FAQ

What tests are there

There are unit tests for Vogen itself, and snapshot tests to test that the source code that is generated matches what is expected.

To run the unit tests for Vogen itself, you can either run them in your IDE, or via Build.ps1. To run the snapshot tests, run RunSnapshots.ps1

I want to add a test, where is the best place for it?

Most tests involve checking two, maybe three, things:

checking that the source generated is as expected (so the snapshot tests in the main solution)
checking that the behavior of the change works as expected (so a test in the consumers solution (tests/consumers.sln))
(maybe) - if you added/changed the behavior of the code that generates the source code (rather than just changing a template), then a unit test in the main solution

I've changed the source that is generated, and I now have snapshot failures, what should I do?

There are a lot of snapshot tests. A lot of permutations of the following are run:

framework
class/struct/record class/record struct
internal/public/sealed/readonly
locales
conversions, such as EF Core, JSON, etc.

When the tests are run, it uses snapshot tests to compare the current output to the expected output. If your feature/fix changes the output, the snapshot tests will bring up your configured code diff tool, for instance, Beyond Compare, and show you the differences. If your change modifies what is generated, then it is likely that a lot of verified files will need update to match the new source code that is generated.

To do this, run RunSnapshots.ps1 -reset. This will delete all the snapshots and treat what is generated as the correct version. Needless to say, only do this if you're sure the newly generated code is correct.

How do I identify types that are generated by Vogen?

I'd like to be able to identify types that are generated by Vogen so that I can integrate them in things like EFCore.

This is described in this how-to page

What versions of .NET are supported?

The source generator is .NET Standard 2.0. The code it generates supports all C# language versions from 6.0 and onwards

If you're using the generator in a .NET Framework project and using the old style projects (the one before the 'SDK style' projects), then you'll need to do a few things differently:

add the reference using PackageReference in the .csproj file:

  <ItemGroup>
      <PackageReference Include="Vogen" 
                        Version="[LATEST_VERSION_HERE - E.G. 1.0.18]" 
                        PrivateAssets="all" />
  </ItemGroup>

set the language version to latest (or anything 8 or more):

  <PropertyGroup>
>>  <LangVersion>latest</LangVersion>
    <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">
      Debug
    </Configuration>

Does it support modern features of C#?

This is primarily a source generator. The source it generates is mostly C# 6 for compatibility. But if you use features from a later language version, for instance, records from C# 9, then it will also generate records.

Source generation is driven by attributes, and, if you're using .NET 7 or above, the generic version of the ValueObject attribute is exposed:

[ValueObject<int>]
public partial struct Age { }

Why are they called 'Value Objects'?

The term Value Object represents a small object whose equality is based on value and not identity. From Wikipedia

In DDD, a Value Object is (again, from Wikipedia)

How can I view the code that is generated?

Add this to your .csproj file:

<PropertyGroup>
    <EmitCompilerGeneratedFiles>true</EmitCompilerGeneratedFiles>
    <CompilerGeneratedFilesOutputPath>
      Generated
    </CompilerGeneratedFilesOutputPath>
</PropertyGroup>

<ItemGroup>
    <Compile Remove="Generated/*/**/*.cs" />
</ItemGroup>

Then, you can view the generated files in the Generated folder. In Visual Studio, you need to select 'Show all files' in the Solution Explorer window:

the solution explorer window shows the 'show all files' option

Here's an example from the included Samples project:

the solution explorer window showing generated files

Why can't I just use public record struct CustomerId(int Value);?

That doesn't give you validation. To validate Value, you can't use the shorthand syntax (Primary Constructor). So you'd need to do:

public record struct CustomerId
{
    public CustomerId(int value) {
        if(value <=0) throw new Exception(...)
    }
}

You might also provide other constructors which might not validate the data, thereby allowing invalid data into your domain. Those other constructors might not throw exceptions or might throw different exceptions.
One of the opinions in Vogen is that any invalid data given to a Value Object throws a ValueObjectValidationException.

You could also use default(CustomerId) to evade validation. In Vogen, there are analyzers that catch this and fail the build, e.g.:

// error VOG009: Type 'CustomerId' cannot be constructed 
// with default as it is prohibited.
CustomerId c = default;
var c2 = default(CustomerId);

Can I serialize and deserialize them?

