If I have a LINQ to SQL table that has a field called say Alias.
There is then a method stub called OnAliasChanging(string value);
What I want to do is to grab the value, check the database whether the value already exists and then set the value to the already entered value.
So I may be changing my alias from "griegs" to "slappy" and if slappy exists then I want to revert to the already existing value of "griegs".
So I have;
partial void OnaliasChanging(string value)
{
string prevValue = this.alias;
this.Changed = true;
}
When I check the value of prevValue it's always null.
How can I get the current value of a field?
Update
If I implement something like;
partial void OnaliasChanging(string value)
{
if (this.alias != null)
this.alias = "TEST VALUE";
}
it goes into an infinte loop which is unhealthy.
If I include a check to see whether alias already == "TEST VALUE" the infinate loop still remains as the value is always the original value.
Is there a way to do this?
The code snippets you've posted don't lend themselves to any plausible explanation of why you'd end up with an infinite loop. I'm thinking that this.alias might be a property, as opposed to a field as the character casing would imply, but would need to see more. If it is a property, then you are invoking the OnAliasChanging method before the property is ever set; therefore, trying to set it again in the same method will always cause an infinite loop. Normally the way to design this scenario is to either implement a Cancel property in your OnXyzChanging EventArgs derivative, or save the old value in the OnXyzChanging method and subsequently perform the check/rollback in the OnXyzChanged method if you can't use the first (better) option.
Fundamentally, though, what you're trying to do is not very good design in general and goes against the principles of Linq to SQL specifically. A Linq to SQL entity is supposed to be a POCO with no awareness of sibling entities or the underlying database at all. To perform a dupe-check on every property change not only requires access to the DataContext or SqlConnection, but also causes what could technically be called a side-effect (opening up a new database connection and/or silently discarding the property change). This kind of design just screams for mysterious crashes down the road.
In fact, your particular scenario is one of the main reasons why the DataContext class was made extensible in the first place. This type of operation belongs in there. Let's say that the entity here is called User with table Users.
partial class MyDataContext
{
public bool ChangeAlias(Guid userID, string newAlias)
{
User userToChange = Users.FirstOrDefault(u => u.ID == userID);
if ((userToChange == null) || Users.Any(u => u.Alias == newAlias))
{
return false;
}
userToChange.Alias = newAlias;
// Optional - remove if consumer will make additional changes
SubmitChanges();
return true;
}
}
This encapsulates the operation you want to perform, but doesn't prevent consumers from changing the Alias property directly. If you can live with this, I would stop right there - you should still have a UNIQUE constraint in your database itself, so this method can simply be documented and used as a safe way to attempt a name-change without risking a constraint violation later on (although there is always some risk - you can still have a race condition unless you put this all into a transaction or stored procedure).
If you absolutely must limit access to the underlying property, one way to do this is to hide the original property and make a read-only wrapper. In the Linq designer, click on the Alias property, and on the property sheet, change the Access to Internal and the Name to AliasInternal (but don't touch the Source!). Finally, create a partial class for the entity (I would do this in the same file as the MyDataContext partial class) and write a read-only wrapper for the property:
partial class User
{
public string Alias
{
get { return AliasInternal; }
}
}
You'll also have to update the Alias references in our ChangeAlias method to AliasInternal.
Be aware that this may break queries that try to filter/group on the new Alias wrapper (I believe Linq will complain that it can't find a SQL mapping). The property itself will work fine as an accessor, but if you need to perform lookups on the Alias then you will likely need another GetUserByAlias helper method in MyDataContext, one which can perform the "real" query on AliasInternal.
Things start to get a little dicey when you decide you want to mess with the data-access logic of Linq in addition to the domain logic, which is why I recommend above that you just leave the Alias property alone and document its usage appropriately. Linq is designed around optimistic concurrency; typically when you need to enforce a UNIQUE constraint in your application, you wait until the changes are actually saved and then handle the constraint violation if it happens. If you want to do it immediately your task becomes harder, which is the reason for this verbosity and general kludginess.
One more time - I'm recommending against the additional step of creating the read-only wrapper; I've put up some code anyway in case your spec requires it for some reason.
Is it getting hung up because OnaliasChanging is firing during initialization, so your backing field (alias) never gets initialized so it is always null?
Without more context, that's what it sounds like to me.
Related
My models have both id and counter attributes. The id is a UUID, and the counter is an integer which is auto-incremented by the database.
Both are unique however I rely on id as the primary key. The counter is just a human-friendly name that I sometimes display to the user.
