RavenDB - Patching in collection of denormalized references

Question

Let's assume I have the following domain:

public class Movie
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public List<ActorReference> Actors { get; set; }
}

public class Actor
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Biography { get; set; }
    public string AnotherDetailProperty { get; set; }
}

public class ActorReference
{
    public string Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
}

Now, if the name of an actor changes I want to make sure, that all referencing movies are updated as well. Therefore, I first create an Index which let me query all movies in which a specific actor is involved:

public class Movies_ByActorId : AbstractIndexCreationTask<Movie>
{
    public Movies_ByActorId()
    {
        Map = movies => from movie in movies
                        from actor in movie.Actors
                        select new { ActorId = actor.Id };
    }
}

Ok, now I would like to fire the patch-command...

Session.Advanced.DatabaseCommands.UpdateByIndex(
    "Movies/ByActorId",
    new IndexQuery
    {
        Query = "ActorId:" + actorWhoseNameHasChanged.Id
    },
    new[]
    {
        new PatchRequest
        {
            Type = PatchCommandType.Modify,
            Name = "Actors",
            Nested = new[]
            {
                // WHAT TO DO HERE?
            }
        }
    },
    allowStale: false);

Could someone please help me complete this code-block above, since I have absolutely no idea, how I can only update the name of the denormalized references which represent the changed actor.

I'm afraid RavenDB doesn't support this kind of patch-request and I need to load and store all movies manually, which is something I would definitely want to avoid for performance reasons.

Ayende Rahien Ayende Rahien · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-22T10:12:23

RavenDB doesn't support doing criteria based patching. You can solve your problem without denormalized references and by using include at read time

RavenDB - Patching in collection of denormalized references

1 Answers