Populating an existing entity using NHibernate - nhibernate

Using NHibernate, is it possible to fill an existing object using the results of a query, rather than returning a new entity? For example:
var foo = new Foo();
session.GetById(foo, id);

Well... kind of... If you object is transient you can Session.Get<Foo>(id) another object into NH identity map and then manually copy its fields into your object. If your object is persistent (attached to a session), you can Session.Refresh(foo) to re-retrieve it from DB.
I guess you can try doing Session.Lock on your transient instance to reattach it to the session and then Session.Refresh to refresh it... Should work... at least in theory...

Related

Can I delete an entity that is not in cache?

I want to delete a record from the DB that hasn't been retrieved from a breeze query. The entity hasn't been retrieved so it's not in the cache, but I know the KEY of the record from another operation. Here's what I've tried:
create a new entity from the manager:
manager.createEntity(entityNames.book);
setting the ID :
bookToDelete().bookID(1); // bookToDelete is a ko observable from step 1
updating the state:
bookToDelete().entityAspect.setDeleted();
When I save changes, this transaction is not included in the JSON
You almost have it. Calling entityAspect.setDeleted on an 'Added' entity moves it directly to a 'Detached' state, which in effect removes it from the EntityManager, and hence it cannot be saved. This is deliberate. It handles the case where you create an entity and later delete it. In this case, there is no entity to save.
So, in your case, you have to make the entity either 'Modified' or 'Unchanged' before you call entityAspect.setDeleted. You can do this by either calling entityAspect.setUnchanged or entityAspect.setModified before calling entityAspect.setDeleted or you can call entityAspect.acceptChanges.
Note that you will also have to insure that the 'clone' entity passes validation and if you have a concurrency field on the entity, you will need to set this appropriately as well.
UPDATE Dec 7th
You can create the book entity in the marked-for-delete state in a single step as shown:
var book = manager.createEntity(entityNames.book,
{ BookID: 1 }, // use initializer to set the key
breeze.EntityState.Deleted); // creates the entity in the Deleted state
Be sure to initialize it with all other properties that are necessary for the entity to pass validation and optimistic concurrency checks on the server.
No problem if you don't have these checks. Not sure how you'd get those values without querying the server if you did have such checks.
got it. cant delete entity while still in added state. I first setModified. then setdeleted. didnt see any side affects.

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.

Trying to update entities from a disconnected entity

Ok, each and every time I get into this situation, I struggle back and forth until I find a way to solve it (and that is usually not the way I would have liked to solve it).
What I'm talking about is disconnected entities in EF that should update existing entities in the database.
I'll give an example of my problem here (this example is the last time I got into this problem that caused me to write this question).
I have a WCF service that uses Entity Framework as well. The other program that have added a service reference to my service have gotten proxy versions of the Entities as normal.
The case is that the consumer of the service now construct a object of this proxy class, and call the method UpdateEntity on the WCF service. This entity has a foreign key to another type of entities, and the primary key of the entity I want to link this new entity to is also sent as a parameter to this method. In this case, I want the entity with the same primary key in the database to be updated. It seems simple enough right?
My method looks something like this now:
public bool ChangeEntity(MyEntity entity, int otherTableForignKey)
{
//first I verify that the entity to update exist in the system
var entitytochange = entityContext.MyEntities.FirstOrDefault(e => e.Name == entity.Name);
if (systemtochange == null) return false;
try
{
entity.ForignEntity = entityContext.ForeignEntities.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Key == otherTableForignKey);
//code for updating the entity should go here, but I'm nor sure what
entityContext.SaveChanges();
return true;
}
catch (Exception exc)
{
return false;
}
}
I tried many different combinations of ApplyCurrentValues, Attach, setting ObjectState to Modified and so on, but I get either the error message that I can't add a new entity with the same key as an existing entity, that the object state of the new object can't be Added and so on.
So my question is: What is the best way to do this without writing code that looks like a big hack.
The only way I got this working now was to just set the properties of entitytochange manually with the properties of entity, but it is a bad solution since any added properties to MyEntity will break the code if I don't remember to add code in this method as well, and it seems there really should be another way that is better.
EDIT
When I put entityContext.MyEntities.ApplyCurrentValues(entity); where my comment is put above, I get the following exception on this line:
The existing object in the ObjectContext is in the Added state. Changes can only be applied when the existing object is in an unchanged or modified state.
However, if I remove this line above entity.ForignEntity = entityContext.ForeignEntities.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Key == otherTableForignKey); then the ApplyCurrentValues works without any problems.
Why would me setting the ForeignEntity of the object set it to Added state? So it seems that setting a Property on the Detached entity, attaches it to the context with a state of added?

Fluent NHibernate LazyLoad Issues

I couldn't find an answer to this issue so I assume it is something I am doing wrong.
I have a PersistenceModel set up where I have set a convention as follows: -
persistenceModel.Conventions.Add(DefaultLazy.Always());
However, for one of the HasManyToMany relationships in one of my entities I want eager loading to take place which I am setting up as follows: -
HasManyToMany(x => x.Affiliates).Not.LazyLoad();
Intuitively, I expect eager loading to take place as I am overriding the lazy load default that I have specified as a convention but it still lazy loads. If I set the DefaultLazy convention to never and then set LazyLoad on an individual relationship it doesn't work either.
Any ideas?
When you set Not.LazyLoad(), you tell NHibernate to load Affiliates when the parent loads. NHibernate will do this by performing another select on the Affliates many-to-many table regardless of whether you access the Affiliates collection or not. NHibernate is using another select because that is the default fetching mode. You want to override fetching mode as well, either in the query or in the mapping. To do it in the mapping, add the following:
HasManyToMany(x => x.Affiliates)
.Not.LazyLoad()
.Fetch.Join();
You might also want to include a ".Cascade.AllDeleteOrphan()" if you want NHibernate to persist new Affiliaites added to the collection and delete orphaned ones. If you do not do this, you will have to explicitly call session.Save(newAffiliate). Otherwise you'll receive a TransientObjectException when your Affiliates collection contains a new Affiliate.
It may be one stupid thing to ask, but have you execute the query inside your session? Say,
Using(var session = OpenSession())
{
session.Query<Entity>().ToList();
}
I had this problem before, and finally realized the objects that I was accessing hadn't been queried before disposing the session.

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.