Immediately before an object is created a listener gives it a UUID. This works fine.
When the record is saved, MySQL increments the counter field. This works fine except that the copy of the object which I have in memory does not have the counter value. I can reload the object to find out what its counter is, but that would require another database query.
Is there a way to find the value of the counter without a specific database query? For example, is it returned as part of the response from the database when a record is created?
Few things:
Use create(array $attributes) and you'll get exactly what you want. For this having right, you have to ensure that $fillable array consists all attributes' names passed to create method.
You should use Observer on model instead of listener (most likely creating method).
Personal preference using Eloquent is that you should use id for id (increment field) and forget custom settings between models because by default it is what relations expect and so on
public function secondModels()
{
return $this->hasMany(SecondModel::class);
}
is pretty much no brainer. But for having this working best way would be (also following recommendations of this guy) FirstModel::id, SecondModel::id, SecondModel::first_model_id; first_models, second_models as table names. Avoiding and/or skipping this kind of unification is lot of custom job afterward. I don't say it can't be done but it is lot of non-first-time-successful work done.
Also, if you want visitor to get something other than id field name, you can make computed field with accessor:
/**
* Get the user's counter.
*
* #return string
*/
public function getCounterAttribute(): string
{
return (string)$this->id;
}
Which you call then with $user->counter.
Also personal preference of mine is to have most possible descriptive variable names so uuid field of mine would be something like
$table->uuid('uuid4');
This is some good and easy to make practice of Eloquent use.
Saying all this let me just to say that create() and save() will return created object from database while insert() shall not do it.
I'm using yii active records for mysql, and i have a table where there's a field that needs to be appended with the primary key of the same table. The primary key is an auto increment field, hence i can't access the primary key before saving.
$model->append_field = "xyz".$model->id; // nothing is appending
$model->save();
$model->append_field = "xyz".$model->id; //id is now available
How do i do this?
I know that i can update right after insertion, but is there a better method?
Your record is only assigned an id after the INSERT statement is executed. There is no way to determine what that id is prior to INSERT, so you would have to execute an UPDATE with the concatenated field value after your INSERT.
You could write a stored procedure or trigger in MySQL to do this for you, so your app executes a single SQL statement to accomplish this. However, you are just moving the logic into MySQL and in the end both an INSERT and UPDATE are occurring.
Some more workarounds:
This is almost your approach ;)
$model->save();
$model->append_field = "xyz".$model->id; //id is now available
$model->save();
But you could move this functionality to a behavior with a custom afterSave() method, note that you'd have to take care about not looping the event.
Or just write a getter for it
function getFull_append_field(){
return $this->append_field.$this->id;
}
but then you can not use it in a SQL statement, unless you create the attribute there with CONCAT() or something similar.
Anyone else coming to this question might be interested in exactly how i implemented it, so here's the code :
//in the model class
class SomeModel extends CActiveRecord{
...
protected function afterSave(){
parent::afterSave();
if($this->getIsNewRecord()){
$this->append_field=$this->append_field.$this->id;
$this->updateByPk($this->id, array('append_field'=>$this->append_field));
}
}
}
One way to avoid the looping the event(as mentioned by #schmunk) was to use saveAttributes(...) inside the afterSave() method, but saveAttributes(...) checks isNewRecord, and inserts a value only if it is a new record, so that requires us to use setNewRecord(false); before calling saveAttributes(...).
I found that saveAttributes(...) actually calls updateByPk(...) so i directly used updateByPk(...) itself.
When you query an EntitySet property on a model object in Linq-to-SQL, it returns all rows from the entityset and does any further querying client-side.
This is confirmed in a few places online and I've observed the behavior myself. The EntitySet does not implement IQueryable.
What I've had to do is convert code like:
var myChild = ... ;
// Where clause performed client-side.
var query = myChild.Parents().Where(...) ;
to:
var myChild = ... ;
// Where clause performed in DB and only minimal set of rows returned.
var query = MyDataContext.Parents().Where(p => p.Child() == myChild) ;
Does anyone know a better solution?
A secondary question: is this fixed in the Entity Framework?
An EntitySet is just a collection of entities. It implements IEnumerable, not IQueryable. The Active Record pattern specifies that entities be directly responsible for their own persistence. OR mapper entities don't have any direct knowledge of the persistence layer. OR Mappers place this responsibility, along with Unit Of Work, and Identity Map responsibilities into the Data Context. So if you need to query the data source, you gotta use the context (or a Table object). To change this would bend the patterns in use.
