Entity Framework Refresh Entity Does Not Refresh Its Foreign Keys

Question

When marking an entity for deletion, and saving changes, sometimes the operation fails due to foreign key constraints for example. In this case, i notify the user and refresh the entity. The problem is that the entity does not get fully refreshed - its foreign keys stays empty.

For example :

//EditableEntity.SomeCollection --> Populated...

ContextManager.CurrentObjectContext.DeleteObject(EditableEntity);

try
{
    ContextManager.CurrentObjectContext.SaveChanges();
}
catch (Exception err)
{
    ContextManager.CurrentObjectContext.Refresh(System.Data.Objects.RefreshMode.StoreWins, EditableEntity);
}

//EditableEntity.SomeCollection --> Empty!!

Please help, Thanks, Oran

Answer 1

Well, it seems that after recreating the EDM, and rebuilding the project, the above procedure works fine.

To conclude the solution : When marking an object for deletion, it behaves as it was 'detached' from the object context losing its related parents and collections but is actually still in the 'attached' state. If the delete opertaion is canceled of any reason, the usage of this object related objects and collections, will raise an exception. To solve this we need to 'attach' the object back to the object context. The problem is that the object is still marked as 'attached'.

To solve this simply refresh the object using :

ContextManager.CurrentObjectContext.Refresh(RefreshMode.StoreWins, item);

Hope it helps, Oran