Overriding dateCreated for testing in Grails

Question

Is there any way I can override the value of dateCreated field in my domain class without turning off auto timestamping?

I need to test controller and I ha

Answer 1

Getting a hold of the ClosureEventListener allows you to temporarily disable grails timestamping.

import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.servlet.GrailsApplicationAttributes
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate.cfg.GrailsAnnotationConfiguration
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate.support.ClosureEventTriggeringInterceptor
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.orm.hibernate.support.ClosureEventListener

class FluxCapacitorController {

    def backToFuture = {
        changeTimestamping(new Message(), false)
        Message m = new Message()
        m.dateCreated = new Date("11/5/1955")
        m.save(failOnError: true)
        changeTimestamping(new Message(), true)
    }

    private void changeTimestamping(Object domainObjectInstance, boolean shouldTimestamp) {
        GrailsWebApplicationContext applicationContext = servletContext.getAttribute(GrailsApplicationAttributes.APPLICATION_CONTEXT)
        GrailsAnnotationConfiguration configuration = applicationContext.getBean("&sessionFactory").configuration
        ClosureEventTriggeringInterceptor interceptor = configuration.getEventListeners().saveOrUpdateEventListeners[0]
        ClosureEventListener listener = interceptor.findEventListener(domainObjectInstance)
        listener.shouldTimestamp = shouldTimestamp
    }
}

There may be an easier way to get the applicationContext or Hibernate configuration but that worked for me when running the app. It does not work in an integration test, if anyone figures out how to do that let me know.

Update

For Grails 2 use eventTriggeringInterceptor

private void changeTimestamping(Object domainObjectInstance, boolean shouldTimestamp) {
    GrailsWebApplicationContext applicationContext = servletContext.getAttribute(GrailsApplicationAttributes.APPLICATION_CONTEXT)
    ClosureEventTriggeringInterceptor closureInterceptor = applicationContext.getBean("eventTriggeringInterceptor")
    HibernateDatastore datastore = closureInterceptor.datastores.values().iterator().next()
    EventTriggeringInterceptor interceptor = datastore.getEventTriggeringInterceptor()

    ClosureEventListener listener = interceptor.findEventListener(domainObjectInstance)
    listener.shouldTimestamp = shouldTimestamp
}