Question

I have a Model like this

public class Challenge
{
    public int ID { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Blurb { get; set; }
    public int Points { get; set; }
    public string Category { get; set; }
    public string Flag { get; set; }
    public List<string> SolvedBy { get; set; }
}

public class ChallengeDBContext : DbContext
{
    public DbSet<Challenge> Challenges { get; set; }
}

and then Controller like this. But I cannot update the List “SolvedBy”, the next time I step through with the debugger, the list is still empty.

    [HttpPost]
    public string Index(string flag = "", int id=0)
    {
        Challenge challenge = db.Challenges.Find(id);
        if (flag == challenge.Flag)
        {
            var chall = db.Challenges.Find(id);
            if (chall.SolvedBy == null)
            {
                chall.SolvedBy = new List<string>();
            }
            chall.SolvedBy.Add(User.Identity.Name);
            db.Entry(chall).State = EntityState.Modified;
            db.SaveChanges();
            //congrats, you solved the puzzle
            return "got it";
        }
        else
        {
            return "fail";
        }
    }

is there any way around it to make a list of strings kept in the database?

Answer 1

EF don’t know how to store an array in database table so it just ignore it. You can create another table/entity or use XML/JSON to store the list. You can serialize the list before saving and deserialize it after loading from database