Question

I’m using a Linq query to retrieve entities from an SQL server using the Entity Framework. When I update an entitiy, the EF is caching the result. I suspect this is because the ObjectContext is in a static variable (below). The only way to refresh the data using my code below is to call a method and set _db to null when there might be stale data displayed (Eg: in a GridView). Is there a way to just prevent it from caching, or to add some sort of end request handler to call this method on my data layer instead of needing to detect when there may be stale data displayed?

private static ServiceEntities _db;
protected static ServiceEntitiesDb
    {
        get
        {
            if (_db == null)
            {
                _db = new ServiceEntities();
                _db.Contacts.MergeOption = MergeOption.OverwriteChanges; // failed
            }
            return _db;
        }
    }

    public static IEnumerable<Contact> GetContactsByName(string name) {
        var items = Db.Contacts;
        var filteredName = items.Where(i => (i.Name??string.Empty).IndexOf(name) >=0);
        return filteredName;
    }

Answer 1

The slightly verbose solution (which I wanted to avoid) is to wrap it in a using block. Ie:

public static IEnumerable<Contact> GetContactsByName(string name) {
        var items = Db.Contacts;
        var filteredName = items.Where(i => (i.Name??string.Empty).IndexOf(name) >=0);
        return filteredName;
}

Becomes

public static IEnumerable<Contact> GetContactsByName(string name) {
    using (var db = new SomeContext()) {
        var items = db.Contacts;
        var filteredName = items.Where(i => (i.Name??string.Empty).IndexOf(name) >=0);
        return filteredName;
    }
}