Get count of child objects in grails Criteria query - grails

Question

Lets Say a domain class A has many Class B objects. I need to do a criteria query which returns
A.id
A.name
B.count(no of B elements associated with A)
B.last Updated(date of most recent update of B elements associated with A considering i have last_updated date for all B elements)
Also the query should be flexible enough to add conditions/restrictions to both A and B domain objects.
Currently I have gotten as far as this:
A.createCriteria().list {
createAlias('b','b')
projections{
property('id')
property('gender')
property('dateOfBirth')
count('b.id')
property('publicId')
}
}
But the problem is that it only returns one object and the count of child objects is for all the elements of B instead of just those associated with A

Answer 1

Recently I was in a similar scenario I needed a query in which one of your rows will store the count of many in a one-to-many relationship
But unlike your scenario I used native sql queries to resolve the query.
The solution was to use derived tables (I do not know how to implement them using criteria query).
In case you find it useful I share a code with the implementation taken from a grails service:
List<Map> resumeInMonth(final String monthName) {
final session = sessionFactory.currentSession
final String query = """
SELECT
t.id AS id,
e.full_name AS fullName,
t.subject AS issue,
CASE t.status
WHEN 'open' THEN 'open'
WHEN 'pending' THEN 'In progress'
WHEN 'closed' THEN 'closed'
END AS status,
CASE t.scheduled
WHEN TRUE THEN 'scheduled'
WHEN FALSE THEN 'non-scheduled'
END AS scheduled,
ifnull(d.name, '') AS device,
DATE(t.date_created) AS dateCreated,
DATE(t.last_updated) AS lastUpdated,
IFNULL(total_tasks, 0) AS tasks
FROM
tickets t
INNER JOIN
employees e ON t.employee_id = e.id
LEFT JOIN
devices d ON d.id = t.device_id
LEFT JOIN
(SELECT
ticket_id, COUNT(1) AS total_tasks
FROM
tasks
GROUP BY ticket_id) ta ON t.id = ta.ticket_id
WHERE
MONTHNAME(t.date_created) = :monthName
ORDER BY dateCreated DESC"""
final sqlQuery = session.createSQLQuery(query)
final results = sqlQuery.with {
resultTransformer = AliasToEntityMapResultTransformer.INSTANCE
setString('monthName', monthName)
list()
}
results
}
The part of interest is to declare a row within the main select and then in the clause from declare the derived query that stores the result in a row with the same name declared in the main select
SELECT ...
total_tasks --Add the count column to your select
FROM ticket t
JOIN (SELECT ticked_id, COUNT(1) as total_tasks
FROM tasks
GROUP BY ticked_id) ta ON t.id = ta.ticked_id
...rest of query
This last example I share from the answer made by the user Aaron Dietz to the question that I also formulate
I hope it is useful for you

Answer 2

Turns out I wasn't very far from the solution and i just needed to do grouping based on the right property which is the foreign key column in the child table which is b.a in this case so the following works now
A.createCriteria().list {
createAlias('b','b')
projections{
property('id')
property('gender')
property('dateOfBirth')
count('b.id')
groupProperty('b.a')
property('publicId')
}
}

Answer 3

In the criteria you need to group by the property which are not aggregate.
Try following:
A.createCriteria().list {
createAlias('b','b')
projections{
groupProperty('id','id')
groupProperty('gender','gender')
groupProperty('dateOfBirth','dateOfBirth')
count('b.id','total')
groupProperty('publicId','publicId')
}
}
or If you want to have a list of map object return you can try add resultTransformer(CriteriaSpecification.ALIAS_TO_ENTITY_MAP)
A.createCriteria().list {
resultTransformer(CriteriaSpecification.ALIAS_TO_ENTITY_MAP)
createAlias('b','b')
projections{
groupProperty('id','id')
groupProperty('gender','gender')
groupProperty('dateOfBirth','dateOfBirth')
count('b.id','total')
groupProperty('publicId','publicId')
}
}
Hope it can help