How to simply update entity in entity framework?

Question

Hi! I'm writing a custom .NET MembershipProvider (not the built in one) and trying to update using Entity Framework. But of course i have no access to (Try)UpdateModel. How can i update it? Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

To do this with the default provider is a little complicated, however what would be much easier would be to create your own CustomMembershipProvider as outlined here:

Implementing A Membership Provider

As you can do this to your OWN account model, you can code the repository/DAL code however you choose, and use standard EF practices and conventions, allowing you to perform simple and strongly mapped operations such as UpdateModel.

Answer 2

You can't do this kind of thing with the ASP.NET Membership Provider, that is, write custom updates to the tables.

If it were that easy, less people would have issues/problems with it. =)

Don't even bother adding the ASP.NET Membership SQL Tables onto your EDMX - you won't know the relationships or how the tables really work together. Forget about trying to represent it as a "Model".

My advice is don't try and bind to the MembershipProvider as a Model (i.e dont create a strongly typed view), just call the Membership methods directly from your controller.

This is where we start to miss the 'drag and drop' of Web Forms, can't drop on a ChangePassword control. =)

Your best bet would be to create a regular view (not strongly typed), then have regular buttons that post to your controller methods.

Don't try and pass through the object as a model, get the fields in the Request.Form collection.

[HttpPost]
public ActionResult ChangePassword()
{
   string userName = Request.Form["userName"];
   string passWord = Request.Form["passWord"];
   MembershipProvider.ChangePassword(userName, password);       
   return View("ChangePasswordSuccess");
}

The above code would be (roughly) the equivalent of passing through a strongly typed User object, changing the password and calling UpdateModel.

Of course, you could implement your own membership provider, but i dont believe implementing a custom provider just to make your code "easier" should be the driver, because unless coded properly (which is not easy to do), you compromise a lot of the built-in security features and wealth of account management options of the ASP.NET Membership provider that we take for granted.

Answer 3

A similar question was asked here.

Here is a CodeProject sample app that could get you started that uses EF and Microsoft's MembershipProvider. There is a class they built that inherits from MembershipProvider.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/web-security/EFMembershipProvider.aspx