Yes. By default, each VO is decorated with a TypeConverter and System.Text.Json (STJ) serializer. There are other converters/serializers for:

Newtonsoft.Json (NSJ)
Dapper
EFCore
LINQ to DB
MongoDB/BSON
Orleans
ServiceStack.Text
Protobuf

Can I use them in EFCore?

Yes, although there are certain considerations. Please see the EFCore page on the Wiki, but the TL;DR is:

If the Value Object on your entity is a struct, then you don't need to do anything special
But if it is a class, then you need a conversion to be generated, e.g. [ValueObject<string>(conversions: Conversions.EfCoreValueConverter)] and you need to tell EFCore to use that converter in the OnModelCreating method, e.g.:

        builder.Entity<SomeEntity>(b =>
        {
            b.Property(e => e.Name)
             .HasConversion(new Name.EfCoreValueConverter());
        });

It seems like a lot of overhead; I can validate the value myself when I use it!

You could, but to ensure consistency throughout your domain, you'd have to validate everywhere. And Shallow's Law says that that's not possible:

Concretely: "When 5 things need to change, Shalloway will find at most, 4 of these things."

If my VO is a struct, can I prohibit using CustomerId customerId = default(CustomerId);?

Yes. The analyzer generates a compilation error.

If my VO is a struct, can I prohibit using CustomerId customerId = new(CustomerId);?

Yes. The analyzer generates a compilation error.

If my VO is a struct, can I have my own constructor?

No. The parameter-less constructor is generated automatically, and the constructor that takes the underlying value is also generated automatically.

If you add further constructors, then you will get a compilation error from the code generator, e.g.

[ValueObject(typeof(int))]
public partial struct CustomerId {
    // Vogen already generates this as a private constructor:
    // error CS0111: Type 'CustomerId' already defines a member called
    // 'CustomerId' with the same parameter type
    public CustomerId() { }

    // error VOG008: Cannot have user defined constructors, please use
    // the From method for creation.
    public CustomerId(int value) { }
}

If my VO is a struct, can I have my own fields?

You could, but you'd get compiler warning CS0282-There is no defined ordering between fields in multiple declarations of partial class or struct 'type'

Can I explicitly convert to and from the primitive?

Yes, by default Vogen generates explicit operators. See the casting page for more information.

What about implicit casts?

Implicit casts are problematic:

they bypass validation (since they should never throw an exception)
they potentially cause a heap allocation
they bypass normalization
they weaken type safety

The casting page describes these problems in more detail.

Why is there no interface?

NOTE Vogen can now generate an interface, but it's a curiously recurring template, and so isn't particularly useful in the same way as a normal interface is and how it would be used in this context

Just like primitives have no interfaces (aside from static abstract interfaces, such as those used in generic math), there's usually no need to have interfaces on value objects. The receiver that takes a CustomerId knows that it's a value object. If it were instead to take (for example), an IValidated<int>, then it wouldn't have any more information; you'd still have to know to call Value to get the value.

It might also relax type-safety. Without the interface, we have signatures such as this:

public void DoSomething(
  CustomerId customerId, 
  SupplierId supplierId, 
  ProductId productId);

… but with the interface, we could have signatures such as this:

public void DoSomething(
  IValidate<int> customerId, 
  IValidated<int> supplierId, 
  IValidated<int> productId);

So, callers could mess things up by calling DoSomething(productId, supplierId, customerId))

There would also be no need to know if it's validated, as, if it's in your domain, it's valid (there's no way to manually create invalid instances). And with that said, there would also be no point in exposing the 'Validate' method via the interface because validation is done at creation.

Having said that, outside the domain, it can be useful to have an interface. The Guids tutorial describes how to generate the interface and when it's useful to do so.

Can I represent special values

Yes. You might want to represent special values for things like invalid or unspecified instances, e.g.

/*
* Instances are the only way to avoid validation, 
* so we can create instances that nobody else can. 
* This is useful for creating special instances 
* that represent concepts such as 'invalid' and 
* 'unspecified'.
*/
[ValueObject]
public readonly partial struct Age
{
    public static readonly Age Unspecified = new(-1);
    public static readonly Age Invalid = new(-2);
    
    private static Validation Validate(int v) => v > 0 
      ? Validation.Ok 
      : Validation.Invalid("Must be zero or more.");
}

Using new is only permitted in the value object itself and bypassed validation (and normalization).

