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 have to provide specific domain objects with specific creation date but GORM seems to override values I provide.

Edit

My classes look like this:

class Message {

    String content
    String title
    User author

    Date dateCreated
    Date lastUpdated

    static hasMany = [comments : Comment]

    static constraints = {
        content blank: false
        author nullable: false
        title nullable: false, blank: false
    }

    static mapping = {
        tablePerHierarchy false
        tablePerSubclass true
        content type: "text"
        sort dateCreated: 'desc'
    }
}

class BlogMessage extends Message{

    static belongsTo = [blog : Blog]

    static constraints = {
        blog nullable: false
    }

}

I'm using console to shorten things up. The problem which I encountered with Victor's approach is, when I write:

Date someValidDate = new Date() - (20*365)

BlogMessage.metaClass.setDateCreated = {
            Date d ->            
            delegate.@dateCreated = someValidDate
}

I get following exception:

groovy.lang.MissingFieldException: No such field: dateCreated for class: pl.net.yuri.league.blog.BlogMessage

When I tried

Message.metaClass.setDateCreated = {
                Date d ->            
                delegate.@dateCreated = someValidDate
}

Script goes well, but unfortunately dateCreated is not being altered.

Answer 1

I was having a similar issue, and was able to overwrite dateCreated for my domain (in a Quartz Job test, so no @TestFor annotation on the Spec, Grails 2.1.0) by

• Using the BuildTestData plugin (which we use regularly anyway, it is fantastic)
• Double-tapping the domain instance with save(flush:true)

For reference, my test:

import grails.buildtestdata.mixin.Build
import spock.lang.Specification
import groovy.time.TimeCategory

@Build([MyDomain])
class MyJobSpec extends Specification {

    MyJob job

    def setup() {
        job = new MyJob()
    }

    void "test execute fires my service"() {
        given: 'mock service'
            MyService myService = Mock()
            job.myService = myService

        and: 'the domains required to fire the job'
            Date fortyMinutesAgo
            use(TimeCategory) {
                fortyMinutesAgo = 40.minutes.ago
            }

            MyDomain myDomain = MyDomain.build(stringProperty: 'value')
            myDomain.save(flush: true) // save once, let it write dateCreated as it pleases
            myDomain.dateCreated = fortyMinutesAgo
            myDomain.save(flush: true) // on the double tap we can now persist dateCreated changes

        when: 'job is executed'
            job.execute()

        then: 'my service should be called'
            1 * myService.someMethod()
    }
}

Answer 2

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
}

Answer 3

I got this working by simply setting the field. The trick was to do that after the domain object has been saved first. I assume that the dateCreated timestamp is set on save and not on object creation.

Something along these lines

class Message {
  String content
  Date dateCreated
}

// ... and in test class

def yesterday = new Date() - 1
def m = new Message( content: 'hello world' )
m.save( flush: true )
m.dateCreated = yesterday
m.save( flush: true )

Using Grails 2.3.6