Can we have a DML not roll back when i use an adderror method?

Question

We have a scenario where in the before insert trigger of object Asset, which looks for a duplicate and if a duplicate is found a record is inserted in the junction table and after the dml is complete, we have an adderror method throw an error message letting the user know of the situation.

The problem is that the DML on the junction object is completed but rolled back when adderror method executes.

Things i have tried.. Having a savepoint, Saveresult, Writing the dml of junction object in another class, setting the allornone parameter to false and none of these have helped.

Answer 1

This is, quite sadly, not possible as I discovered on this answer is that if all rows in the trigger have addError called on them than any DML (which, technically speaking, includes things like sending email and calling @future methods) is rolled back.

In short, if all rows in the trigger fail to save than any byproducts of the trigger execution are rolled back.

Answer 2

Do you want the transaction to fail or not ;) I assume "not really".

If you have to stick to standard pages - you might move population of junction object to an @future method. I haven't tried it in failure scenario - it might turn out that @futures aren't queued up if transaction fails, similar to how email sending happens only after succesfull transaction.

Much saner way would be to have some kind of top level control though (for example visualforce page + controller extension) for the Asset creation. You could perform the uniqueness check upfront or simply wrap it in a try-catch block (if the logic really has to be in the trigger) that would capture the error message (maybe phrase it nicer so user sees something more meaningful than big nasty red error + stacktrace)...

try {
    insert assets;
} catch(DMLException e) {
    insert junctionObjects;
    endUserMessage = '10 Assets created, 5 found to be dupes, linked instead';
}