autoPopulate set to false ignored for create/update response

System Information
  • Strapi Version: 3.1.5
  • Operating System:
  • Database: MongoDB
  • Node Version:
  • NPM Version:
  • Yarn Version:

When setting the “autoPopulate” flag to false in my model, it works as expected for all finders and delete responses. A user relation attribute defined in my model and on which the flag was set, is not populated, only the key field of the user is returned inside the response
On the other hand, when creating new or updating content, the response does contain the full user object.
How come?

Hi All,
I would be happy

  1. to know if this really is an inconsistency in Strapi or something that is supposed to work like this and I missed it in the documentation and
  2. to get a pointer of how to best override the behaviour of create/update to as well NOT return the populated relations. The least intrusive fix, preferably preventing all the not wanted loading of relations in the first place and not simply removing them after the DB loading before the response is returned.
    Thanks everybody