Entity Framework EntityKey / Foreign Key problem

Question

As the result of a form post, I\'m trying to save a new Brand record. In my view, Gender is a dropdown, returning an Integer, which is populated from ViewData(\"gender\")

Answer 1

Rather than creating an EntityKey create a stub Gender object (sorry I'm not a VB guy so in C#):

Gender g = new Gender{ID = Int32.Parse(Request.Form("Gender"))};

Then you attach the Gender to the appropriate EntitySet (the name of property on DB that you get Gender entities from is the string below):

DB.AttachTo("Genders",g);

This puts the database in the state where the Gender is in the ObjectContext in the unchanged state without a database query. Now you can build a relationship as per normal

brand.Gender = g;
DB.AddToBrand(brand);
DB.SaveChanges();

That is all there is to it. No need to muck around with EntityKeys

Hope this helps

Alex