Updating entity in EF Core application with SQLite gives DbUpdateConcurrencyException

Question

I try to use optimistic concurrency check in EF Core with SQLite. The simplest positive scenario (even without concurrency itself) gives me Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.

Answer 1

Looks like EF Core SQLite provider does not handle properly [TimeStamp] (or IsRowVersion()) marked byte[] properties when binding them to SQL query parameters. It uses the default byte[] to hex string conversion which is not applicable in this case - the byte[] actually is a string.

First consider reporting it to their issue tracker. Then, until it gets resolved (if ever), as a workaround you can use the following custom ValueConverter:

class SqliteTimestampConverter : ValueConverter
{
    public SqliteTimestampConverter() : base(
        v => v == null ? null : ToDb(v),
        v => v == null ? null : FromDb(v))
    { }
    static byte[] FromDb(string v) =>
        v.Select(c => (byte)c).ToArray(); // Encoding.ASCII.GetString(v)
    static string ToDb(byte[] v) =>
        new string(v.Select(b => (char)b).ToArray()); // Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(v))
}

Unfortunately there is no way to tell EF Core to use it only for parameters, so after assigning it with .HasConversion(new SqliteTimestampConverter()), now the db type is considered string, so you need to add .HasColumnType("BLOB").

The final working mapping is

    modelBuilder.Entity()
        .Property(p => p.Timestamp)
        .IsRowVersion()
        .HasConversion(new SqliteTimestampConverter())
        .HasColumnType("BLOB")
        .HasDefaultValueSql("CURRENT_TIMESTAMP");

You can avoid all that by adding the following custom SQLite RowVersion "convention" at the end of your OnModelCreating:

if (Database.IsSqlite())
{
    var timestampProperties = modelBuilder.Model
        .GetEntityTypes()
        .SelectMany(t => t.GetProperties())
        .Where(p => p.ClrType == typeof(byte[])
            && p.ValueGenerated == ValueGenerated.OnAddOrUpdate
            && p.IsConcurrencyToken);

    foreach (var property in timestampProperties)
    {
        property.SetValueConverter(new SqliteTimestampConverter());
        property.Relational().DefaultValueSql = "CURRENT_TIMESTAMP";
    }
}

so your property configuration could be trimmed down to

modelBuilder.Entity()
    .Property(p => p.Timestamp)
    .IsRowVersion();

or totally removed and replaced with data annotation

public class Blog
{
    public Guid Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    [Timestamp]
    public byte[] Timestamp { get; set; }
}