Summary

Allows performing additional validations on Grails domain objects at runtime. Adds an overloaded validate(Closure extraConstraints) method to every domain class.

Installation

Include the plugin in BuildConfig.groovy:

plugins {
    compile ":extra-runtime-validation:0.1"
}

or if you are somehow old school and like deprecated features:

grails install-plugin extra-runtime-validation

Usage

Typical scenario

Given

a domain class Author with a nullable firstName field:

class Author {
    String firstName
    String lastName

    static constraints = {
        firstName nullable: true
        lastName blank: false
    }
}

When

we want to validate that the firstName is neither null nor blank (as required by a specific use case).

Then

validate the domain object with the standard validate method:

anAuthor.validate()

And

perform some additional validations with extra constraints:

anAuthor.validate {
	firstName nullable: false, blank: false
}

And

do something with validation errors.

Unit testing

The plugin doesn't provide a direct support for mocking the validate(Closure). The reason behind this is that the plugin should remain compatible with both Grails 1.3 and 2.x (which implement mocking in a different way).

However, the plugin includes a helper method ValidationUtils.addValidateWithExtraConstraints(Object, ApplicationContext) which adds the new validation method to a concrete instance. Dependending on the Grails version and assuming you are using Spock, you mock validate(Closure) in the following way:

Grails 1.3

import es.osoco.grails.plugins.extraval.ValidationUtils
import org.codehaus.groovy.grails.support.MockApplicationContext

mockDomain(Author)
def o = new Author(...)
// With JUnit and a subclass of GrailsUnitTestCase, you don't have to create the MockApplicationContext. Take it from the parent class (applicationContext property)
def ctx = new MockApplicationContext()
ctx.registerMockBean('messageSource', null)
ValidationUtils.addValidateWithExtraConstraints(o, ctx)

Grails 2.x

import es.osoco.grails.plugins.extraval.ValidationUtils

@TestMixin(DomainClassUnitTestMixin)

mockDomain(Author)
def o = new Author(...)
ValidationUtils.addValidateWithExtraConstraints(o, applicationContext)

Final notes

• validate(Closure) must be called after the standard validate method so that additional errors are retained. If called before, the built-in validation cleans the error list.
• Validation of extra constraints adds errors and doesn't replace them.
• Extra constraints neither replace nor modify intrinsic constraints