You can then use default values when using these types, e.g.

public class Person {
    public Age Age { get; set; } = Age.Unspecified
}

… and if you take an Age, you can compare it to an instance that is invalid/unspecified

public void CanEnter(Age age) {
    if(age == Age.Unspecified || age == Age.Invalid) 
      throw CannotEnterException("Name not specified or is invalid")
    
    return age < 17;
}

Can I normalize the value when a VO is created?

I'd like to normalize/sanitize the values used, for example, trimming the input. Is this possible?

Yes, add NormalizeInput method, e.g.

private static string NormalizeInput(string input) => input.Trim();

See the how-to page for more information.

Can I create custom Value Object attributes with my own defaults?

No, it used to be possible, but it impacts the performance of Vogen. A much better way is to use the type alias feature.

NOTE: custom attributes must extend a ValueObjectAttribute class; you can’t layer custom attributes on top of each other

Why isn't this concept part of the C# language?

It would be great if it was, but it's not there currently. I wrote an article about it, but in summary, there is a long-standing language proposal focusing on non-defaultable value types. Having non-defaultable value types is a great first step, but it would also be handy to have something in the language to enforce validation. So I added a language proposal for invariant records.

One of the responses in the proposal says that the language team decided that validation policies shouldn’t be part of C# but provided by source generators.

How do I run the benchmarks?

dotnet run -c Release -- --job short --framework net6.0 --filter *

Why do I get a build error when running .\Build.ps1?

You might see this:

.\Build.ps1 : File C:\Build.ps1 cannot be loaded. The file 
  C:\Build.ps1 is not digitally signed. You cannot run this script 
  on the current system. 

To get around this, run Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy Bypass

What alternatives are there?

StronglyTypedId This is focused more on IDs. Vogen is focused more on 'Domain Concepts' and the constraints associated with those concepts.

StringlyTyped This is my first attempt and is NON-source-generated. There is memory overhead because the base type is a class. There are also no analyzers. It is now marked as deprecated in favor of Vogen.

ValueOf Like StringlyTyped - non-source-generated and no analyzers. This is also more relaxed and allows composite 'underlying' types.

ValueObjectGenerator Like Vogen, but less focused on validation and no code analyzer.

What primitive types are supported?

Any type (except ICollection) can be wrapped. Serialisation and type conversions have implementations for:

string
int
long
short
byte
float (Single)
decimal
double
DateTime
DateOnly
TimeOnly
DateTimeOffset
Guid
bool

For other types, generic type conversion and a serializer are applied. If you are supplying your own converters for type conversion and serialization, then specify None for converters and decorate your type with attributes for your own types, e.g.

[ValueObject<SpecialPrimitive>(conversions: Conversions.None)]
[JsonConverter(typeof(SpecialPrimitiveJsonConverter))]
[TypeConverter(typeof(SpecialPrimitiveTypeConverter))]
public partial struct SpecialMeasurement;

Collections aren’t allowed as they don't exhibit value-equality. It is worth considering if the type you're wrapping in your value object exhibits value-equality. For types that don't, it completely breaks down the principal of value objects.

I've made a change that means the 'Snapshot' tests are expectedly failing in the build—what do I do?

Vogen uses a combination of unit tests, in-memory compilation tests, and snapshot tests. The snapshot tests are used to compare the output of the source generators to the expected output stored on disk.

If your feature/fix changes the output of the source generators, then running the snapshot tests will bring up your configured code diff tool (for example, Beyond Compare) to show the differences. You can accept the differences in that tool, or, if there are lots of differences (and they're all expected!), you have various options depending on your platform and tooling. Those are described here.

NOTE: If the change to the source generators expectedly changes most of the snapshot output files, then you can tell the snapshot runner to overwrite the expected files with the actual files that are generated.

To do this, run .\RunSnapshots.ps1 -v "minimal" -reset. This deletes all snaphsot folders under the tests folder and treats everything generated as the new baseline for future comparisons.

This will mean there are potentially thousands of changed files that will end up in the commit, but it's expected and unavoidable.

How do I debug the source generator?

The easiest way is to debug the SnapshotTests. Put a breakpoint in the code and then debug a test somewhere.

To debug an analyzer, select or write a test in the AnalyzerTests. There are tests that exercise the various analyzers and code-fixers.

How do I run the tests that actually use the source generator?

