NHibernate - Handling StaleObjectStateException to always commit client changes - Need advice/recommendation - nhibernate

Question

I am trying to find the perfect way to handle this exception and force client changes to overwrite any other changes that caused the conflict. The approach that I came up with is to wrap the call to Session.Transaction.Commit() in a loop, inside the loop I would do a try-catch block and handle each stale object individually by copying its properties, except row-version property then refreshing the object to get latest DB data then recopying original values to the refreshed object and then doing a merge. Once I loop I will commit and if any other StaleObjectStateException take place then the same applies. The loop keeps looping until all conflicts are resolved.
This method is part of a UnitOfWork class. To make it clearer I'll post my code:
// 'Client-wins' rules, any conflicts found will always cause client changes to
// overwrite anything else.
public void CommitAndRefresh() {
bool saveFailed;
do {
try {
_session.Transaction.Commit();
_session.BeginTransaction();
saveFailed = false;
} catch (StaleObjectStateException ex) {
saveFailed = true;
// Get the staled object with client changes
var staleObject = _session.Get(ex.EntityName, ex.Identifier);
// Extract the row-version property name
IClassMetadata meta = _sessionFactory.GetClassMetadata(ex.EntityName);
string rowVersionPropertyName = meta.PropertyNames[meta.VersionProperty] as string;
// Store all property values from client changes
var propertyValues = new Dictionary<string, object>();
var publicProperties = staleObject.GetType().GetProperties();
foreach (var p in publicProperties) {
if (p.Name != rowVersionPropertyName) {
propertyValues.Add(p.Name, p.GetValue(staleObject, null));
}
}
// Get latest data for staled object from the database
_session.Refresh(staleObject);
// Update the data with the original client changes except for row-version
foreach (var p in publicProperties) {
if (p.Name != rowVersionPropertyName) {
p.SetValue(staleObject, propertyValues[p.Name], null);
}
}
// Merge
_session.Merge(staleObject);
}
} while (saveFailed);
}
The above code works fine and handle concurrency with the client-wins rule. However, I was wondering if there is any built-in capabilities in NHibernate to do this for me or if there is a better way to handle this.
Thanks in advance,

Answer 1

What you're describing is a lack of concurrency checking. If you don't use a concurrency strategy (optimistic-lock, version or pessimistic), StaleStateObjectException will not be thrown and the update will be issued.
Okay, now I understand your use case. One important point is that the ISession should be discarded after an exception is thrown. You can use ISession.Merge to merge changes between a detached a persistent object rather than doing it yourself. Unfortunately, Merge does not cascade to child objects so you still need to walk the object graph yourself. So the implementation would look something like:
catch (StaleObjectStateException ex)
{
if (isPowerUser)
{
var newSession = GetSession();
// Merge will automatically get first
newSession.Merge(staleObject);
newSession.Flush();
}
}