Order of relationship vs navigation configuration when using ApplyConfigurationsFromAssembly

[vflame]

There are times when we have to define the same relationship in two places (when we use ApplyConfigurationsFromAssembly) since the order of applying IEntityTypeConfiguration matters.

When we explicitly control the order of configuration, it works as expected (e.g., explicitly configured in ApplicationDbContext.cs OnModelCreating).

But if we using something like the following two config classes, the order in which the configuration is applied can cause the navigation not found exception to be thrown if PaymentConfiguration was applied before OrderConfiguration.

public class PaymentConfiguration : IEntityTypeConfiguration<Payment>
{
    public void Configure(EntityTypeBuilder<Payment> builder)
    {
        //navigation not found exception thrown
        builder.Navigation("_order").AutoInclude();
    }
}

public class OrderConfiguration : IEntityTypeConfiguration<Order>
{
    public void Configure(EntityTypeBuilder<Order> builder)
    {
       builder.HasMany<Payment>("_payments").WithOne("_order");
    }
}

Ideally, the order of applying configuration should not matter as long as the relationship is fully defined at some point.

[ajcvickers]

@vflame Why not define the relationship in PaymentConfiguration?

builder.HasOne<Order>("_order").WithMany("_payments");
builder.Navigation("_order").AutoInclude();

[vflame]

@vflame Why not define the relationship in PaymentConfiguration?

builder.HasOne<Order>("_order").WithMany("_payments");
builder.Navigation("_order").AutoInclude();

That's what we resorted to doing. Just wanted to point out this behavior and how order of applying configs matters when ideally it shouldn't. (e.g., all navigations configs are applied after relationship configs are applied) after scanning all assemblies.

[ajcvickers]

@AndriySvyryd I can't find an issue for ordering the configurations.

[AndriySvyryd]

Duplicate of #22035