Transactions in EF Core

Entity Framework Core (EF Core) does wrap the SaveChanges method in a transaction by default. When you call SaveChanges to persist changes to the database, EF Core ensures that all the changes are committed as a single transaction. This means that if any part of the operation fails (e.g., due to a validation error or a database constraint violation), none of the changes will be applied to the database.

Here's how it works:

1. You make changes to your entity objects within a DbContext.
2. When you call SaveChanges, EF Core starts a database transaction.
3. EF Core applies all the changes to the database within this transaction.
4. If all changes are successfully applied, the transaction is committed, making the changes permanent.
5. If any part of the operation fails (e.g., an exception is thrown), the transaction is rolled back, and no changes are applied to the database.

This behavior ensures that your data remains in a consistent state, and either all changes are applied or none are. If you need more control over transactions, such as specifying isolation levels or manually managing transactions, EF Core provides options for doing so. You can use methods like BeginTransaction, Commit, and Rollback on the DbContext's Database property to work with transactions explicitly.

In this example, you can see how you can manually manage a transaction around your database operations, providing more fine-grained control when needed. However, for most scenarios, the default behavior of wrapping SaveChanges in a transaction is sufficient.

using (var dbContext = new YourDbContext())
{
    using (var transaction = dbContext.Database.BeginTransaction())
    {
        try
        {
            // Perform your database operations here

            dbContext.SaveChanges();

            // If everything is successful, commit the transaction
            transaction.Commit();
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            // Handle exceptions and optionally roll back the transaction
            transaction.Rollback();
        }
    }
}

In this example, you can see how you can manually manage a transaction around your database operations, providing more fine-grained control when needed. However, for most scenarios, the default behavior of wrapping SaveChanges in a transaction is sufficient.