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).

Answer 1

You could look for the memento pattern

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.

Answer 3

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