What would be the best way to implement change tracking on an object

You can implement the IChangeTracking or IRevertibleChangeTracking interfaces, now included in .NET Standard 2.0.

Implementation is as follows:

IChangeTracking:

class Entity : IChangeTracking
{
  string _FirstName;
  public string FirstName
  {
    get => _FirstName;
    set
    {
      if (_FirstName != value)
      {
        _FirstName = value;
        IsChanged = true;
      }
    }
  }

  string _LastName;
  public string LastName
  {
    get => _LastName;
    set
    {
      if (_LastName != value)
      {
        _LastName = value;
        IsChanged = true;
      }
    }
  }

  public bool IsChanged { get; private set; }    
  public void AcceptChanges() => IsChanged = false;
}

IRevertibleChangeTracking:

class Entity : IRevertibleChangeTracking
{
  Dictionary<string, object> _Values = new Dictionary<string, object>();

  string _FirstName;
  public string FirstName
  {
    get => _FirstName;
    set
    {
      if (_FirstName != value)
      {
        if (!_Values.ContainsKey(nameof(FirstName)))
          _Values[nameof(FirstName)] = _FirstName;
        _FirstName = value;
        IsChanged = true;
      }
    }
  }

  string _LastName;
  public string LastName
  {
    get => _LastName;
    set
    {
      if (_LastName != value)
      {
        if (!_Values.ContainsKey(nameof(LastName)))
          _Values[nameof(LastName)] = _LastName;
        _LastName = value;
        IsChanged = true;
      }
    }
  }

  public bool IsChanged { get; private set; }

  public void RejectChanges()
  {
    foreach (var property in _Values)
      GetType().GetRuntimeProperty(property.Key).SetValue(this, property.Value);
    AcceptChanges();
  }

  public void AcceptChanges()
  {
    _Values.Clear();
    IsChanged = false;
  }
}

Another option, which I like the most, is to use a change tracking library, such as TrackerDog, that generates all the boilerplate code for you, while just need to provide POCO entities.

There are more ways to achieve this if you don't want to implement all the properties by hand. One option is to use a weaving library, such as Fody.PropertyChanged and Fody.PropertyChanging, and handle the change methods to cache old values and track object state. Another option is to have the object's graph stored as MD5 or some other hash, and reset it upon any change, you might be surprised, but if you don't expect zillion changes and if you request it only on demand, it can work really fast.

Here is an example implementation (Note: requires Json.NET and Fody/PropertyChanged:

[AddINotifyPropertyChangedInterface]
class Entity : IChangeTracking
{
  public string UserName { get; set; }
  public string LastName { get; set; }

  public bool IsChanged { get; private set; }

    string hash;
  string GetHash()
  {
    if (hash == null)
      using (var md5 = MD5.Create())
      using (var stream = new MemoryStream())
      using (var writer = new StreamWriter(stream))
      {
        _JsonSerializer.Serialize(writer, this);
        var hash = md5.ComputeHash(stream);
        this.hash = Convert.ToBase64String(hash);
      }
    return hash;
  }

  string acceptedHash;
  public void AcceptChanges() => acceptedHash = GetHash();

  static readonly JsonSerializer _JsonSerializer = CreateSerializer();
  static JsonSerializer CreateSerializer()
  {
    var serializer = new JsonSerializer();
    serializer.Converters.Add(new EmptyStringConverter());
    return serializer;
  }

  class EmptyStringConverter : JsonConverter
  {
    public override bool CanConvert(Type objectType) 
      => objectType == typeof(string);

    public override object ReadJson(JsonReader reader,
      Type objectType,
      object existingValue,
      JsonSerializer serializer)
      => throw new NotSupportedException();

    public override void WriteJson(JsonWriter writer, 
      object value,
      JsonSerializer serializer)
    {
      if (value is string str && str.All(char.IsWhiteSpace))
        value = null;

      writer.WriteValue(value);
    }

    public override bool CanRead => false;  
  }   
}

To do this you can't really use automatic getter & setters, and you need to set IsDirty in each setter.

I generally have a "setProperty" generic method that takes a ref parameter, the property name and the new value. I call this in the setter, allows a single point where I can set isDirty and raise Change notification events e.g.

protected bool SetProperty<T>(string name, ref T oldValue, T newValue) where T : System.IComparable<T>
    {
        if (oldValue == null || oldValue.CompareTo(newValue) != 0)
        {
            oldValue = newValue;
            PropertyChanged?.Invoke(this, new System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
            isDirty = true;
            return true;
        }
        return false;
    }
// For nullable types
protected void SetProperty<T>(string name, ref Nullable<T> oldValue, Nullable<T> newValue) where T : struct, System.IComparable<T>
{
    if (oldValue.HasValue != newValue.HasValue || (newValue.HasValue && oldValue.Value.CompareTo(newValue.Value) != 0))
    {
        oldValue = newValue;
        PropertyChanged?.Invoke(this, new System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs(name));
    }
}

Tags:

C#

.Net