[Bug]: Transform meta classes (subclass of BaseTransformMeta) no longer support "String getXml()" and "void loadXml(...)" for xml serializing

[fskorgen]

Apache Hop version?

2.18

Java version?

21

Operating system

Windows

What happened?

The following functions are marked with @deprecated(since = "2.10.0", forRemoval = false) :
BaseTransformMeta:: String getXml() throws HopException
BaseTransformMeta:: void loadXml(Node transformNode, IHopMetadataProvider metadataProvider) throws HopXmlException

In the latest 2.18 SNAPSHOT this function are not called anymore.

We have 15-20 tranforms plugins where XML serializing do not work anymore.
Will support for manuall XML serializing be removed in 2.18 ?

The getXml() and loadXml( ..) functions are called when using copy/paste, but not when Pipelines are loaded and saved.

Issue Priority

Priority: 3

Issue Component

Component: Transforms

[hansva]

@mattcasters, it might have been a bit too aggressive to remove these at this point in time.
But yes, we recommend migrating to the annotations as soon as possible.

[fskorgen]

Hi! Thanks for the feedback.

One of the reasons we still use the old void loadXml(...) function is that we have legacy plugins with 10–15 years of metadata history (versioning). This makes it much easier to handle mapping and transition between versions without breaking compatibility.

Frank

[hansva]

It will be removed at some point. I personally would also like to move to a more friendly format like YAML for the pipeline definitions. Though it hasn't been discussed yet I feel that format will be more friendly for GIT revisions and more human readable

[mattcasters]

I think it's fair enough to call the legacy plugins code. It should only be a few lines of code.
Maybe we can somehow detect the property annotations in the transform/action plugins and if we don't see any annotations call the old methods.

[hansva]

.take-issue

[mattcasters]

The thing is that it all the other code that made the pipeline loading messy, not specifically the transforms metadata. Just make sure to call the old XML first so that the transforms can be looked up in the hops and error handling.