Provide some kind of "Retrieve" or "Sample" method, which returns one of the objects *already* built by a builder about teststack.dossier HOT 4 OPEN

Are there any scenarios that this lights up that you can't do with .BuildList() followed by a LINQ extension method to grab a random item? If not then it seems like, while it's useful, it's an orthogonal concern of the library?

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If the builder has been used to construct several different objects, it could be more difficult. It's all doable, but it's overhead / boilerplate, whereas this library is meant (as I interpret it) to eliminate as much of that as possible.

Something that isn't as simple as .BuildList() and .Random() would be the tree example I gave. In that case, you're explicitly ensuring that everything generated is parented to something generated before it. Without this, you'd have to do something like:

    var nodes = Builder<OrgUnit>.CreateListOfSize(1000).BuildList();
    var workingSet = new List<OrgUnit>();
    workingSet.Add(nodes.First());
    foreach(var node in nodes)
    {
        node.Parent = workingSet.PickRandom();
        workingSet.Add(node);
    }

Yes, it's doable, but it seems to me to fit nicely within the concerns of the library: Reducing the burden of creating data for testing purposes.

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Ah yeah, fair enough.

I'll be honest I'm still a bit confused about what's going on in that code, but if you have a PoC to push up as a pull request then maybe it will make more sense?

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Sure, I'll do so when I get off work today.

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