Question

LINQ-2-SQL maintains an identity map so subsequent calls to entity.First(e => e.Id == id) do not cause additional queries beyond the first one for a context.

Is there anyway to ask L2S if a particular item exists in the identity map?

I ask this cause there is support for .Attach which allows you to attach entities to a context, however the method will exception out if the item already exists in the identity map.

In an interoperability scenario I may want to load up entities in a different, faster orm and attach, however it makes no sense to lookup an entity if it is already in the identity map.

Answer 1

No nice way… you can hack your way in, though. For example imagine you have a User object that you know is keyed by Id:

var user = // get some user
var dataContext = // your DB context

const BindingFlags AllInstance = BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic
        | BindingFlags.Public;
object commonDataServices = typeof(DataContext)
    .GetField("services", AllInstance)
    .GetValue(dataContext);
object identifier = commonDataServices.GetType()
    .GetProperty("IdentityManager", AllInstance)
    .GetValue(commonDataServices, null);
MethodInfo find = identifier.GetType().GetMethod("Find", AllInstance);
var metaType = dataContext.Mapping.GetMetaType(typeof(User));
object[] keys = new object[] { user.Id };
var user2 = (User)find.Invoke(identifier, new object[] { metaType, keys });
bool pass = ReferenceEquals(user, user2);

Pretty-much every access is non-public; I would expect this to suck performance-wise unless you use DynamicMethod to spoof access from another type.

And as a DynamicMethod version:

(yes, I’m hard-coding to an int key… you could make it any single-value by replacing the int with object, and just drop the OpCodes.Box, typeof(int) – or you could make it a params object[] argument and pass it in directly)

static readonly Func<DataContext, Type, int, object> identityLookup = BuildIdentityLookup();

static Func<DataContext, Type, int, object> BuildIdentityLookup()
{
    var quickFind = new DynamicMethod("QuickFind", typeof(object), new Type[] { typeof(DataContext), typeof(Type), typeof(int) }, typeof(DataContext), true);
    var il = quickFind.GetILGenerator();

    const BindingFlags AllInstance = BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Public;
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); // DB
    var services = typeof(DataContext).GetField("services", AllInstance);
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldfld, services); // services

    var identifier = services.FieldType.GetProperty("IdentityManager", AllInstance);
    il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, identifier.GetGetMethod(true), null); // identifier

    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_0); // identifier DB
    var mapping = typeof(DataContext).GetProperty("Mapping");
    il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, mapping.GetGetMethod(), null); // identifier mapping

    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_1); // identifier mapping type
    il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, mapping.PropertyType.GetMethod("GetMetaType"), null); // identifier metatype

    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldc_I4_1); // identifier metatype 1
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Newarr, typeof(object)); // identifier metatype object[]
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Dup); // identifier metatype object[] object[]
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldc_I4_0); // identifier metatype object[] object[] 0
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ldarg_2); // identifier metatype object[] object[] 0 id
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Box, typeof(int)); // identifier metatype object[] object[] 0 boxed-id
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Stelem_Ref); // identifier metatype object[]

    il.EmitCall(OpCodes.Callvirt, identifier.PropertyType.GetMethod("Find", AllInstance), null); // object
    il.Emit(OpCodes.Ret);

    return (Func<DataContext, Type, int, object>)quickFind.CreateDelegate(typeof(Func<DataContext, Type, int, object>));
}