 <p>You should be able to use <a href="http://grails.org/doc/latest/ref/Plug-ins/filters.html" rel="nofollow">Grails filters</a> to do this:</p> <pre><code>class TimeFilters { def filters = { timeCheck(controller: '*', action: '*') { before = { model -&gt; ... } after = { model -&gt; ... } } } } </code></pre> <p>If you look at the source code of <code>java.util.Date</code>:</p> <pre><code>public Date() { this(System.currentTimeMillis()); } </code></pre> <p>So this is just a performance overhead to create and get time: <code>new Date().getTime()</code></p>