ASP.NET MVC - Attaching an entity of type 'MODELNAME' failed because another entity of the same type already has the same primary key value

In a nutshell the exception is thrown during POSTing wrapper model and changing the state of one entry to 'Modified'. Before changing the state, the state is set to 'Detached' but calling Attach() does throw the same error. I'm using EF6.

Please find my code below(model names have been changed to make it easier to read)

Model

// Wrapper classes
        public class AViewModel
        {
            public A a { get; set; }
            public List<B> b { get; set; }
            public C c { get; set; }
        }   

Controller

        public ActionResult Edit(int? id)
        {
            if (id == null)
            {
                return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.BadRequest);
            }

            if (!canUserAccessA(id.Value))
                return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.Forbidden);

            var aViewModel = new AViewModel();
            aViewModel.A = db.As.Find(id);

            if (aViewModel.Receipt == null)
            {
                return HttpNotFound();
            }

            aViewModel.b = db.Bs.Where(x => x.aID == id.Value).ToList();
            aViewModel.Vendor = db.Cs.Where(x => x.cID == aViewModel.a.cID).FirstOrDefault();

            return View(aViewModel);
        }

[HttpPost]
        [ValidateAntiForgeryToken]
        public ActionResult Edit(AViewModel aViewModel)
        {
            if (!canUserAccessA(aViewModel.a.aID) || aViewModel.a.UserID != WebSecurity.GetUserId(User.Identity.Name))
                return new HttpStatusCodeResult(HttpStatusCode.Forbidden);

            if (ModelState.IsValid)
            {
                db.Entry(aViewModel.a).State = EntityState.Modified; //THIS IS WHERE THE ERROR IS BEING THROWN
                db.SaveChanges();
                return RedirectToAction("Index");
            }
            return View(aViewModel);
        }

As shown above line

db.Entry(aViewModel.a).State = EntityState.Modified;

throws exception:

Attaching an entity of type 'A' failed because another entity of the same type already has the same primary key value. This can happen when using the 'Attach' method or setting the state of an entity to 'Unchanged' or 'Modified' if any entities in the graph have conflicting key values. This may be because some entities are new and have not yet received database-generated key values. In this case use the 'Add' method or the 'Added' entity state to track the graph and then set the state of non-new entities to 'Unchanged' or 'Modified' as appropriate.

Does anybody see anything wrong in my code or understand in what circumstances it would throw such error during editing a model?

Problem SOLVED!

Attach method could potentially help somebody but it wouldn't help in this situation as the document was already being tracked while being loaded in Edit GET controller function. Attach would throw exactly the same error.

The issue I encounter here was caused by function canUserAccessA() which loads the A entity before updating the state of object a. This was screwing up the tracked entity and it was changing state of a object to Detached.

The solution was to amend canUserAccessA() so that the object I was loading wouldn't be tracked. Function AsNoTracking() should be called while querying the context.

// User -> Receipt validation
private bool canUserAccessA(int aID)
{
    int userID = WebSecurity.GetUserId(User.Identity.Name);
    int aFound = db.Model.AsNoTracking().Where(x => x.aID == aID && x.UserID==userID).Count();

    return (aFound > 0); //if aFound > 0, then return true, else return false.
}

For some reason I couldnt use .Find(aID) with AsNoTracking() but it doesn't really matter as I could achieve the same by changing the query.

Hope this will help anybody with similar problem!

Interestingly:

_dbContext.Set<T>().AddOrUpdate(entityToBeUpdatedWithId);

Or if you still is not generic:

_dbContext.Set<UserEntity>().AddOrUpdate(entityToBeUpdatedWithId);

seems to solved my problem smoothly.

It seems that entity you are trying to modify is not being tracked correctly and therefore is not recognized as edited, but added instead.

Instead of directly setting state, try to do the following:

//db.Entry(aViewModel.a).State = EntityState.Modified;
db.As.Attach(aViewModel.a); 
db.SaveChanges();

Also, I would like to warn you that your code contains potential security vulnerability. If you are using entity directly in your view model, then you risk that somebody could modify contents of entity by adding correctly named fields in submitted form. For example, if user added input box with name "A.FirstName" and the entity contained such field, then the value would be bound to viewmodel and saved to database even if the user would not be allowed to change that in normal operation of application.

Update:

To get over security vulnerability mentioned previously, you should never expose your domain model as your viewmodel but use separate viewmodel instead. Then your action would receive viewmodel which you could map back to domain model using some mapping tool like AutoMapper. This would keep you safe from user modifying sensitive data.

Here is extended explanation:

http://www.stevefenton.co.uk/Content/Blog/Date/201303/Blog/Why-You-Never-Expose-Your-Domain-Model-As-Your-MVC-Model/

Try this:

var local = yourDbContext.Set<YourModel>()
                         .Local
                         .FirstOrDefault(f => f.Id == yourModel.Id);
if (local != null)
{
  yourDbContext.Entry(local).State = EntityState.Detached;
}
yourDbContext.Entry(applicationModel).State = EntityState.Modified;

for me the local copy was the source of the problem. this solved it

var local = context.Set<Contact>().Local.FirstOrDefault(c => c.ContactId == contact.ContactId);
                if (local != null)
                {
                    context.Entry(local).State = EntityState.Detached;
                }