EF DbContext Attach works only when proxy creation disabled - entity-framework-6

Question

I ran into an issue where I was intermittently receiving an error:
An entity object cannot be referenced by multiple instances of IEntityChangeTracker
whenever trying to attach an entity to the DbContext.
UPDATE: Original post is below and is TL;DR. So here is a simplified version with more testing.
First I get the Documents collection. There are 2 items returned in this query.
using (UnitOfWork uow = new UnitOfWork())
{
// uncomment below line resolves all errors
// uow.Context.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;
// returns 2 documents in the collection
documents = uow.DocumentRepository.GetDocumentByBatchEagerly(skip, take).ToList();
}
Scenario 1:
using (UnitOfWork uow2 = new UnitOfWork())
{
// This errors ONLY if the original `uow` context is not disposed.
uow2.DocumentRepository.Update(documents[0]);
}
This scenario works as expected. I can force the IEntityChangeTracker error by NOT disposing the original uow context.
Scenario 2:
Iterate through the 2 items in the documents collection.
foreach (Document document in documents)
{
_ = Task.Run(() =>
{
using (UnitOfWork uow3 = new UnitOfWork())
{
uow3.DocumentRepository.Update(document);
});
}
}
Both items fail to attach to the DbSet with the IEntityChangeTracker error. Sometimes one succeeds and only one fails. I assume this might be to do with the exact timings of the Task Scheduler. But even if they are attaching concurrently, they are different document entities. So they shouldn't be being tracked by any other context. Why am I getting the error?
If I uncomment ProxyCreationEnabled = false on the original uow context, this scenario works! So how are they still being tracked even thought the context was disposed? Why is it a problem that they are DynamicProxies, even though they are not attached to or tracked by any context.
ORIGINAL POST:
I have an entity object called Document, and it's related entity which is a collection of DocumentVersions.
In the code below, the document object and all related entities including DocumentVersions have already been eagerly loaded before being passed to this method - which I will demonstrate after.
public async Task PutNewVersions(Document document)
{
// get versions
List<DocumentVersion> versions = document.DocumentVersions.ToList();
for (int i = 0; i < versions.Count; i++)
{
UnitOfWork uow = new UnitOfWork();
try
{
versions[i].Attempt++;
//... make some API call that succeeds
versions[i].ContentUploaded = true;
versions[i].Result = 1;
}
finally
{
uow.DocumentVersionRepository.Update(versions[i]); // error hit in this method
uow.Save();
}
}
}
The Update method just attaches the entity and changes the state. It is part of a GenericRepository class that all my Entity Repositories inherit from:
public virtual void Update(TEntity entityToUpdate)
{
dbSet.Attach(entityToUpdate); // error is hit here
context.Entry(entityToUpdate).State = EntityState.Modified;
}
The document entity, and all related entities are loaded eagerly using a method in the Document entity repository:
public class DocumentRepository : GenericRepository<Document>
{
public DocumentRepository(MyEntities context) : base(context)
{
this.context = context;
}
public IEnumerable<Document> GetDocumentByBatchEagerly(int skip, int take)
{
return (from document in context.Documents
.Include(...)
.Include(...)
.Include(...)
.Include(...)
.Include(d => d.DocumentVersions)
.AsNoTracking()
orderby document.DocumentKey descending
select document).Skip(skip).Take(take);
}
}
The method description for .AsNoTracking() says that "the entities returned will not be cached in the DbContext". Great!
Then why does the .Attach() method above think that this DocumentVersion entity is already referenced in another IEntityChangeTracker? I am assuming this means it is referenced in another DbContext, i.e: the one calling GetDocumentByBatchEagerly(). And why does this issue only present intermittently? It seems that it happens less often when I am stepping through the code.
I resolved this by adding the following line to the above DocumentRepository constructor:
this.context.Configuration.ProxyCreationEnabled = false;
I just don't understand why this appears to resolve the issue.
It also means if I ever want to use the DocumentRepository for something else and want to leverage change tracking and lazy loading, I can't. There doesn't seem to be a 'per query' option to turn off dynamic proxies like there is with 'as no tracking'.
For completeness, here is how the 'GetDocumentsByBatchEagerly' method is being used, to demonstrate that it uses it's own instance of UnitOfWork:
public class MigrationHandler
{
UnitOfWork uow = new UnitOfWork();
public async Task FeedPipelineAsync()
{
bool moreResults = true;
do
{
// documents retrieved with AsNoTracking()
List<Document> documents = uow.DocumentRepository.GetDocumentByBatchEagerly(skip, take).ToList();
if (documents.Count == 0) moreResults = false;
skip += take;
// push each record into TPL Dataflow pipeline
foreach (Document document in documents)
{
// Entry point for the data flow pipeline which links to
// a block that calls PutNewVersions()
await dataFlowPipeline.DocumentCreationTransformBlock.SendAsync(document);
}
} while (moreResults);
dataFlowPipeline.DocumentCreationTransformBlock.Complete();
// await completion of each block at the end of the pipeline
await Task.WhenAll(
dataFlowPipeline.FileDocumentsActionBlock.Completion,
dataFlowPipeline.PutVersionActionBlock.Completion);
}
}