"ObjectContext has been disposed" /multi-controller view

Question

@foreach (Thing thing in Model) {
    @Html.Action("someAction", "someOtherController", thing)
    //kind of a PartialView but coming from another controller
}

-

public class someOtherController: Controller
{

    public PartialViewResult someAction(Thing Model)
    {
        ...
    }

When this Html.Action is getting called I get The ObjectContext instance has been disposed and can no longer be used for operations that require a connection.

This is an error I'm usually able to fix using .Include() in the appropriate place in the code.

But in this case:

• On debugging it doesn't look like "thing" or included sub-entities have been disposed.
• I can put a breakpoint on @Html.Action("someAction", "someOtherController", thing) but if I put a breakpoint on the first line of someAction(...) method, it is never reached.
• I have another page using such kind of partial view and it works perfectly
• if I generate the content in the place of @Html.Action("someAction", "someOtherController", thing) instead of calling it through the partial view, it works perfectly. -

So there must be something wrong between that call and the controller, but I can't point out what. Any idea how I could debug this further and/or solve the problem?

---

Somebody asked for the query:

Data access layer :

public static List<Thing> GetAllThings(string[] Include = null)
{
    using (Entities ctx = new Entities())
    {
        if ((Include != null) && (Include.Length > 0))
        {
            System.Data.Entity.DbSet<Thing> things= ctx.Things;
            System.Data.Entity.Infrastructure.DbQuery<Thing> thingQuery= things.Include(Include[0]);
            for (int i = 1, c = Include.Length; i < c; i++)
                thingQuery= thingQuery.Include(Include[i]);
            return thingQuery.ToList();
        }
        return ctx.Things.ToList();
    }
}

In controller:

public ActionResult Index()
{
    string[] include = new string[] { "Stuff1.Stuff2", "Stuff4.Stuff5.Stuff6", "Stuff7.Stuff8" };
    List<Things> things = ThingsManager.GetAllThings(include).OrderBy(x => x.Name).ToList();
    return this.View(things);
}

Answer 1

The exception message explains it all: your database context is falling out of scope before something is trying to enumerate a lazy-loaded related entity.

Check to make sure that you are eager-loading all your related entities that this block of code operates on:

@foreach (item dto in items) {
    @Html.Action("someAction", "someOtherController", item) //kind of PartialView but coming from another controller