How do I initialise a Date field in a Grails domain object to act as a timestamp?

Question

I have a domain class which has two dates in it and I want one of them populated with the current time when a record is created for the object, like a create timestamp...

class Contact {
    Date initiatedDate
    Date acceptedDate
}

Is it sufficient just to new a Date object on one of them and make the other nullable until such a time as I need to fill it, sort of like this...

class Contact {

    static constraints = 
    {
        acceptedDate(nullable:true)
    }

    Date initiatedDate = new Date()
    Date acceptedDate
}

I'm experimenting, but I would like to know whether this is the right way to go about it or whether there is something more Grailsy or GORMy I should do in, say, an init function or by tweaking the domain object definition to have one by default, like it does an id and version.

Thanks

Answer 1

What you've written should work but you can use the GORM auto-timestamping feature by simply adding a field:

class Contact {
    Date dateCreated
}

If you want to keep your own names for the fields the same grails docs also show you how to use GORM events to set fields on save or update.

HTH