Best Practice with MVC4 and EF5 to apply changes - asp.net-mvc-4

Question

I have a CustomerOrder-view where I would like to change an existing CustomerOrder.
I have a viewmodel that very simpliefied looks something like this:
public class CustomerOrderViewModel
{
public int ID { get; set; }
public Customer Customer { get; set; }
public DateTime Date { get; set; }
public IEnumerable<OrderRow> OrderRows { get; set; }
}
public class OrderRow
{
public int id { get; set; }
public int price { get; set; }
}
public class Customer
{
public string Name { get; set; }
}
I also have a database with mapping tables / fields.
In my GET Action Method I load the Order with the help of Automapper like this:
var customerOrder = using (var ctx = new My_Entities()) {
return ctx.CustomerOrders.
Include("Orderrows").
Include("Customer").
Single(o => o.CustomerOrderID == id);
}
var model= AutoMapper.Mapper.DynamicMap<DataAccessLayer.CustomerOrder, CustomerOrderViewModel>(customerOrder);
In the View I use Knockout to bind to a viewmodel there, where the user can update the CustomerOrder. That includes editing Customer information and adding new orderrows etc.
Then in the post back a map the ViewModel back to the ObjectContext CustomerOrder:
var customerOrderToBeSaved =
AutoMapper.Mapper.DynamicMap<CustomerOrderViewModel, CustomerOrder>(
customerOrderViewModel);
try
{
using (var ctx = new MyEntities())
{
ctx.CustomerOrders.Attach(customerOrderToBeSaved);
ctx.CustomerOrders.ApplyCurrentValues(customerOrderToBeSaved);
...
ctx.SaveChanges();
}
}
I get the error message: An object with the same key already exists in the ObjectStateManager. The ObjectStateManager cannot track multiple objects with the same key.
OK, that I can understand. But how should I go about this? Can I get the existing object and apply Changes to that one, because that is really what I'd like. I've tried to look up the old one and detach it but I haven't got it to wrok.Perhaps I'm doing this in a completely wrong way. Please advice.

Answer 1

You should not attach customerOrderToBeSaved, see MSDN about the argument of ApplyCurrentValues.
The detached object that has property updates to apply to the original object.
So you've got to load the entity from the database into the context and then ApplyCurrentValues with the detached object that has the new values.

Answer 2

You don't have to load the row from the database to update it.
You can do something like this:
var entity = ctx.CustomerOrders.Attach(customerOrderToBeSaved);
ctx.Entry( entity ).State = EntityState.Modified;
ctx.SaveChanges();
This will tell EF to issue an UPDATE SQL statement that overwrites all the columns in the record.
You can select which columns you want to update like this:
var entity = ctx.CustomerOrders.Attach(customerOrderToBeSaved);
var entry = ctx.Entry( entity );
entry.Property( o => o.<ColumnPropertyToUpdate> ).IsModified = true;
entry.Property( o => o.<ColumnPropertyToUpdate> ).IsModified = true;
...
ctx.SaveChanges();
If you do this, EF will only include the columns you've marked as modified in the UPDATE statement.