Entity Framework Core: A second operation started on this context before a previous operation completed

Question

I'm working on a ASP.Net Core 2.0 project using Entity Framework Core

<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore" Version="2.0.1" />
  <PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Tools" Version="2.0.0" PrivateAssets="All" />
<PackageReference Include="Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Design" Version="2.0.0"/>

And in one of my list methods I'm getting this error:

InvalidOperationException: A second operation started on this context before a previous operation completed. Any instance members are not guaranteed to be thread safe.
Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore.Internal.ConcurrencyDetector.EnterCriticalSection()

This is my method:

    [HttpGet("{currentPage}/{pageSize}/")]
    [HttpGet("{currentPage}/{pageSize}/{search}")]
    public ListResponseVM<ClientVM> GetClients([FromRoute] int currentPage, int pageSize, string search)
    {
        var resp = new ListResponseVM<ClientVM>();
        var items = _context.Clients
            .Include(i => i.Contacts)
            .Include(i => i.Addresses)
            .Include("ClientObjectives.Objective")
            .Include(i => i.Urls)
            .Include(i => i.Users)
            .Where(p => string.IsNullOrEmpty(search) || p.CompanyName.Contains(search))
            .OrderBy(p => p.CompanyName)
            .ToPagedList(pageSize, currentPage);

        resp.NumberOfPages = items.TotalPage;

        foreach (var item in items)
        {
            var client = _mapper.Map<ClientVM>(item);

            client.Addresses = new List<AddressVM>();
            foreach (var addr in item.Addresses)
            {
                var address = _mapper.Map<AddressVM>(addr);
                address.CountryCode = addr.CountryId;
                client.Addresses.Add(address);
            }

            client.Contacts = item.Contacts.Select(p => _mapper.Map<ContactVM>(p)).ToList();
            client.Urls = item.Urls.Select(p => _mapper.Map<ClientUrlVM>(p)).ToList();
            client.Objectives = item.Objectives.Select(p => _mapper.Map<ObjectiveVM>(p)).ToList();
            resp.Items.Add(client);
        }

        return resp;
    }

I'm a bit lost especially because it works when I run it locally, but when I deploy to my staging server (IIS 8.5) it gets me this error and it was working normally. The error started to appear after I increase the max length of one of my models. I also updated the max length of the corresponding View Model. And there are many other list methods that are very similar and they are working.

I had a Hangfire job running, but this job doesn't use the same entity. That's all I can think to be relevant. Any ideas of what could be causing this?

Answer 1

I am not sure if you are using IoC and Dependency Injection to resolve your DbContext where ever it might be used. If you do and you are using native IoC from .NET Core (or any other IoC-Container) and you are getting this error, make sure to register your DbContext as Transient. Do

services.AddTransient<MyContext>();

OR

services.AddDbContext<MyContext>(ServiceLifetime.Transient);

instead of

services.AddDbContext<MyContext>();

AddDbContext adds the context as scoped, which might cause troubles when working with multiple threads.

Also async / await operations can cause this behaviour, when using async lambda expressions.

Adding it as transient also has its downsides. You will not be able to make changes to some entity over multiple classes that are using the context because each class will get its own instance of your DbContext.

The simple explanation for that is, that the DbContext implementation is not thread-safe. You can read more about this here