Entity framework assign automaticly new instance entity as deleted - asp.net-mvc

Question

As I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC project I've saw a weird behavior of EF which delays me (to be exact, I'm still stuck on this problem at least month... and only now I've realized that my DDD architecture code is not broken and it's specific an EF-related code bug that I have).
My site has posts. Each post has a set of attributes (PostAttributeValue) and each attribute value has a related PostAttributeDefinition which contains data about it - such as Title, Validation Rules, Raw Value (binary serialized), data type etc.
This is my Post model:
public class Post
{
#region Settings
/// <summary>
/// Maximum linked images
/// </summary>
public static int MaximumLinkedImages
{
get { return Properties.Settings.Default.MaximumPostsLinkedImages; }
}
/// <summary>
/// Maximum linked image size in MB
/// </summary>
public static int MaximumLinkedImageSize
{
get { return Properties.Settings.Default.MaximumPostLinkedImageSize; }
}
/// <summary>
/// Delay hours between posts bumping
/// </summary>
public static int BumpPostDelayHours
{
get { return Properties.Settings.Default.BumpPostDelayHours; }
}
#endregion
#region ctor
public Post()
{
this.Attributes = new List<PostAttributeValue>();
this.LinkedImages = new List<string>();
}
#endregion
/// <summary>
/// The parent category that this post was posted into
/// </summary>
[Required]
public virtual Category ParentCategory { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post unique identifier
/// </summary>
[Key]
public Guid PostIdentifier { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post title (e.g. "Great vila!")
/// </summary>
[Required]
public string Title { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post title url alias (e.g. "great-vila")
/// </summary>
public string TitleUrlAlias { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Post extra notes and information written by the author
/// </summary>
[Required]
public string Description { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post item city
/// </summary>
[Required]
public virtual City City { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post item location
/// </summary>
public string Location { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Is the post was published and marketed by brokerage (Tivuuch)
/// </summary>
[Required]
public bool Brokerage { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Post custom attributes
/// </summary>
public virtual ICollection<PostAttributeValue> Attributes { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post assigned price
/// </summary>
[Required]
public int RequestedPrice { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// List of images linked with the post (includes only the name of the picture, a.k.a "foo.png", "bar.jpg" etc.)
/// </summary>
public virtual ICollection<string> LinkedImages { get; set; }
public string LinkedImagesSerialized
{
get
{
if (this.LinkedImages == null)
{
this.LinkedImages = new List<string>();
}
return string.Join(",", this.LinkedImages);
}
set
{
if (this.LinkedImages == null)
{
this.LinkedImages = new List<string>();
}
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(value))
{
return;
}
this.LinkedImages = value.Split(new char[] { ',' }, StringSplitOptions.RemoveEmptyEntries).ToList();
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Cached generated cached url using IShorterUrlService
/// </summary>
public string GeneratedShorterUrl { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Is this post marked as hot
/// </summary>
public bool IsHotPost { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post publish status
/// </summary>
public PostPublishStatus PublishStatus { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The post author
/// </summary>
public virtual Account Author { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The author IP address (collected to determine different IPs)
/// </summary>
public string AuthorIPAddress { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The creation date of the post
/// </summary>
public DateTime CreationDate { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The last post modification date
/// </summary>
public DateTime LastUpdatedDate { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The date that the post was bumped at, used to sort the posts in category.
/// </summary>
public DateTime LastBumpDate { get; set; }
}
This is PostAttributeValue
public class PostAttributeValue
{
///
/// The attribute value id
///
[Key]
public int AttributeValueId { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The value owner post
/// </summary>
public virtual Post OwnerPost { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The value attribute definition id
/// </summary>
//public int RelatedAttributeDefinitionId { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The value attribute definition
/// </summary>
public virtual PostAttributeDefinition Definition { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The stored raw value
/// </summary>
public byte[] RawValue { get; set; }
}
and this is PostAttributeDefinition
public class PostAttributeDefinition
{
///
/// The filter name
///
[Key]
public int DefinitionId { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The owner category
/// </summary>
[Required]
public virtual Category OwnerCategory { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The filter title
/// </summary>
[Required]
public string Title { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Metadata enum that provides extra data about the data type
/// </summary>
public PostAttributeTypeMetadata TypeMetadata { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Bitwise metadata that provides data about the object in display mode
/// </summary>
public PostAttributeDisplayModeMetadata DisplayModeMetadata { get; set; }
public PostAttributeEditorType EditorType { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The attribute raw default value
/// </summary>
[Required]
public byte[] RawDataValue { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// The attribute raw associated validation attributes
/// </summary>
public byte[] RawValidationRules { get; set; }
/// <summary>
/// Is this field required
/// </summary>
public bool IsRequired { get; set; }
}
My problem is that when I'm trying to add a new post I'm getting a relationship error (A relationship from the AssociationSet is in the 'Deleted' state)
which is
A relationship from the 'PostAttributeValue_Definition' AssociationSet is in the 'Deleted' state. Given multiplicity constraints, a corresponding 'PostAttributeValue_Definition_Source' must also in the 'Deleted' state.
Now, I've saw that the problem is that when I'm assigning to PostAttributeValue a definition, automaticlly it becomes Deleted - even if I'm assigning a definition that I'm fetching from the DB right now.
I've tested the above code:
var db = ServiceLocator.SharedInstance.GetInstance<MyDbContext>();
List<PostAttributeValue> v = new List<PostAttributeValue>();
var entity = db.PostAttributesDefinitions.Where(d => d.DefinitionId==1).Include(d => d.OwnerCategory).First();
v.Add(new PostAttributeValue() { Definition = entity });
Post post = new Post()
{
Title = "foo",
Description = "bar",
City = new City { },
Brokerage = false,
Location = "",
RequestedPrice = 500,
ParentCategory = new Category() { },
AuthorIPAddress = "",
Attributes = v
};
db.Posts.Add(post);
var deletedValuesStore = ((System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.IObjectContextAdapter)db)
.ObjectContext.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries(System.Data.EntityState.Deleted);
And saw that deletedValuesStore contains 1 item - the definition. When I'm commenting this line there's no items in the store.
Do you got any ideas how it can be solved?
Thanks for your time!

Answer 1

Ok so I figured it out.
Just in case somebody is interest, I've configured my DbContext mistakenly with Required().WithOptional() relationship instead of one to many - Required().WithMany().
Because of that, when I've assigned existing attribute definition, which was already assigned to a value, to a new value - it automatically marked it as deleted.