Should removeFrom* method remove child item from a DB or it should just remove the parent-child relation? - grails

The question is in the subj.
Currently, the behavior I observe is that when I call Parent.removeFromChilds(child), child is not removed from my DB (i.e. I can find it with Child.findBy...(args)).
I'm curious if it's the correct behavior. If yes - what's the best way to remove both relation and child within one transaction?
If no - what may I do wrong?

By default, deletes cascade if you delete the owning side of a one to many. If you just remove the child, it will not delete. You can change that by specifying the custom cascading behavior of 'all-delete-orphan' on the owning side of the relationship. From the Grails doc:
class Person {
String firstName
static hasMany = [addresses: Address]
static mapping = { addresses cascade: "all-delete-orphan" } }
Update
Part 2 of GORM Gotchas has a really good breakdown of the not-so-obvious addTo and removeFrom behavior. I think it contains the exact information you're looking for.

Related

Grails: Simple hasMany relation create more tables than necessary

Hi I have a simple problem.
My domain class is like this:
class Example {
long seq
hasMany = [example_array: ExampleData]
long count
}
class ExampleData {
String type
long description
static belongsTo = Example
static constraints = {
}
}
This results in 3 tables, like a many to many relation.
Why is this?
Thanks
The reason for the extra table is that you've modeled the relation only in one direction - an Example can access its ExampleData instances via the example_array Set that's added to your class bytecode because of the hasMany property, but an ExampleData instance has no way to reference its owning Example.
You added a belongsTo property, but only specified the class name. That's sufficient to configure ownership, cascaded deletes, etc. but doesn't provide a property in the class to access the Example instance.
If you change it to the other supported syntax it will work as you expected:
static belongsTo = [example: Example]
Here example will end up being the name of an Example property (and you can change it and/or example_array to any valid property name), which is basically the same as declaring
Example example
Now that both sides can access the other, the relationship is bidirectional and you no longer need the third table. That's because a 1-many is typically implemented using a foreign key in the child table, in this case in the table for ExampleData that points to the table for Example. That wasn't possible without a property in the class to wire up to that column, so the join table was necessary.
I believe that you have to map the BelongsTo, like this:
static belongsTo = [example:Example]
Hope it helps :)
From the definition of hasMany Grails will, by default, map this kind of relationship with a join table.That join table is the 3rd table you mentioned.No need to worry about that.
Well the one-to-many relationship is constructed by having additional table (i.e. Example_ExampleData) containing two columns each id fields from tables of the entities forming the relationship(i.e. Example and ExampleData).
The newly added table is child to parent tables – Example and ExampleData.
So in your case when you run your application the 3rd table gets created by Grails by default as your table relationship falls under the one-to-many relationship.

Is there anyway to perform a "deep save" in Grails?

In my service I create a "root" object which has associations to many objects which in turn have associations to many more objects and so on. Once the root object is completely built and ready to be saved I would like to call save on the root object and have all associated objects all the way down be saved as well. Right now I have a recursive method called deepSave which does this. Is there a better way?
If you use belongsTo GORM automatically defines the cascading for you. This means: If A belongsTo B then A will be saved when B is saved. However, it is possible to define cascading without using belongsTo (if this does not fit to your domain model):
class Author {
static hasMany = [books: Book]
static mapping = { books cascade: 'all-delete-orphan' }
}
You should have a look at the cascade property provided by GORM. Additionaly the hibernate documentation provides more detailed information.

Grails: Delete relation Domain

I want to asked about my project.
I Have Two Domain like this
I suggest you to look in the GORM documentation. You have some ways to declare your relationship between classes, and depending on them the delete will be cascade or not.
This behavior is explained in "6.3.3 Understanding Cascading Updates and Deletes".
Whether it is a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many, defining
belongsTo will result in updates cascading from the owning class to
its dependant (the other side of the relationship), and for
many-/one-to-one and one-to-many relationships deletes will also
cascade.
So you should consider declaring hasMany and belongsTo, to enable the cascading deletes.
class User {
// Group details should not be referenced here
}
class Group {
String Name
String Description
GroupDetails gd
}
class GroupDetails {
User user
static belongsTo = [group:Group]
}
In this case if Group will have a child GroupDetails then when you delete Group, child entity(ies) will also be deleted.
Have a look at first example in grails docs: http://grails.org/doc/2.2.x/ref/Domain%20Classes/belongsTo.html
Also as Sérgio Michels there are more ways to make it work.
example: https://github.com/aprudnikovas/testGrailsOneToOneCascade

