.Flush().
The records are written into the DB, and the session needs to continue without closing. Meanwhile, another two child records are written into the DB and committed.
Once the original session then attempts to re-load the graph using QueryOver with JoinAlias, the SQL statement generated looks perfectly fine, and the rows are being returned correctly, however the collection that should receive these new children is found to have already been initialized within the session (as it should be), and based on that NH decides for some reason to completely ignore the respective rows.
I think NH makes an invalid assumption here that if the collection is already marked "Initialized" it does not need to be re-loaded from the query.
It would be great if someone more familiar with NHibernate internals could chime in on this.

Nhibernate foreign key constraint due to unexpected update of already inserted record

This is a strange one replicated in the following code:
using (ISession session = RepositoryTestHelper.SessionFactory.OpenSession())
{
//session.BeginTransaction();
UserRepo repo = new UserRepo(session);
CompanyRepo cRepo = new CompanyRepo(session);
var user = repo.FindByEmail("test.user#blah.com");
user.CompanyAssociations.Add(new CompanyUserAssoc()
{
User = user,
Company = cRepo.GetById(1)
});
repo.AddOrUpdate(user);
//session.Transaction.Commit();
}
And the relationship between user, company and CompanyUserAssoc is fairly straight forward:
For the company:
HasMany<CompanyUserAssoc>(x => x.UserAssociations).KeyColumn("User_id");
For the user:
HasMany<CompanyUserAssoc>(x => x.CompanyAssociations).KeyColumn("Company_id")
And for the association class itself:
References(x => x.Company).UniqueKey("CompanyId_UserId");
References(x => x.User).UniqueKey("CompanyId_UserId");
Now this is where I am baffled. Notice in my initial code that the begin and commit trans calls are commented out. This actually means the code will work! The CompanyUserAssoc is created and correctly references the user and the company with id of 1. Great!
But... sadly when I put this in a transaction i get this error:
{"The UPDATE statement conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint \"FK3C47859753A62C6E\". The conflict occurred in database \"xxxx\", table \"dbo.Company\", column 'Id'.\r\nThe statement has been terminated."}
But why? Well that's my question. What i have see in the profiler is that it does this:
exec sp_executesql N'UPDATE [CompanyUserAssoc] SET Company_id = null WHERE Company_id = #p0',N'#p0 int',#p0=1
Wait... what? NULL? Why is it setting the company id to null? and why is it only doing this when in a transaction? What's "wrong" with my Nhibernate mapping?
Since both collections are mapped as non-inverse (the default) and the Company collection has no users, it will issue that update to clear the link table. Could you try setting the UserAssociations to inverse? Or, what I usually do when an explicit link table is involved, is set both HasManys to inverse and simply work with the link table directly.
This was a red herring in the end, a fish I have come to despise. I had not noticed in my haste and dependence on intellisense that the UserAssocations property of the Company was not an IList but an IList! yes I have stupidly chosen the Nhib map class instead of the domain class.. This weirdly didn't error in the way you would expect, and worked without a transaction, but why?
Well - Nhib was able to insert the assoc entry, but then believed it needed to update that same table with the id it had already inserted (because it somehow sees it as a different entity?). I would have expected a compilation error here in the map class itself as I was using the type, but no. And without a transaction the sql generated works.
I would investigate more as to why, but I've answered this just to highlight a rare and silly mistake which can lead to a lot of investigation if missed.

use entities across multiple context entity framework 4

I have a strange requirement, and do not know how to solve it.
I have a context that holds all my main entities.
One of the entity is "customers".
Now i have an other application with they're entities in a separate context.
However that application should be able to access the customers from the main context.
I don't mind if there is no relation. I know the key of the customer and can access it manually.
I thought about something like this: (example is pseudo vb.net)
Imports MainModels
Namespace OtherApplication
Dim myMainContext as new MainModels.MainContext
Dim myAppContext as new AppContext
Dim myOrder as order = AppContext.Orders.Find(OrderIdent)
Dim myCustomer as customer = MainModels.MainContext.Customers.Find(myOrder.CustomerKey)
Is there a common way of solving those kind of requirements?
Reason for me to separate the two context is, that the MainContext is not going to change anymore, while the AppContext could be extended. There could even be a App2Context for some other application.
I have found following post:
Choosing the subset by exposing foreign keys
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/adonet/archive/2008/11/24/working-with-large-models-in-entity-framework-part-1.aspx
Found similar question:
Entity Framework: Multiple models - the current state of thinking?

Persist a top-level collection?

NHibernate allows me to query a database and get an IList of objects in return. Suppose I get a list of a couple of dozen objects and modify a half-dozen or so. Does NHibernate have a way to persist changes to the collection, or do I have to persist each object as I change it?
Here's an example. Suppose I run the following code:
var hql = "from Project";
var query = session.CreateQuery(hql);
var myProjectList = query.List<Project>();
I will get back an IList that contains all projects. Now suppose I execute the following code:
var myNewProject = new Project("My New Project");
myProjectList .Add(myNewProject);
And let's say I do this several times, adding several new projects to the list. Now I'm ready to persist the changes to the collection.
I'd like to persist the changes by simply passing myProjectList to the current ISession for updating. But ISession.SaveOrUpdate() appears to take only individual objects, not collections like myProjectList. Is there a way that I can persist changes to myProjectList, or do I have to persist each new object as I create it? Thanks for your help.
David Veeneman
Foresight Systems
If you load objects like in your example - then yes you have to persist them one by one.
However, if you make a small design change, and load something like : Account that has an IList<Project> - if you specify cascade "what_cascade_you_need" in the mapping , then when you change the projects on Account , you only have to save Account and everything will get saved.