Feature: Passing non entity value from one fixture to others

[remi-blaise]

Hello!

Here is my use case: I want to pass a list of references from AFixture to BFixture.
For now I'm forced to make a loop:

// in AFixture.php
foreach ($skills as $key => $skill) {
    $this->addReference('skill-' . $key, $skill);
}

Thus, I made a loop too for recovering the data:

// BFixture.php
$skills = [];
for ($i=0; $i < $nbOfRegisteredSkills; $i++) {
    $skills[] = $this->getReference('skill-' . $i);
}

There is one problem: I have no mean to get $nbOfRegisteredSkills, as I can't pass integer.

For now, I'm using a global variable:

// AFixture.php
$GLOBALS['count_skills'] = count($skills);

// BFixture.php
$skills = [];
for ($i=0; $i < $GLOBALS['count_skills'] - 3; $i++) {
    $skills[] = $this->getReference('skill-' . $i);
}

So it would be very usefull to be able to pass every type of data, especially integers and entities lists.
We could for exemple replace Doctrine\Bundle\FixturesBundle\Fixture::addReference/implement a new method accepting any kind of data.

What do you think about that?

Best regards,
Zzortell