My model contains an Order (parent object) and Shipments (child object). The database table for these already have a surrogate key as an auto-increment primary key.
I have the business rule is that for each shipment in the order, we need to have an auto generated "counter" field -- e.g. Shipment 1, Shipment 2, Shipment 3, etc. Shipment model has properties: "ShipmentId", "OrderId", "ShipmentNumber". My attempted implemention is to have ShipmentNumber an int and in code(as opposed to database), query the Shipment collection and do max() + 1.
Here's a code snipet of what I'm doing.
Shipment newShipmentObj = // blah;
int? currentMaxId = myOrderObj.Shipments
.Select(x => (int?) x.ShipmentNumber)
.Max();
if (currentMaxId.HasValue)
newShipmentObj.ShipmentNumber = currentMaxId.Value + 1;
else
newShipmentObj.ShipmentNumber = 1; // 1st one
myOrderObj.Shipments.Add(newShipmentObj);
// etc.. rest of EF4 code
Is there a better way?
I don't really like this as I have the following problems because of potential transaction/concurrency issues.
My Order object also has a autoincrement "counter" -- e.g. Order 1, Order 2, Order 3, ... My Order model has properties: "OrderId", "CustomerId", "OrderNumber".
My design is that I have an OrderRepository but not a ShipmentRepository. The ShipmentRepository could query off the Order.Shipment collection... but with Orders, I have to query directly off the dbcontext, e.g.
int? currentMaxId = (_myDbContext)).Orders
.Where(x => x.CustomerId == 123456)
.Select(x => (int?)x.OrderNumber)
.Max();
However, the above part doesn't work well if I attempt to add multiple objects to the DbContext without committing/saving changes to the database. (i.e. the .Where() returns null... and only works if I use DbContext ".Local", which is not what I want.)
Help! Not sure what the best solution would be. Thanks!