BreezeJS editing data not working - breeze

Question

I was able to follow the instruction on adding data, that part was easy and understandable. But when I tried to follow instructions for editing data, I'm completely lost.
I am following the todo sample, which works quite well, but when I tried to add to my own project using the same principle, nothing works.
in my controller, I have the following:
function listenForPropertyChanged() {
// Listen for property change of ANY entity so we can (optionally) save
var token = dataservice.addPropertyChangeHandler(propertyChanged);
// Arrange to remove the handler when the controller is destroyed
// which won't happen in this app but would in a multi-page app
$scope.$on("$destroy", function () {
dataservice.removePropertyChangeHandler(token);
});
function propertyChanged(changeArgs) {
// propertyChanged triggers save attempt UNLESS the property is the 'Id'
// because THEN the change is actually the post-save Id-fixup
// rather than user data entry so there is actually nothing to save.
if (changeArgs.args.propertyName !== 'Id') { save(); }
}
}
The problem is that any time I change a control on the view, the propertyChanged callback function never gets called.
Here's the code from the service:
function addPropertyChangeHandler(handler) {
// Actually adds any 'entityChanged' event handler
// call handler when an entity property of any entity changes
return manager.entityChanged.subscribe(function (changeArgs) {
var action = changeArgs.entityAction;
if (action === breeze.EntityAction.PropertyChange) {
handler(changeArgs);
}
});
}
If I put a break point on the line:
var action = changeArgs.entityAction;
In my project, it never reaches there; in the todo sample, it does! It completely skips the whole thing and just loads the view afterwards. So none of my callback functions work at all; so really, nothing is subscribed.
Because of this, when I try to save changes, the manager.hasChanges() is always false and nothing happens in the database.
I've been trying for at least 3 days getting this to work, and I'm completely dumbfounded by how complicated this whole issue has been for me.
Note: I'm using JohnPapa's HotTowel template. I tried to follow the Todo editing functionality to a Tee.. and nothing is working the way I'd like it to.
Help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

The whole time I thought the problem was in the javascript client side end of things. Turned out that editing doesn't work when you created projected DTOs.
So in my server side, I created a query:
public IQueryable<PersonDTO> getPerson(){
return (from _person in ContextProvider.Context.Queries
select new PersonDTO
{
Id = _person.Id,
FirstName = _person.FirstName,
LastName = _person.LastName
}).AsQueryable();
}
Which just projected a DTO to send off to the client. This did work with my app in fetching data and populating things. So this is NOT wrong. Using this, I was able to add items and fetch items, but there's no information that allowed the entitymanager to know about the item. When I created an item, the entitymanager has a "createEntity" which allowed me to tell the entitymanager which item to use.. in my case:
manager.createEntity(person, initializeValues);
Maybe if there was a "manager.getEntity" maybe that would help?
Anyways, I changed the above query to get it straight from the source:
public IQueryable<Person> getPeople(){
return ContextProvider.Context.People;
}
Note ContextProvider is:
readonly EFContextProvider<PeopleEntities> ContextProvider =
new EFContextProvider<PeopleEntities>();
So the subscribe method in the javascript checks out the info that's retrieved straight from the contextual object.. interesting. Just wish I didn't spend 4 days on this.