I had a similar problem: How can I make this SelectMany use a join. After messing with LINQPad for a good amount of time I found a decent workaround. The key is to push the EntitySet you are looking at inside a SelectMany, Select, Where, etc. Once it's inside that it becomes an Expression and then the provider can turn it into a proper query.
Using your example try this:
var query = from c in Children
where c == myChild
from p in c.Parents
where p.Age > 35
select p;
I'm not able to 100% verify this query as I don't know the rest of your model. But the first two lines of the query cause the rest of it to become an Expression that the provider turns into a join. This does work with my own example that is on the question linked to above.
I've done some searches (over the web and SO) but so far have been unable to find something that directly answer this:
Is there anyway to force L2S to use a Stored Procedure when acessing a Database?
This is different from simply using SPROC's with L2S: The thing is, I'm relying on LINQ to lazy load elements by accessing then through the generated "Child Property". If I use a SPROC to retrieve the elements of one table, map then to an entity in LINQ, and then access a child property, I believe that LINQ will retrieve the register from the DB using dynamic sql, which goes against my purpose.
UPDATE:
Sorry if the text above isn't clear. What I really want is something that is like the "Default Methods" for Update, Insert and Delete, however, to Select. I want every access to be done through a SPROC, but I want to use Child Property.
Just so you don't think I'm crazy, the thing is that my DAL is build using child properties and I was accessing the database through L2S using dynamic SQL, but last week the client has told me that all database access must be done through SPROCS.
i don't believe that there is a switch or setting that out of the box and automagically would map to using t sprocs the way you are describing. But there is now reason why you couldn't alter the generated DBML file to do what you want. If I had two related tables, a Catalog table and CatalogItem tables, the Linq2SQL generator will naturally give me a property of CatalogItems on Catalog, code like:
private EntitySet<shelf_myndr_Previews_CatalogItem> _shelf_myndr_Previews_CatalogItems;
[global::System.Data.Linq.Mapping.AssociationAttribute(Name="CatalogItem", Storage="_CatalogItems", ThisKey="Id", OtherKey="CatalogId")]
public EntitySet<CatalogItem> CatalogItems
{
get
{
return this._CatalogItems;
//replace this line with a sproc call that ultimately
//returns the expected type
}
set
{
this._CatalogItems.Assign(value);
//replace this line with a sproc call that ultimately
//does a save operation
}
}
There is nothing stopping you from changing that code to be sproc calls there. It'd be some effort for larger applications and I'd be sure that you be getting the benefit from it that you think you would.
How about loading the child entities using the partial OnLoaded() method in the parent entity? That would allow you to avoid messing with generated code. Of course it would no longer be a lazy load, but it's a simple way to do it.
For example:
public partial class Supplier
{
public List<Product> Products { get; set; }
partial void OnLoaded()
{
// GetProductsBySupplierId is the SP dragged into your dbml designer
Products = dataContext.GetProductsBySupplierId(this.Id).ToList();
}
}
Call your stored procedure this way:
Where GetProductsByCategoryName is the name of your stored procedure.
http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/08/16/linq-to-sql-part-6-retrieving-data-using-stored-procedures.aspx
I ran into an interesting problem while using DLINQ. When I instantiate an entity, calling .SubmitChanges() on the DataContext will insert a new row into the database - without having ever called .Insert[All]OnSubmit(...).
//Code sample:
Data.NetServices _netServices = new Data.NetServices(_connString);
Data.ProductOption[] test = new Data.ProductOption[]
{
new Data.ProductOption
{
Name="TEST1",
//Notice the assignment here
ProductOptionCategory=_netServices.ProductOptionCategory.First(poc => poc.Name == "laminate")
}
};
_netServices.SubmitChanges();
Running the code above will insert a new row in the database. I noticed this effect while writing an app to parse an XML file and populate some tables. I noticed there were 1000+ inserts when I was only expecting around 50 or so - then I finally isolated this behavior.
How can I prevent these objects from being persisted implicitly?
Thanks,
-Charles
Think of the relationship as having two sides. When you set one side of the relationship the other side needs to be updated so in the case above as well as setting the ProductOptionCategory it is effectively adding the new object to the ProductOptions relationship on the laminate ProductOptionCategory side.
The work-around is as you have already discovered and to set the underlying foreign key instead so LINQ to SQL will not track the objects in the usual way and require implicit indication it should persist the object.
Of course the best solution for performance would be to determine from the source data which objects you don't want to add and never create the instance in the first place.