Impex Export: Colon in multivalue attribute is escaped by double backslash - How to remove this behavior?

[geffchang]

Hybris: 6.3.0.0-SNAPSHOT (the behavior is the same with 6.3.0.21)

When exporting impex, we noticed a difference when exporting a non-multivalue Type attribute versus exporting a multivalue Type attribute.

When exporting data without colon, a non-multivalue attribute can be exported as Experts, while a multivalue attribute can be exported as Experts|Hybris.

When exporting data with colons (e.g. URL), the colon is escaped with a double backslash (for multivalue only). A non-multivalue attribute can be exported as https://experts.hybris.com, while a multivale attribute can be exported as https\\://experts.hybris.com if there is only 1 value or as https\\://experts.hybris.com|https\\://help.hybris.com if there are 2 values.

How can I stop the export from escaping the colon? Is there a method I can override to change this behavior? I would like to change the result to https://experts.hybris.com|https://help.hybris.com or to "https://experts.hybris.com"|"https://help.hybris.com".

Business Case: We want to copy the URL from the exported impex, but the URL contains double backslashes. The exported impex is not meant to be reimported.

[geffchang · Accepted solution]

For this specific case, I created a new translator, extending AbstractValueTranslator. Then, I implemented the exportValue method, joining the string data (which are URLs), without escaping them.

 public String exportValue(final Object value) throws JaloInvalidParameterException
 {
     String joinedString = "";
     if (value instanceof Collection)
     {
         final Collection valueCollection = (Collection) value;
         if (!valueCollection.isEmpty())
         {
             final ArrayList<CustomType> list = (ArrayList<CustomType>) valueCollection;
             final StringJoiner joiner = new StringJoiner("|");
             for (final CustomType customType : list)
             {
                 // data is a URL
                 joiner.add(customType.getData());
             }
             joinedString = joiner.toString();
         }
     }

     return joinedString;
 }

Reference:

• Customization: https://help.hybris.com/1808/hcd/ef51040168d743879c015b7de232ce40.html