Question

I have always known that all good programmers call Dispose on any object that implements IDisposable, case in point the ObjectContext class in EF.

I am new to asp.net mvc so this may be a noob question but here goes…

    public ActionResult Index()
    {
        using (var db = new MyObjectContext())
        {
            return View(db.People);
        }
    }

If I run this code I get an error (ObjectDisposedException) because the ObjectContext has been disposed of before the View takes action on the data. Is there a different approach here? How can I ensure my objects get disposed of as soon as possible?

Answer 1

Override the Controller.Dispose() method and dispose of your object in there:

private IDisposable _objectToDispose;

public ActionResult Index() {
  var db = new MyObjectContext();
  _objectToDispose = db;
  return View(db.People);  
}

protected override void Dispose(bool disposing) {
  if (disposing && _objectToDispose != null) {
    _objectToDispose.Dispose();
  }
  base.Dispose(disposing);
}

The MVC framework will automatically call Controller.Dispose() at the end of the request.