DDevelopment & Design

DATE or NUMBER as a column name

One could expect that if it is possible to name a table’s column “DATE” then it is safe to do so. It appears, however, that using such a column’s name would cause the following compilation error in any procedure using an input parameter of the row type based on this table: ORA-06552: PL/SQL: Compilation unit analysis terminated ORA-06553: PLS-320: the declaration of the type of this expression is incomplete or malformed Surprisingly, view on this table works correctly and you can insert data through it. It seems that only PL/SQL has this error. The same errors occurs when the column is named NUMBER. However there is no problem with names: VARCHAR, VARCHAR2, INTEGER, FLOAT, TIMESTAMP, CLOB, LOB, CHAR, LONG Here is the test for DATE name

create table test_date ( "DATE" date );
create table test_date2 ( "DATE2" date );

-- this procedure would not compile
create procedure pr_test_date(p_date test_date%rowtype) as
begin
 null;
end;

create procedure pr_test_date2(p_date2 test_date2%rowtype) as
begin
 null;
end;

create view v_test_date as select * from test_date;
create view v_test_date2 as select * from test_date2;

insert into v_test_date("DATE") values (sysdate);

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DDevelopment & Design

Simple trick to DRY your Grails controller

Grails controllers are not very DRY. It's easy to find duplicated code fragments in default generated controller. Take a look at code sample below. It is duplicated four times in show, edit, update and delete actions:

class BookController {
def show() {
def bookInstance = Book.get(params.id)
if (!bookInstance) {
flash.message = message(code: 'default.not.found.message', args: [message(code: 'book.label', default: 'Book'), params.id])
redirect(action: "list")
return
        }
        [bookInstance: bookInstance]
    }
}

Why is it duplicated?

There is a reason for that duplication, though. If you move this snippet to a method, it can redirect to "list" action, but it can't prevent controller from further execution. After you call redirect, response status changes to 302, but after method exits, controller still runs subsequent code.

Solution

At TouK we've implemented a simple trick to resolve that situation:

  1. wrap everything with a simple withStoppingOnRender method,
  2. whenever you want to render or redirect AND stop controller execution - throw EndRenderingException.

We call it Big Return - return from a method and return from a controller at once. Here is how it works:

class BookController {
def show(Long id) {
withStoppingOnRender {
Book bookInstance = Book.get(id)
validateInstanceExists(bookInstance)
            [bookInstance: bookInstance]
        }
    }

protected Object withStoppingOnRender(Closure closure) {
try {
return closure.call()
        } catch (EndRenderingException e) {}
    }

private void validateInstanceExists(Book instance) {
if (!instance) {
flash.message = message(code: 'default.not.found.message', args: [message(code: 'book.label', default: 'Book'), params.id])
redirect(action: "list")
throw new EndRenderingException()
        }
    }
}

class EndRenderingException extends RuntimeException {}

Example usage

For simple CRUD controllers, you can use this solution and create some BaseController class for your controllers. We use withStoppingOnRender in every controller so code doesn't look like a spaghetti, we follow DRY principle and code is self-documented. Win-win-win! Here is a more complex example:

class DealerController {
@Transactional
def update() {
withStoppingOnRender {
Dealer dealerInstance = Dealer.get(params.id)
validateInstanceExists(dealerInstance)
validateAccountInExternalService(dealerInstance)
checkIfInstanceWasConcurrentlyModified(dealerInstance, params.version)
            dealerInstance.properties = params
saveUpdatedInstance(dealerInstance)
redirectToAfterUpdate(dealerInstance)
        }
    }
}