JT’s Blog

Grails Validation Gotcha on Dates

I ran into a little gotcha with Grails and validation today. I was parsing a date from a web post and kept getting a validation error.

I have a ExtJS web form posting a date value as a string:

	02/23/2011	

This format does not get automagically converted to a date.

My original code was as follows:

       def application = new Application(params)
 
        if (params?.accidentDate) {
            application.accidentDate = new Date().parse("MM/dd/yyyy", params.accidentDate)
        } else {
            application.accidentDate = null
        }
 
        application.validate()
 
        if (!application.hasErrors()){
            application.save(failOnError:true)
        }

Fairly simple code. I’m using the parameters map to create a new object. When I got the validation errors, I realized the date format was wrong and added the new date logic.

Seemed simple enough. But I kept getting validation errors on the date.

Field error in object 'com.asf.Application' on field 'accidentDate': rejected value [Wed Feb 23 00:00:00 EST 2011]; codes [typeMismatch.com.asf.Application.accidentDate,typeMismatch.accidentDate,typeMismatch.java.util.Date,typeMismatch]; arguments [org.springframework.context.support.DefaultMessageSourceResolvable: codes [com.asf.Application.accidentDate,accidentDate]; arguments []; default message [accidentDate]]; default message [Failed to convert property value of type 'java.lang.String' to required type 'java.util.Date' for property 'accidentDate'; nested exception is java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Could not parse date: Unparseable date: "02/23/2011"]

I banged my head on the desk a few times thinking there was some kind of type mismatch. My domain clearly had a Date property, a I was creating a valid date and setting it. WTF!?! What is not happy about it!

Answer nothing was wrong with with the value I parsed and set. Problem was in creating the application object in the first place. This chunk of code:

def application = new Application(params)

is implicitly calling validate and populating the errors object. Even though I was setting a valid value and calling validate later, the errors object had already been set and was not getting cleared.

Solution:

application.clearErrors()

ta-dah! Works like a champ now!

Full code:

    def submitApplication(def params) {
 
        def application = new Application(params)
 
        application.clearErrors()
 
        if (params?.accidentDate) {
            application.accidentDate = new Date().parse("MM/dd/yyyy", params.accidentDate)
        } else {
            application.accidentDate = null
        }
 
        if (!application.hasErrors()){
            application.save(failOnError:true)
        }
 
        application
    }

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 2nd, 2011 at 1:59 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. The entry is tagged under GORM, Grails. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.