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• Comparison: Values of different types will now be compared via equals method instead of causing an exception. #162
• DiffNode: DiffNodes now return all configured categories instead of just the ones fron the annotation. #160
• Introspection: The StandardIntrospector will now only be created when needed, so platforms like Android (where java.beans.Introspector is not available) can easily provide alternative implementations. #158
• Maintenance: Fully replaced TestNG, Mockito and FestAssert with Spock.
• Maintenance: Added Eclipse files to .gitignore #153
• Maintenance: Fixed typo in JavaDoc of CircularReferenceConfigurer #154

Big thanks to @jlsalmon, @scompo, @simplysoft & @PascalSchumacher for your contributions!

• Fixes a memory leak when the ObjectDiffer throws an exception

• Comparison: The ObjectDifferBuilder now provides new configuration outlet called identity

  This allows for providing a custom strategy to establish the identity of collection items base on something other than the equals method. That's especially useful when you have no control over the items equals and hashCode methods.

  However, it's a brand-new feature and there may be some corner-cases that have not yet been anticipated. If you run into any trouble using this feature, please feel free to open a ticket in the issue tracker.

  Many thanks to @NagyGa1 for his help on this feature.

• Comparison: Fixed a concurrency issue when sharing the ObjectDiffer between multiple threads. (Thanks @tacoo)

This is just a small feature release, without any breaking changes.

Features

• DiffNode: Allow for checking field level annotations (Thanks @NagyGa1) [#134]

Improvements

• Comparison: Enable ComparableComparisonStrategy for more types

  Up until now this strategy only applied to BigDecimals. It has now been extended to automatically apply to all simple types that implement java.lang.Comparable.

  The list of types that qualify as simple has also been extended. It now looks as follows:

  • all primitive types (int, short, byte, etc.)
  • all primitive wrapper types (Integer, Short, Byte, etc.)
  • enums
  • subclasses of:
    • java.math.BigDecimal
    • java.math.BigInteger
    • java.lang.CharSequence
    • java.util.Calendar
    • java.util.Date
  • java.lang.Class
  • java.net.URI
  • java.net.URL
  • java.util.Locale
  • java.util.UUID

  Of course this behaviour can be overriden via configuration API or property annotations.

  To make comparison via compareTo more reliable, from now on compareTo will be invoked on the working and the base object and both will be considered equal if either one of this comparisons returns true.

• Comparison: Dates are now compared via compareTo method to workaround the strictness of java.util.Date's equals method, which only returns true for other java.util.Dates, but not for extending classes like java.sql.Date. [#85]

• DiffNode: Replaced some constructors with factory methods to better express their intentions.

• Utilities: Removed some unused collection utility methods.

• Tests: Migrated many, many more tests from TestNG to Spock.

• Tests: Upgraded to Groovy 2.3 and Spock 1.0.

Features

• Inclusion: Implemented a mechanism to control the inclusion of properties of specific object types.
• Inclusion: Implemented a mechanism to register custom inclusion resolvers to support inclusion rules far beyond the built-in ones.
• Introspection: Implemented a mechanism to register a custom instance factory, which is used by DiffNode#canonicalSet in order to create instances of missing objects

Improvements

• Inclusion: Performance improvements (Thanks @Deipher)
• Inclusion: InclusionService has been split into several InclusionResolvers
• DiffNode: canonicalSet now automatically creates missing objects along the path to the root object

Bugfixes

• Circular Reference Detection: Fixed 'Detected inconsistency in enter/leave sequence. Must always be LIFO.' bug that could occur due to inconsistent cleanup of the instance memory when a circular reference has been detected.

This version breaks API-compatibility with the previous versions, but comes with a much more powerful and intuitive configuration API and builds a strong foundation for the future of this library.

What's new?

• Fluent and more consistent configuration API
• Designed for extensibility
• Added more ways to configure the ObjectDiffer without changing the underlying objects
• Custom Differs to make it easier to add missing features like array diffing
• Custom ComparisonStrategies to configure different ways how objects are compared
• Custom Introspectors to allow advanced introspection (e.g. extracting annotations of interfaces)
• Modular configuration to make it easier to add new features
• Configuration possible on types, categories and property paths
• Less insane package structure (only a small amount of unavoidable, fluent API-related tangles left)
• Added lots of acceptance tests written in Spock to serve as living examples
• Migrated lots of tests from TestNG to Spock (still many more to go...)
• I tried to add more JavaDoc comments to public methods, but there are still many, many more that would benefit from good comments. However, I hope the fluent API is self-explanatory enough, so the lack of documentation isn't all that bad

This version breaks API-compatibility with the previous versions, but comes with a much more powerful and intuitive configuration API and builds a strong foundation for the future of this library.

Until the release of the final version, I cannot guarantee, that the API won't change in some places, so please only upgrade, when you're willing to deal with that. Otherwise please stick with version 0.13.1 until then.

What's new?

• Fluent and more consistent configuration API
• Designed for extensibility
• Added more ways to configure the ObjectDiffer without changing the underlying objects
• Custom Differs to make it easier to add missing features like array diffing
• Custom ComparisonStrategies to configure different ways how objects are compared
• Custom Introspectors to allow advanced introspection (e.g. extracting annotations of interfaces)
• Modular configuration to make it easier to add new features
• Configuration possible on types, categories and property paths
• Less insane package structure (only a small amount of unavoidable, fluent API-related tangles left)
• Added lots of acceptance tests written in Spock to serve as living examples
• Migrated lots of tests from TestNG to Spock (still many more to go...)
• I tried to add more JavaDoc comments to public methods, but there are still many, many more that would benefit from good comments. However, I hope the fluent API is self-explanatory enough, so the lack of documentation isn't all that bad