SQLite.Net Extensions issue with InsertOrReplaceWithChildren

Question

I am using SQLite-Net PCL together with SQLite-Net extensions for the development of an application using Xamarin.

I have two classes A and B defined as follows:

public class A
{

    [PrimaryKey, AutoIncrement]
    public int Id
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [Unique]
    public string Name
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [OneToMany(CascadeOperations = CascadeOperation.All)]
    public List<B> Sons
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public A(string name, List<B> sons)
    {
        Name = name;
        Sons = sons;
    }

}

public class B
{

    [PrimaryKey, AutoIncrement]
    public int Id
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [Unique]
    public string Name
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public string LastModified
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [ForeignKey(typeof(A))]
    public int FatherId
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    [ManyToOne]
    public A Father
    {
        get;
        set;
    }

    public B()
    {
    }

    public B(string name)
    {
        Name = name;
    }

}

I am trying to use insert or replace in the following way:

        var sons1 = new List<B>
        {
            new B("uno"),
        };

        var a1 = new A("padre", sons1);

        var sons2 = new List<B>
        {
            new B("uno2"),
        };

        var a2 = new A("padre", sons2);

        using (var conn = DatabaseStore.GetConnection())
        {
            conn.DeleteAll<A>();
            conn.DeleteAll<B>();
        }

        using (var conn = DatabaseStore.GetConnection())
        {
            conn.InsertOrReplaceWithChildren(a1, true);
            conn.InsertOrReplaceWithChildren(a2, true);
        }

The problem is that the second InsertOrReplaceWithChildren is throwing a Constraint exception, that is not thrown if we remove the unique constraint on A.Name . Isn't InsertOrReplaceWithChildren supposed to replace the object if a unique constraint is violated?

Answer 1

I checked the commits for that line, now I remember: it seems that the AutoIncrement primary key only works for Insert statements and not for InsertOrReplace . As consequence if you call InsertOrReplace with an AutoIncrement primary key set to 0, it will always overwrite the same value in the database with ID 0 instead of correctly adding new values.

This issue is easy to check by executing this test:

var a = new List<A> {
    new A("a1", null),
    new A("a2", null),
    new A("a3", null),
    new A("a4", null),
    new A("a5", null),
    new A("a6", null)
};

foreach (var element in a) {
    conn.InsertOrReplace(element);
}

// Will fail expecting 6 elements but returning only 1
Assert.AreEqual(a.Count, conn.Table<A>().ToList().Count);

To solve it you have to give up either the AutoIncrement primary key or the Unique constraint check for the InsertOrReplace statement to work.

These are drop-in replacement classes that should work as expected giving up the AutoIncrement primary keys:

public class A
{

    [PrimaryKey]
    public Guid Id { get; set; }

    [Unique]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    [OneToMany(CascadeOperations = CascadeOperation.All)]
    public List<B> Sons { get; set; }

    public A() {}
    public A(string name, List<B> sons)
    {
        Id = Guid.NewGuid();
        Name = name;
        Sons = sons;
    }
}

public class B
{

    [PrimaryKey]
    public Guid Id { get; set; }

    [Unique]
    public string Name { get; set; }

    public string LastModified { get; set; }

    [ForeignKey(typeof(A))]
    public Guid FatherId { get; set; }

    [ManyToOne]
    public A Father { get; set; }

    public B() {}

    public B(string name)
    {
        Id = Guid.NewGuid();
        Name = name;
    }
}

Hope it helps.