Trying to set a non-null string to type 'System.Int32'

Question

Entity Framework is throwing this exception:

The 'PasswordIterations' property on 'BranchIdentity' could not be set to a 'System.String' value. You must set this property to a non-null value of type 'System.Int32'.

It's throwing on this line:

// Validate uniqueness or email and username
var user = sqlStorage.BranchIdentities.FirstOrDefault(i => i.Username.ToLower() == viewModel.Username.ToLower());

The exception only throws when there is an entity that matches the query. If there are no matches, the exception isn't thrown.

My BranchIdentity model:

namespace Branch.Models.Sql
{
    public class BranchIdentity
    {
        [Key]
        public int Id { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public string Username { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public string PasswordHash { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public string PasswordSalt { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public int PasswordIterations { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public string Email { get; set; }

        [Required]
        public string FullName { get; set; }

        public virtual ICollection<BranchIdentitySession> BranchIdentitySessions { get; set; } 

        public virtual BranchRole BranchRole { get; set; }

        public virtual GamerIdentity GamerIdentity { get; set; }
    }
}

And my schema (taken from the sql database) - auto-generated using code-first migrations:

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[BranchIdentities] (
    [Id]                 INT            IDENTITY (1, 1) NOT NULL,
    [Username]           NVARCHAR (MAX) NOT NULL,
    [PasswordHash]       NVARCHAR (MAX) NOT NULL,
    [PasswordSalt]       NVARCHAR (MAX) NOT NULL,
    [PasswordIterations] INT            NOT NULL,
    [Email]              NVARCHAR (MAX) NOT NULL,
    [BranchRole_Id]      INT            NULL,
    [GamerIdentity_Id]   INT            NULL,
    [FullName]           NVARCHAR (MAX) DEFAULT ('') NOT NULL,
    CONSTRAINT [PK_dbo.BranchIdentities] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([Id] ASC),
    CONSTRAINT [FK_dbo.BranchIdentities_dbo.BranchRoles_BranchRole_Id] FOREIGN KEY ([BranchRole_Id]) REFERENCES [dbo].[BranchRoles] ([Id]),
    CONSTRAINT [FK_dbo.BranchIdentities_dbo.GamerIdentities_GamerIdentity_Id] FOREIGN KEY ([GamerIdentity_Id]) REFERENCES [dbo].[GamerIdentities] ([Id])
);

I have tried making PasswordIterations nullable, but to no avail.

Answer 1

Sounds like your schema and the Entity don't match up, You posted your Code first generated code but that might have changed since the table was created. take a look at the table in SQL Server Manager and double check the data type for that column.

Answer 2

Just for anyone else having issues with this. Set a breakpoint in DatabaseContext and make sure it's connecting to the correct database. Mine was being overwritten from a web.config file I forgot about.

Answer 3

I came across this SO post on the way to solving a similar problem.

I found that my stored procedure had conditional logic that could return either a string or an int for the first column in the result set.

EF seemed to pick up the first bit of result set code it found, which returned a string.

I fixed this by having the sproc return a string either way.