Add [IgnorePropertyAttribute] that ignores a property when generating CRDs or support TimeSpan properties

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe. I’d like to add TimeSpan properties my custom resource spec and status properties. This isn’t supported out of the box:

[KubeOps.Operator.Errors.CrdConversionException]: During conversion of the property "Spec" with type "TaskSpec", an error occured. [inner:KubeOps.Operator.Errors.CrdConversionException: During conversion of the property "RetentionTime" with type "TimeSpan", an error occured.]

I was hoping to define TimeSpan properties with a type converter that converted to/from GOLANG duration format, but TimeSpan isn’t supported at all.

As a workaround, I thought I could define the CRD properties as strings and then add hidden properties that did the conversion to/from the string properties, something like:

public class MySpec
{
    public string Timeout { get; set;}

    [IgnoreProperty]
    public TimeSpan TimeoutTimeSpan
    {
        get => GoDuration.Parse(Timeout);
        set => Timeout = GoDuration.FromTimeSpan(value).ToString();
    }
}

This wouldn’t actually be too bad, but KubeOps has no [IgnoreProperty] attribute that I can see.

My next workaround is to add GetTimeout() and SetTimeout() methods (not horrible, but feels like Java).

Describe the solution you’d like

1. Ideally, KubeOps could handle TimeSpan properties natively by parsing GOLANG style durations
2. Add and implement an [IgnoreProperty] attribute

[jefflill]

I agree. I just re-read the API conventions and they explicitly say it’s best to encode durations as seconds or something rather than requiring that programs in other languages be able to parse golang durations.

[buehler]

While that may be true, I’d like to stick to the standard. When we diverge from the standards that are implemented in Kubernetes, every change from K8S may result in a break.

I think the Ignore and Converter attributes are the way to go.