When to initialize an Entity after Load

It would be nice if someone would give us a hint today. The time-shift always poses a problem for us Europeans ;-)

Since there is so much going on in the construction / serialization / fetching of entities. We do not use the constructor for post-init. Instead, we have followed the pattern shown in the Prism Explorer sample where a static Create method is added to the entity class. This Create method calls the constructor and then performs init work like setting the Parent entity and initializing defaults.

For example:

This is the base Create method in the BaseEntity class (upon which most of our Entities are based):

        #region Create

        protected static BaseEntity Create<T>(User user) where T : BaseEntity
        {
            InitManager();
            T item = Manager.CreateEntity<T>();
            GetATemporaryKey(item);
            item.InitializeDefaults(user);
            AddToManager(item);
            item.InitializeChildren(user);
            return item;
        }

        protected static void GetATemporaryKey<T>(T item) where T : Entity
        {
            if (Manager == null)
            {
               InitManager();
            }
            var key = item.EntityAspect.EntityMetadata.KeyProperties[0];
            if (key.IsAutoIncrementing)
            {
               try
               {
                    Manager.GenerateId(item, key);
               }
               catch (IdeaBlade.Core.IdeaBladeException)
               {
                    //eat the exception thrown if this class does not have a Generator
               }
               catch (Exception)
               {
                    throw;
               }
            }
        }

        protected static void AddToManager(Entity entity)
        {
            entity.EntityAspect.AddToManager();
        }

        protected virtual void InitializeDefaults(User user) { }

        protected virtual void InitializeChildren(User user) { }


        #endregion

The Entity then has a Create method that looks like this, with whatever parameters needed being passed in:

        #region Create

        public static Deal Create(User user)
        {
            return (Deal)Create<Deal>(user);
        }

        protected override void InitializeDefaults(User user)
        {
            this.EnteredBy = user.UserId;
            this.DateEntered = DateTime.Now;
            this.DateOfDeal = DateTime.Today;
            this.FlowDateStart = DateTime.Today.AddDays(1);
            this.FlowDateEnd = DateTime.Today.AddWeekdays(1);
        }

        protected override void InitializeChildren(User user)
        {
            AddDealPricing(user);
        }

        #endregion

The Create method in the DealPricing (a child class) looks like this:

        #region Create

        public static DealPricing Create(Deal deal, User user)
        {
            var dp = (DealPricing)Create<DealPricing>(user);
            dp.Deal = deal;
            return dp;
        }

        protected override void InitializeDefaults(User user)
        {
            this.EnteredBy = user.UserId;
        }

        #endregion

Maybe this will help? Let me know what you think.

Bump

I see this still hasn't been addressed in the Dec 14th release (based on what I can tell from the Release Notes).  Are there any updates about when or if this will be addressed?

I was able to use a combination of the EntityGroup EntityChanged and EntityPropertyChanged events to do what I need (setting computed non-persisted properties for example) so this is no longer a priority for us.