Help changing Parent on an attribute from one class to another

[ejafman]

Hi all,

Trying to automate (in vbscript) the movement of attributes from one Class to another.

On checking, I have found threads that say to just update the ParentID of the element to the new parent and refresh both the old and new parent.
Unfortunately, I am getting the error which says that I "Can't assign to read-only property".

Any clues?

TIA...Eric

[Eve]

Unfortunately, I am getting the error which says that I "Can't assign to read-only property".

Yep, it's marked as read-only in the documentation.

Attribute Class

I have found threads that say to just update the ParentID of the element to the new parent and refresh both the old and new parent.

It would appear that those threads either had people guessing, or they weren't about attributes. That process would work for child elements.

[Geert Bellekens]

If the property is read-only (why?) then the only solution is to go behind the API's back.

So update the Object_ID directly in the database, and then do an Element.Attributes.Refresh

There is an undocumented, and unsupported method called Repository.Execute(sqlStatement) in which you can pass an SQL update statement.
Obviously Eve can't give you that advice (since it's officially unsupported)

Geert

[ejafman]

Thanks...I was afraid of that.

Unfortunately, I do not have update rights in the actual DB itself, so don't think I could run an update SQL statement, I believe.

Thanks for the quick answers.

Eric

[Geert Bellekens]

Thanks...I was afraid of that.

Unfortunately, I do not have update rights in the actual DB itself, so don't think I could run an update SQL statement, I believe.

Thanks for the quick answers.

Eric

Repository.Execute uses the connection EA makes to the database.
If the user that EA uses has update rights it will work.

Geert

[ejafman]

good to know...I will see if that is possible.

Thanks

[ejafman]

curious...if I do actually use the rep.execute method, should I still run a refresh on the old and new class? I am checking the data in the actual underlying tables, and actually don't see anything that would actually need refreshing.

UPDATE...I ran a test, and debugged. My actual hardcoded update statement did work, and then ran an update(),  and the Object_ID for the row in t_attribute flipped back to the original class.

Weird, or am I not getting it?

E

[Geert Bellekens]

If you update the database, your object in memory don't know about that.
So if you have an attribute object in memory, and you call Update() it will save itself to the database, thereby overwriting the object_ID again.
So after doing a direct database updaate, you should consider your object in memory to be invalid.

Refreshing (element.Attributes.Refresh) reloads the attributes from the database.

Geert

[ejafman]

Thanks for the tip...will play around

Update: thanks again...me not running the update solved the problem