It is challenging to run tests that use the source generator in the same project as the source generator, so there is a separate solution for this. It's called Consumers.sln. What happens is that build.ps1 builds the generator, runs the tests, and creates the NuGet package in a private local folder. The package is version 999.9.xxx and the consumer references the latest version. The consumer can then really use the source generator, just like anything else.

Can I get it to throw my own exception?

Yes, by specifying the exception type in either the ValueObject attribute or, globally, with VogenConfiguration.

I get an error from Linq2DB when I use a ValueObject that wraps a TimeOnly saying that DateTime cannot be converted to TimeOnly—what should I do?

Linq2DB 4.0 or greater supports DateOnly and TimeOnly. Vogen generates value converters for Linq2DB; for DateOnly, it just works, but for `TimeOnly, you need to add this to your application:

MappingSchema.Default.SetConverter<DateTime, TimeOnly>(dt => TimeOnly.FromDateTime(dt));

Can I use protobuf-net?

Yes. Add a dependency to protobuf-net and set a surrogate attribute:

[ValueObject(typeof(string))]
[ProtoContract(Surrogate = typeof(string))]
public partial class BoxId;

The BoxId type will now be serialized as a string in all messages and grpc calls. If one is generating .proto files for other applications from C#, proto files will include the Surrogate type as the type.

thank you to @DomasM for this information.

Can I have a factory method for value objects that wrap GUIDs?

Yes, use the Customizations.AddFactoryMethodForGuids in the global config attribute, e.g.

[assembly: VogenDefaults(
  customizations: Customizations.AddFactoryMethodForGuids)]

[ValueObject<Guid>]
public partial struct CustomerId;

...

var newCustomerId = CustomerId.FromNewGuid();

Can I use value objects instead of primitives as parameters in Blazor pages and components?

You can, but it's not straightforward. Blazor, unlike ASP.NET Core, doesn't consider type converters. It passes around and stores parameters as objects, which means that the casting operators in Blazor are also not considered (it's not possible to have a cast operator that takes object in C#).

There are two solutions:

(for components only) - pass the value into the parameter as a value object (parameters can be complex objects)
(for pages) override SetParametersAsync and convert the primitive to the value object, e.g.

    public override Task SetParametersAsync(ParameterView parameters)
    {
        if (parameters.TryGetValue<int>("Id", out var x))
        {
            Id = CustomerId.From(x);
        }

        ...

Are value objects any bigger than the primitives that they wrap?

They are by default, but they can be configured so that they're not.

They're bigger because Vogen generates code that stores a field named _isInitialized. This is used to check that the instance is initialized, e.g., after deserializing. If you don't want that, then you can specify in your project that you don't want validation, e.g.

<PropertyGroup>
    <OutputType>Exe</OutputType>
    <TargetFramework>net8.0</TargetFramework>
    ➕ <DefineConstants>VOGEN_NO_VALIDATION</DefineConstants>
</PropertyGroup>

With this set, when we run in debug mode, we can see that there's no size difference:

[ValueObject]
public readonly partial struct Age;

Console.WriteLine(Marshal.SizeOf<Age>());
Console.WriteLine(Marshal.SizeOf<int>());

// outputs 4, 4

In debug builds, Vogen, by default, includes a stack trace field. This is used in the exception when an uninitialized value object is accessed. If it is important that your debug builds have the same size value objects as your release builds, then add the following in your global config:

[assembly: VogenDefaults(disableStackTraceRecordingInDebug: true)]

Is it possible to see any diagnostics from the source generator?

Yes, it's possible to see some diagnostic information. Vogen looks for a 'marker type' and if present, generates a file with diagnostic information. Include the following marker type in your project:

namespace Vogen
{
    public class __ProduceDiagnostics;
}

This will produce a diagnostics.cs file which you can see in your IDE's solution tree or (in Windows) in a folder something like: C:\Users[user]\AppData\Local\Temp\SourceGeneratedDocuments[3F61CDF56DC2FDAC8E2336AD]\Vogen\Vogen.ValueObjectGenerator

The file looks similar to this:

/*

Generator count: 20
LanguageVersion: CSharp12

User provided global config
===========
UnderlyingType: null
ValidationExceptionType: null
[... etc etc.]

Resolved global config
===========
UnderlyingType: null
ValidationExceptionType: null
[... etc etc.]

Targets
===========
CustomerId
SomethingElseId
SupplierId

*/

Last modified: 13 December 2024