What are some design patterns for doing version control of an object?

Question

What are some design patterns for keeping a history of an object as it changes. I don't need anything as heavy duty as event sourcing, just the ability to save past versions when a specific event happens (in this case when a print form button is pressed).

Flense

Answer 1

You could look for the memento pattern

Waddington

Answer 2

This sounds isomorphic to tracking undo information. The usual pattern for this is a variant of the Command pattern: you keep a queue in time order of previous states, with an operation to restore to the previous state.

Leekgreen

The difference is that the history itself is persisted whereas with undo info you don't need anything of the sort. – Flense

Answer 3

I suggest you have a look at Martin Fowler's temporal patterns: http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaDev/timeNarrative.html

Orangery