Add ability to disable tracking on desired properties

[mattbrailsford]

I know in #18 it was asked if there was a way to ignore certain members, but I think it would be a handy feature, so I'm raising a new issue to discuss how this could be implemented. I'm happy to contribute, but I'm pretty new to the source so could do with some guidance on where / how this could be done.

I have 2 ideas, 1 being that you add an option to the AsTrackable to ignore non-virtual properties. This way one could just disable tracking by making it non-virtual. This does have a problem though if you have a base class you want to allow properties to be overridden on though so option 2 is to introduce a DoNoTrackChangesAttribute that can be added to properties to signify that this property shouldn't be tracked.

I think you could introduce both, but if you just wanted 1 solution that would work, I think the attribute is the better option.

As I say, I'd be happy to contribute this feature, I'd just like to ask for some guidance on where this would get added in the code (I'm still trying to figure things out).

Matt

[mattbrailsford]

Hmm, could this be as simple as adding a check for the attribute on the property inside CanCollectionBeTrackable and CanComplexPropertyBeTrackable? Or are there other areas I would need to consider?

[mattbrailsford]

Ahh, no, appears you need more in order to prevent it firing events. I do have something working whereby all property interceptors check before triggering events whether the property should be tracked, and if not just call invocation.Proceed(); and technically all the unit tests pass, but I'm not sure if over all behavior is right. I'll need to write some more unit tests to check.

[joelweiss]

If you don't mind test if ec2ea2e5 will work in your scenario.

[joelweiss]

To exlude a property from being tracked, apply the DoNoTrack attribute to the property or to the the property class.

public class Order
{
    [DoNoTrack]
    public virtual Address Address { get; set; }

    //will not be tracked bacause the Lead class is marked [DoNotTrack].
    public virtual Lead Lead { get; set; }
}

[DoNoTrack]
public class Lead
{
    public virtual int LeadId { get; set; }
}

[robertmclaws]

Is that Attribute supposed to be DoNotTrack?

[joelweiss]

Is that Attribute supposed to be DoNotTrack?

Yes