I have a method that creates a new entity with a pretty complex object graph that may or may not contain existing entities in it. That method manages its own context. It returns the entity which is consumed in a method on a different class that maintains its own context and attempts to add the entity.
The reason for the division of labor is because the second method does a bunch of processing that is common to several different entity creation scenarios. I don't want to save the entity in the first method, because it's important that the second method is successful before saving the entity to the database.
The problem is that when the second context adds the entity, it is treating the entire object graph as brand new and is creating duplicates in the database.
What is the best way to add the entity to the second context and have all of the existing entities in its object graph just get attached?
I'm trying to avoid doing something like traversing the object graph and testing for IDs > 0...