Question: Is there a way to generate value for only primitive properties?

We are using EF Core we so designed our entity classes like the following structure:

public class Box
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    public ICollection<Content> Contents { get; set; }
}

public class Content
{
    public int Id { get; set; }
    int BoxId { get; set; }
    Box Box { get; set; }
}

When we are using AutoFixture to generate test data, for example: fixture.Build<Content>.Create(), it generates the value of BoxId and a Box instance with different Id than the BoxId (which is correct behavior BTW), however we just want AutoFixture generate all properties of primitive types and leave all properties of complex types null, currently we are using .Without() to exclude members that we don’t want Autofixture to generate values for (fixture.Build<Content>.Without(c => c.Box)), however as there are so many properties of complex types in many class, using .Without() increases our code lines.

• Question 1: is there a way (maybe behavior) to configure this globally?
• Question 2: Any suggestions on using AutoFixture with EF Core 2.1 and SQLite in-memory unit testing practices?

[LiangZugeng]

@ekondur it’s been a long time since my last reply! When I posted the question we designed class graphs without context boundaries and aggregated roots in the mind, so all classes were references by all other classes with different levels of navigation properties, that was not a good design, the problem we encountered with AutoFixture was caused by AutoFixture but by our design.

We changed the design and introduced context boundaries and aggregated roots, and it avoided almost all cyclical references. We had no problems since then.

[LiangZugeng]

Great, will test it ASAP