Entity Framework and Object Context lifetime in ASP.NET MVC

Question

I'm using Entity Framework in my project, and I have the problem that, once I pass my entities to a View (keep in mind that these entities have lazy-initialized objects along the lines of: Products.Owner, where owner is an object that is lazily initialized) I get a run-time exception telling me that the ObjectContext is out of scope.

Now this makes sense since I am getting the entities from a Service with a using (.... entities...) { .... } statement, which means it is disposed when the result is returned.

How would I get around this and have an Object Context that is alive from start to end. Thanks.

Answer 1

One option is to associate the repository with the Request, and have the Repository implement IDisposable, and have the Dispose method dispose of the contained ObjectContext, rather than using the more familiar using pattern inside your controller actions.