Saving a VLANGroup without changes creates a new changelog entry

[pheus]

NetBox Edition

NetBox Community

NetBox Version

v4.4.2

Python Version

3.12

Steps to Reproduce

1. Navigate to IPAM → VLAN Groups; create a VLAN group (or open an existing one).
2. In VLAN ID Ranges, enter a value such as 100-200, 300-300 and click Save.
3. Reopen the same VLAN group, do not change any fields, and click Save again.
4. Open the object’s Changelog tab (or Other → Change Log) and filter by this object.

Expected Behavior

No new changelog entry should be created if no fields were changed.

Observed Behavior

A new changelog entry is recorded on each save, even when the form or API payload is identical in meaning. The difference appears isolated to vid_ranges and stems from representation drift:

• UI/forms (and CSV import) return inclusive ranges (e.g., NumericRange(lo, hi, bounds='[]')).
• PostgreSQL int4range canonicalizes to half‑open [lo, hi) on round‑trip.
• Change logging compares serialized pre/post snapshots textually, so these representations don’t match even though the set of VLAN IDs is unchanged.

[pheus]

Context: inclusive vs half‑open ranges

For discrete ranges (VLAN IDs), users naturally think in inclusive terms: 10–20 means VLANs 10 through 20. NetBox’s UI modeling follows this mental model and yields inclusive NumericRange(lo, hi, bounds='[]').

PostgreSQL, however, uses a canonical representation for discrete range types (e.g., int4range): lower‑inclusive, upper‑exclusive [lo, hi). On read‑back, values may be returned in this canonical form regardless of how they were written. The two representations are set‑equivalent ([10,20] equals [10,21) for integers), but their textual form differs.

NetBox’s change logging records pre‑ and post‑change snapshots and diffs them textually. If the pre‑snapshot (DB‑derived) uses canonical [) while the post‑snapshot (form/API‑derived) uses inclusive [], a change can be recorded even when the set of VLAN IDs didn’t actually change.

Suggestion:
Normalize on input: Convert incoming vid_ranges to the same canonical form used for storage (half‑open [lo, hi)) before the object is saved and snapshot is taken, so in‑memory state matches the DB snapshot.

Minimal code changes (two places):

• utilities.data.string_to_ranges

  values.append(NumericRange(int(lower), int(upper) + 1, bounds='[)'))

• netbox.api.fields.IntegerRangeSerializer

  return NumericRange(data[0], data[1] + 1, bounds='[)')

[pheus]

I’d like to contribute this fix. Could you please assign the issue to me? Thanks!