[v9]: Not possible to remove information in beforeSend (make SentryEvent and related classes mutable)

[ColinSchmale]

Platform

Flutter Web

Obfuscation

Enabled

Debug Info

Enabled

Doctor

Version

8.12.0

Steps to Reproduce

Use options.beforeSend to override a value like this:

await Sentry.init((options) {
  options.beforeSend = (event, hint) {
    return event.copyWith(serverName: null); // Don't send server names.
  };
});

Expected Result

The value is not sent (or null).

Actual Result

The value is sent and not null.

This is what the documentation says about how to remove information:

await Sentry.init((options) {
  options.beforeSend = (event, hint) {
    return event.copyWith(serverName: null); // Don't send server names.
  };
});

but when you take a look at the code, this cannot work:

  final String? serverName;

  @override
  SentryEvent copyWith({
    String? serverName,
  }) =>
      SentryEvent(
        serverName: serverName ?? this.serverName,

Replacing the geo object with an empty geo object does also not work. It seems that the data is overwritten afterwards.

await Sentry.init((options) {
  options.beforeSend = (event, hint) {
    return event.copyWith(
        user: event.user?.copyWith(
        geo: SentryGeo(),
      ),
    );
  };
});

What I ended up doing was masking the city value like this:

await Sentry.init((options) {
  options.beforeSend = (event, hint) {
    return event.copyWith(
        user: event.user?.copyWith(
        geo: SentryGeo(city: '****'),
      ),
    );
  };
});

Related to #980

Are you willing to submit a PR?

None

[buenaflor]

hi, thanks for raising this. we'll look into this and see how we can provide an option to make this possible

[buenaflor]

@ColinSchmale I believe setting it to an empty string "" also does the trick

[ColinSchmale]

**** is also fine for me.

I mostly created this issue because the code in the documentation is wrong and maybe to also get some information why this happens and if my solution is okay.

[buenaflor]

yeah we gotta update the docs definitely

it's been like this way before my time but afaict it is intended that way. so your method is right, setting null won't do anything you have to set it to some value e.g empty string or how you did it

I don't think it's ideal from a dx perspective but let's see what we can do there

[buenaflor]

Since there is no practical use for having these immutable we've decided to refactor these into mutable data classes for the next major v9