DbContext discard changes without disposing

Question

I have a desktop client application that uses modal windows to set properties for hierarchical objects. Since this is a client application and access to the DbContext is not threaded, I use a long-running context on the main Form that gets passed around to modal children.

These modal windows use the PropertyGrid to display entity properties and also have cancel buttons. If any data is modified and the cancel button is pressed, the changes are reflected in the parent form (where I cannot dispose the DbContext object).

Is there a way to discard any changes made if the DbContext.SaveChanges() method has NOT been called?

UPDATE: Entity Framework Version 4.4.

Answer 1

How about wrapping it in a transaction?

    using(var scope = new TransactionScope(TransactionScopeOption.Required,
        new TransactionOptions { IsolationLevel = IsolationLevel.ReadCommitted })){

        // Do something 
        context.SaveChanges();
        // Do something else
        context.SaveChanges();

        scope.Complete();
}

Answer 2

public void RejectChanges()
    {
        foreach (var entry in ChangeTracker.Entries())
        {
            switch (entry.State)
            {
                case EntityState.Modified:
                case EntityState.Deleted:
                    entry.State = EntityState.Modified; //Revert changes made to deleted entity.
                    entry.State = EntityState.Unchanged;
                    break;
                case EntityState.Added:
                    entry.State = EntityState.Detached;
                    break;
            }
        }
    }

Update:

Some users suggest to add .ToList() to avoid 'collection was modified' exception. But I believe there is a reason for this exception.

How do you get this exception? Probably, you are using context in non threadsafe manner.

Answer 3

In the simple case of cancelling the changes made to properties of a single entity you can set the current values to the original values.

context.Entry(myEntity).CurrentValues.SetValues(context.Entry(myEntity).OriginalValues);
//you may also need to set back to unmodified -
//I'm unsure if EF will do this automatically
context.Entry(myEntity).State = EntityState.UnModified;

or alternatively reload (but results in db hit)

context.Entry(myEntity).Reload();

Answer 4

This is based on Surgey Shuvalov's answer. It adds support for navigation property changes.

public void RejectChanges()
{
    RejectScalarChanges();
    RejectNavigationChanges();
}

private void RejectScalarChanges()
{
    foreach (var entry in ChangeTracker.Entries())
    {
        switch (entry.State)
        {
            case EntityState.Modified:
            case EntityState.Deleted:
                entry.State = EntityState.Modified; //Revert changes made to deleted entity.
                entry.State = EntityState.Unchanged;
                break;
            case EntityState.Added:
                entry.State = EntityState.Detached;
                break;
        }
    }
}

private void RejectNavigationChanges()
{
    var objectContext = ((IObjectContextAdapter)this).ObjectContext;
    var deletedRelationships = objectContext.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Deleted).Where(e => e.IsRelationship && !this.RelationshipContainsKeyEntry(e));
    var addedRelationships = objectContext.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(EntityState.Added).Where(e => e.IsRelationship);

    foreach (var relationship in addedRelationships)
        relationship.Delete();

    foreach (var relationship in deletedRelationships)
        relationship.ChangeState(EntityState.Unchanged);
}

private bool RelationshipContainsKeyEntry(System.Data.Entity.Core.Objects.ObjectStateEntry stateEntry)
{
    //prevent exception: "Cannot change state of a relationship if one of the ends of the relationship is a KeyEntry"
    //I haven't been able to find the conditions under which this happens, but it sometimes does.
    var objectContext = ((IObjectContextAdapter)this).ObjectContext;
    var keys = new[] { stateEntry.OriginalValues[0], stateEntry.OriginalValues[1] };
    return keys.Any(key => objectContext.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntry(key).Entity == null);
}

Answer 5

You colud try to do it manually, something like this.. not sure this works for your scenario but you can give it a try:

public void UndoAll(DbContext context)
    {
        //detect all changes (probably not required if AutoDetectChanges is set to true)
        context.ChangeTracker.DetectChanges();

        //get all entries that are changed
        var entries = context.ChangeTracker.Entries().Where(e => e.State != EntityState.Unchanged).ToList();

        //somehow try to discard changes on every entry
        foreach (var dbEntityEntry in entries)
        {
            var entity = dbEntityEntry.Entity;

            if (entity == null) continue;

            if (dbEntityEntry.State == EntityState.Added)
            {
                //if entity is in Added state, remove it. (there will be problems with Set methods if entity is of proxy type, in that case you need entity base type
                var set = context.Set(entity.GeType());
                set.Remove(entity);
            }
            else if (dbEntityEntry.State == EntityState.Modified)
            {
                //entity is modified... you can set it to Unchanged or Reload it form Db??
                dbEntityEntry.Reload();
            }
            else if (dbEntityEntry.State == EntityState.Deleted)
                //entity is deleted... not sure what would be the right thing to do with it... set it to Modifed or Unchanged
                dbEntityEntry.State = EntityState.Modified;                
        }
    }

Answer 6

You can apply this:

context.Entry(TEntity).Reload();

I try it and its work well for me.

Note: This method (Reload) Reloads the entity from the database overwriting any property values with values from the database. The entity will be in the Unchanged state after calling this method.

Answer 7

I came across nasty surprise - call to ChangeTracker.Entries() crashes if you need to rollback changes due to exception in DbContext e.g.

System.InvalidOperationException: 
'The property 'Id' on entity type 'TestEntity' is part of a key and so cannot be modified or marked as modified. 
To change the principal of an existing entity with an identifying foreign key first delete the dependent and invoke 'SaveChanges' then associate the dependent with the new principal.'

so I came up with hacked version of manual rollback

    public async Task RollbackChanges()
    {
        var oldBehavoir = ChangeTracker.QueryTrackingBehavior;
        var oldAutoDetect = ChangeTracker.AutoDetectChangesEnabled;

        // this is the key - disable change tracking logic so EF does not check that there were exception in on of tracked entities
        ChangeTracker.QueryTrackingBehavior = QueryTrackingBehavior.NoTracking;
        ChangeTracker.AutoDetectChangesEnabled = false;

        var entries = ChangeTracker.Entries().ToList();

        foreach (var entry in entries)
        {
            switch (entry.State)
            {
                case EntityState.Modified:
                    await entry.ReloadAsync();
                    break;
                case EntityState.Deleted:
                    entry.State = EntityState.Modified; //Revert changes made to deleted entity.
                    entry.State = EntityState.Unchanged;
                    break;
                case EntityState.Added:
                    entry.State = EntityState.Detached;
                    break;
            }
        }

        ChangeTracker.QueryTrackingBehavior = oldBehavoir;
        ChangeTracker.AutoDetectChangesEnabled = oldAutoDetect;
    }