Question

I’m using Entity Framework 4.1 with a Code-First approach on an ASP.NET MVC site

Say I have an entity named Profile that keeps track of a user’s favorite book, and I want to track when the user updates their favorite book.

UPDATED:

Using the class below as an example, I want to set the FavoriteBookLastUpdated property to the current date whenever the value of the FavoriteBook property changes.

public class Profile
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string FavoriteBook { get; set; }
    public DateTime? FavoriteBookLastUpdated { get; set; }
}

Right now I just update that field, if appropriate, in the controller’s Edit action before calling the DBContext’s SaveChanges() method.

Is there a way I can put that logic in my model somehow? I’d prefer not to use triggers on the database side.

Answer 1

EDIT: I read your comment and new example 🙂

Could you not have your Favorite book property be an actual property that also sets LastModified? I’m not sure if EF4 will accept that, but then you could make a public property for changing the FavoriteBook and a special one for EF4 only. You might need to make the special property ‘InternalsVisibleTo’

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/0tke9fxk(v=vs.80).aspx