Grails 3 datasource config with HibernateSpec

The default implementation of HibernateSpec in Grails 3.3.x overrides the datasource’s dbCreate value with create-drop. To get around this you simply override the getConfiguration method and set your preferred value for dbCreate. The properties in the map returned by this method take precedence to those in your application.yml

Map getConfiguration() {
    Collections.singletonMap(Settings.SETTING\_DB\_CREATE, "create-drop") // change this
}

It is also worthwhile to note that your default datasource setup also take precedence over the test environment setup. So it is best to setup your datasource in such way that only common settings are in the default setup as stated in the documentation.

dataSource:
    pooled: true
    jmxExport: true


environments:
    test:
        dataSource:
            driverClassName: org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver
            dialect: org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect
            username: testuser
            password: ''
            dbCreate: update
            url: jdbc:mariadb://localhost/test\_db    

Or better yet just return your test datasource config from getConfiguration

@Override
Map getConfiguration() {
    \[
            dataSource: \[
                    dbCreate: "update",
                    driverClassName: "org.mariadb.jdbc.Driver",
                    dialect: "org.hibernate.dialect.MySQL5InnoDBDialect",
                    username: "testuser",
                    password: "",
                    url: "jdbc:mariadb://localhost/test\_db"
            \]
    \]
}

Please note that this is no longer the case is Grails 4 as HibernateSpec is now fully environment aware. As always you can find an example of how to do this github.