Include or exclude properties for comparison

[ClaudioNazareth]

Hello! I'll try to illustrate my problem. (Sorry for my bad english)

I need to compare two complex objects before upgrading them for logging the differences. To avoid errors like LazyInitializationException or having to carry all my lazy lists, i need to select which attributes should compare.

I saw the anotation @ObjectDiffProperty(excluded = true) but i can not use it in my project. Is there any annotation to mark a property as compare, in which the properties unannotated not be compared?

If I have an entity called USER who has a list of addresses. The address has several fields and I need exclude or include some of these fields. I tried as follows:

final ObjectDifferBuilder builder = ObjectDifferBuilder.startBuilding();
builder.inclusion().include().node(NodePath.with("addresses","streed"));
or
builder.inclusion().exclude().node(NodePath.with("addresses","number"));
final DiffNode node = builder.build().compare(user2, user1);
node.visit(new PrintingVisitor(usuario2, usuario1));

But that did not work.

I have make any mistakes?

Thx for help

[SQiShER]

Hi! I assume addresses is some kind of Collection, right? In that case the NodePath in your example is missing the selector matching the item in the collection. And there is the problem. Node paths are meant to be very specific, in order to uniquely identify nodes in the graph. Unfortunately you don't want to be specific for your use case. You rather want to say something like:

ObjectDifferBuilder.startBuilding()
    .inclusion().include().properties(Address.class, "street", "city"/*, ... */);

Does that sound about right? The good news is, I'd like to have that feature as well. The bad news is, it's not yet implemented.

Out of interest, why doesn't the annotation work for you?

[ClaudioNazareth]

Hi. Thanks for response and again sorry for my bad english.

If I use annotation, whenever a new property (lazy) is added to my entity, I have to put anotation or remember to load the list or my code will broken.

Ideally would be to include fields by annotation, new attributes in this case would not be problem.

What do you think about @ObjectDiffProperty(inclued = true) ? Is it hard to implement?

Thx again.

[SQiShER]

Hey, sounds good. I started working on it on this branch. The version on the branch is already working, albeit only via Configuration API and not annotation. Plus there are still some red tests. But at least it's a nice proof of concept. Annotations require some additional work, but I'll add that too.

[SQiShER]

The ATs in this file show you how to use it.

[ClaudioNazareth]

Hi, thanks again. I will try.

What do you think about put in your builder a space for inclusion of listener? Thus enabling the extension of your code. Something like:
DiffNode compare = ObjectDifferBuilder
.startBuilding()
.addAcceptObjectListener(new AnnotationAcceptObjectListener()).build()
.compare(new ClasseA("A"), new ClasseA("B"));

I can implement my annotation and allows me and other users to include several features. I think it would be a great improvement to the framework.

[ClaudioNazareth]

Hi!! I try your new build and it's works perfectly. Thanks so much

[SQiShER]

Great! I'm happy to hear that! Did you see the changes I pushed to the branch yesterday? Now there is also an inclusion property on the ObjectDiffProperty annotation, which can be used as an alternative to the configuration API approach.

I'll do some polishing over the weekend and try to make a new release soon as possible.