Releasing version 5.4.0

Author: LaunchDarklyCI

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -2,6 +2,20 @@
 
 All notable changes to the LaunchDarkly Java SDK will be documented in this file. This project adheres to [Semantic Versioning](http://semver.org).
 
+## [5.4.0] - 2021-04-22
+### Added:
+- Added the `alias` method to `LDClient`. This can be used to associate two user objects for analytics purposes with an alias event.
+- In `com.launchdarkly.sdk.json.LDGson`, added convenience methods `valueToJsonElement` and `valueMapToJsonElementMap` for applications that use Gson types.
+- In `com.launchdarkly.sdk.LDValue`, added convenience method `arrayOf()`.
+
+### Changed:
+- In `com.launchdarkly.sdk.json`, the implementations of `LDGson.typeAdapters` and `LDJackson.module` have been changed for better efficiency in deserialization. Instead of creating an intermediate string representation and re-parsing that, they now have a more direct way for the internal deserialization logic to interact with the streaming parser in the application's Gson or Jackson instance.
+
+### Fixed:
+- `Gson.toJsonTree` now works with LaunchDarkly types, as long as you have configured it as described in `com.launchdarkly.sdk.json.LDGson`. Previously, Gson was able to convert these types to and from JSON string data, but `toJsonTree` did not work due to a [known issue](https://github.com/google/gson/issues/1289) with the `JsonWriter.jsonValue` method; the SDK code no longer uses that method.
+- `LDValue.parse()` now returns `LDValue.ofNull()` instead of an actual null reference if the JSON string is `null`.
+- Similarly, when deserializing an `EvaluationDetail<LDValue>` from JSON, if the `value` property is `null`, it will now translate this into `LDValue.ofNull()` rather than an actual null reference.
+
 ## [5.3.1] - 2021-04-08
 ### Fixed:
 - Updated the `commons-codec` dependency from 1.10 to 1.15. There was a [known vulnerability](https://github.com/apache/commons-codec/commit/48b615756d1d770091ea3322eefc08011ee8b113) in earlier versions of `commons-codec`-- although it did not affect this SDK, since it involved base64 decoding, which is not a thing the SDK ever does.

gradle.properties

@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-version=5.3.1
+version=5.4.0
 # The following empty ossrh properties are used by LaunchDarkly's internal integration testing framework
 # and should not be needed for typical development purposes (including by third-party developers).
 ossrhUsername=

src/main/java/com/launchdarkly/sdk/server/Version.java

@@ -4,5 +4,5 @@ abstract class Version {
   private Version() {}
 
   // This constant is updated automatically by our Gradle script during a release, if the project version has changed
-  static final String SDK_VERSION = "5.3.0";
+  static final String SDK_VERSION = "5.4.0";
 }