Specify ignored properties without annotations

[ctmay4]

Currently, you can ignore properties for comparisons using the @DiffIgnore annotation. There are times when you want to track history for entities which you do not have the ability to annotate. It would be very helpful if you can programmatically give a list of properties to ignore when committing changes.

[bartoszwalacik]

I can see two ways for solving this problem.

Lets say we have an Entity

public class MyEntity {
  ...
  private NotInterestingType someProperty;
}

One way is to register a type as ignored. All properties with that type in all classes would be ignored:

javers().registerIgnoredType(NotInterestingType.class).build();

Second way (fine grained), register concrete property as ignored:

javers().registerIgnoredProperty(MyEntity.class, "someProperty").build();

Second approach gives you full control but more configuration. I think that first approach would be better (less and type safe configuration)

[ctmay4]

I think I would argue the second solution is superior. What if my class had 2 properties that returned the same entity. One I want to track, the other I did not. Your first solution would not solve that while the second one would.

[bartoszwalacik]

Hi Chuck,
check 1.0.6-SNAPSHOT (from https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots/)

usage example (Spock):

    def "should ignore properties"() {
        given:
        def javers = JaversBuilder.javers().registerEntity(DummyUser, "name", ["surname"]).build()

        when:
        def user1 = new DummyUser("Lord", "Smith")
        def user2 = new DummyUser("Lord", "Garmadon")

        def diff = javers.compare(user1, user2)

        then:
        ! diff.changes
    }

[ctmay4]

Great. I'll run some tests this week.

[ctmay4]

I just ran some tests are everything looks good from my end. One suggestion I would have is that there are currently 2 versions of registerEntity:

public JaversBuilder registerEntity(Class<?> entityClass);
public JaversBuilder registerEntity(Class<?> entityClass, String idPropertyName, List<String> ignoredProperties);

If I want to register an entity but don't care about ignored properties, I have to pass null as the third parameter. Seems like an easy call through to add

public JaversBuilder registerEntity(Class<?> entityClass, String idPropertyName);

That is a very minor nitpick and it works fine as it is.

I did come across an issue/question about comparisons, but since this issue seems to be complete, I will option another issue for that. Thanks again.

[bartoszwalacik]

Interesting, we had similar doubts on Code Review, You are right, passing null as an argument is not nice.

I've changed the API to:

 public JaversBuilder registerEntity(Class<?> entityClass);
 public JaversBuilder registerEntity(EntityDefinition entityDefinition);

and EntityDefinition has constructors for both cases (with and without ignored properties)

I've just pushed new 1.0.6-SNAPSHOT to Sonatype, check it out.
1.0.6 release will be available in one or two days

[ctmay4]

Sounds like a good plan, but the SNAPSHOT has that second registerEntity method as private:

    private JaversBuilder registerEntity(EntityDefinition entityDefinition) {
        clientsClassDefinitions.add(entityDefinition);
        return this;
    }

[bartoszwalacik]

looks like you have a stale snapshot, nevermind, I've just released 1.0.6 to sonatype, tomorrow morning it will be in maven central