Create a new record with an assigned PK - Castle ActiveRecord

Question

I have a table with a GUID primary key. In ActiveRecord it is setup with a PrimaryKeyType.GuidComb. Is it possible to create this record with a manually assigned PK? If I set the primary key in the record and run Create() a new ID is assigned. If I run Save() I get an error (as one would expect).

The why: This table is in two databases. Records need to be copied between these two databases on occasion. I would like to retain the ID as the record moves across the DBs.

Answer 1

No. A primary key is either generated (e.g. GuidComb) or manually assigned, it can't be both. You could create two classes that inherited from a base class defining all properties except the primary key, then each of these two classes would define their primary key as assigned or generated. But I'd recommend using SQL here, as a single INSERT INTO ... SELECT will be more efficient than using NHibernate/ActiveRecord.

Answer 2

I ended up setting the PrimaryKeyType to Assigned. Then I handled it with an overrided Create function:

    public override void Create() {
        if (ID == default(Guid)) ID = GUIDGenerator.Generate();
        base.Create();
    }

It would have been better to put this in OnSave, but the primary key cannot be modified in the interceptor. This works for my application, however this code will only be called if the object is explicitly created. It will not work if the object is created by cascade.