grails - tell me if anything is dirty?

Question

Grails provides an isDirty method that can be called on domain objects. How would one modify the Grails domain model system, such that one could simply call a method, to find out if any domain objects are dirty.

I'm struggling with some "unsaved transient instance" errors that I haven't been able to nail down, and it'd be great to know what's dirty. Is there an elegant way to do this with groovy?

Answer 1

Add this to BootStrap.groovy:

import org.hibernate.Session

Session.metaClass.isDirty = { ->
   delegate.persistenceContext.entitiesByKey.values().any { it.isDirty() }
}

This adds an isDirty() method to Hibernate sessions that checks that top-level instances or instances in collections are dirty and you can use it with withSession, e.g.

boolean dirty = SomeDomainClass.withSession { session -> session.isDirty() }

or if you have access to the sessionFactory bean (e.g. from a def sessionFactory dependency injection)

boolean dirty = sessionFactory.currentSession.isDirty()

Answer 2

Based on Burt's answer, one might also do:

   Session.metaClass.whatsDirty = { ->
       def everythingDirty = []
       delegate.persistenceContext.entitiesByKey.values().each { if (it.isDirty()) everythingDirty.add(it) }
       return everythingDirty
    }