Grails hasOne unidirectional

Currently I'm having some trouble, creating an unidirectional relationship in Grails.
I have a class Toilet with an Attribute Address.
This Address is a seperate class.
The Address can - theoretically - still exist, if the Toilet-Object, which the Address is associated with, gets deleted.
The toilet will stay, too, if the address gets deleted.
GORM's hasOne is not what i need, because it creates a bidirectional relation.
Defining an attribute of the type class only results in a non-persisted Address (despite it's own table) - that means, the association of the Address to the Toilet-Object doesn't exist
I'm not really familiar with these kinds of relationships, so I would really appreciate a solution or another way to accomplish my goal
Hope my problem is clear - if not comment, and I will try to add further explanations
taken from
http://grails.org/doc/1.0.x/guide/5.%20Object%20Relational%20Mapping%20(GORM).html
5.3.3 Understanding Cascading Updates and Deletes
It is critical that you understand how cascading updates and deletes work when using GORM. The key part to remember is the belongsTo setting which controls which class "owns" a relationship.
Whether it is a one-to-one, one-to-many or many-to-many if you define belongsTo updates and deletes will cascade from the owning class to its possessions (the other side of the relationship).
If you do not define belongsTo then no cascades will happen and you will have to manually save each object.
So.....if you do not use belongsTo then if you manually save each object you should not have a problem.
If the address on Toilet is a simple association without a hasOne or belongsTo mapping, then no operations will be cascaded.
That means you'll have to save the address, assign it toilet.address, and save the toilet.
Found the solution.
What I left out, was the implemenation of an interface in the Toilet class.
The problem was (as a reminder) that the relationship of the address within the toilet class wasn't saved to the database.
This was a problem of the interface itself - in this interface, getters and setters were defined and had to be implemented (the way an interface works - obviously). The problem here was, that the setter of the Address-Attribute expected the Type IAddress.
I overloaded the setter to also receive a parameter of the type Address.
With this change, the relationship between Toilet and Address is saved correctly to the database - the ID of the Address is saved in the table of the Toilet.
I think the definition of the setter is just a mistake (i have no influence on the interface), but with this workaround i can get it to work anyways
Hope this explanation helps others too.
Why not have a class which models the association ?
class ToiletAddress {
Toilet toilet
Address address
...
}
... and then simply wrap your logic into a service where you assign addresses to toilets, and delete toilets or addresses.
Using constraints you can define what kind of association it is. eg 1-1, 1-n (both sides), and n-m
static constraints = {
address unique: ['toilet']
toilet validator: {val, obj -> ... }
}

How to prevent cascade delete for bidirectional associations?

I'd like to know if it's possible to delete parent objects in a bidirectional 1:N association without a cascade delete. According to
http://grails.org/doc/1.0.x/guide/5.%20Object%20Relational%20Mapping%20%28GORM%29.html
...in a unidirectional relationship the parent end gets mapped with a 'save-update' and the child end with a 'none'. I've tried these settings for the bidirectional relationship, but not very surprisingly it didn't work. Specifically:
class Personnel {
...
}
static hasMany = [projectlead:Project, projectmanager:Project]
static mappedBy = [projectlead:'leaddeveloper', projectmanager:'projectmanager']
static mapping = {
projectlead cascade:'save-update'
projectmanager cascade:'save-update'
}
And here's the project class:
class Project {
...
}
static belongsTo = [leaddeveloper:Personnel, projectmanager:Personnel]
static mapping = {
leaddeveloper cascade:'none'
projectmanager cascade:'none'
}
I'd rather not redesign my application (by removing the "belongsTo" from the Project class) if there's a solution to this: the navigational access from both ends is very convenient and I don't have too much instances on the project end.
Also, if there's a way to implement this, it would be interesting to know, what happens with those active mappings afterwards, can I set them (or will they be set) to "null" for instance?
Appreciate any inputs on this matter.
By reading your question, I think that you want to delete "Personnel" object but leaving his "projects" untouched. Sadly, this can't be done with your current implementation. A "belongsTo" relationship means that every child object must has a Parent object. If you delete the Parent, the orphan will be deleted as well.
Another option that you could try without modifying too much the design is "marking as deleted". Add a "deleted" field in Personal, and in case you want to delete someone, just mark him as deleted. This will help you keep the historical data of projects, even after the project manager left.

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