dev/core#2587 Ignore modified_date when checking for changes during mailing auto-save

[rthouvenin]

Overview

Prevents double auto-save at each modification of a mailing in the mailing editor.
https://lab.civicrm.org/dev/core/-/issues/2587

Before

Whenever a mailing or A/B mailing is modified in the editor, the auto-save is triggered twice: once because the mailing was modified, once because after the first save the modified date of the local object does not match the one of the server response (because the server overwrote its value).

After

The modified date is ignored in the comparison for the auto-save, so that the second unnecessary save does not happen.

Technical Details

The suggestion of the issue on how to implement the fix does not work because the model is not a single object, but a list of objects (mailing(s), optional ab mailing, attachments). The autoSave controller is generic and is agnostic of the structure of the model, so finding and ignoring the modified date could not happen there. This is why instead I chose to edit the model before giving it to the autoSave controller. As far as I can see this affects only the autoSave.

Comments

When testing the fix, you may notice that the autoSave still happens twice, but only for the first time it is triggered. I found out this is another unrelated bug, due to the schedule date being set to empty string or null depending on whether it comes from initialisation or server response. I didn't chase this bug further.

[civibot]

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[eileenmcnaughton]

@colemanw are you able to take a look at this one?

[demeritcowboy]

This seems to run ok and I can see it prevents calling save twice and I don't see any side effects. Going to put merge ready.