Question

This is a little out there but I have a customer object coming back to my controller. I want to just reconnect this object back to the database, is it even possible? I know there is a datacontext.customers.insertonsubmit(customer), but is there the equivalent datacontext.customers.updateonsubmit(customer)???

Answer 1

You want to use the attach method on the customers table on the data context.

datacontext.customers.Attach(customer); 

to reconnect it to the data context. Then you can use SubmitChanges() to update the values in the database.

EDIT: This only works with entities that have been detached from the original data context through serialization. If you don’t mind the extra call to the database, you can use the idiomatic method in ASP.NET MVC of retrieving the object again and applying your changes via UpdateModel or TryUpdateModel as @Odd suggests.