Deleting missing descendant on Update

Question

I have the following method in my controller:

[HttpPost]
public async Task<ActionResult<ChartsCategoryDto>> PostChartsCategory(ChartsCategoryDto chartsCategory)
{
    try
    {
        var category = _mapper.Map<ChartsCategoryDto, ChartsCategory>(chartsCategory);
        if (category.Id == 0)
        {
            category = _context.ChartsCategories.Add(category).Entity;
            await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
            return CreatedAtAction("GetChartsCategory", new { id = category.Id }, _mapper.Map<ChartsCategory, ChartsCategoryDto>(category));
        }
        else
        {
            _context.ChartsCategories.Update(category);
            await _context.SaveChangesAsync();
            return NoContent();
        }
    }
    catch (Exception)
    {
        return StatusCode(StatusCodes.Status500InternalServerError, "Error updating data");
    }
}

Which is supposed to handle both create and update of the entity named ChartsCategory, which has a collection of Charts:

public partial class ChartsCategory
{
    public ChartsCategory()
    {
        Charts = new HashSet<Chart>();
        InverseParent = new HashSet<ChartsCategory>();
    }

    public int Id { get; set; }
    public string Name { get; set; }
    public string Label { get; set; }
    public string Icon { get; set; }
    public int? ParentId { get; set; }

    public virtual ChartsCategory Parent { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<Chart> Charts { get; set; }
    public virtual ICollection<ChartsCategory> InverseParent { get; set; }
}

1. When I create a new entity - everything works as expected.
2. When I update an existing entity - everything works as expected.
3. Updating or creating a singular Chart within a ChartCategory - as expected.
4. Deleting a Chart within the ChartsCategory doesn't work.

I would expect the Update() functionality to remove missing items. I found this answer however it seems a little too explicit. I want to globally state that a descendant item must be sent, otherwise it should be removed.

Thanks

Answer 1

I think that in the first case the retrieved user is not tracked by the context.

 _context.ChartsCategories.AsNoTrcking.Remove(category);