Grails form error handling: Binding 1:1 object mappings - grails

Question

I have a registration form that contains fields related to two domain objects; User and Profile. The relationship is a 1:1 mapping owned by the User domain class.
A 'register' action on the User controller marshals the form values, and provided there are no validation errors, persists the user object and redirects to the applications root when the form is submitted. Otherwise, the controller will redirect back to the registration form showing pre-populated fields with failed values.
However, in practice, when validation fails, the failed values aren't displayed in the view. Below is the code for the register action:
def registration = {
}
def register = {
def user = new User()
bindData(user, params)
if (user.save()) {
flash.message = 'Successfully Registered User'
redirect(uri: '/')
}else {
flash.message = 'Registration Failed!'
redirect(action: registration, params: [ user: user ])
}
}
Below is an example html excerpt from the view showing User and Profile related fields:
<div class="row">
<label for="city"> City, State: </label>
<g:textField id="city" name="profile.city"
value="${user?.profile?.city}" size="28" />
<span class="red">*</span>
</div>
<hr />
<div class="row">
<label for="email"> E-mail address: </label>
<g:textField id="email" name="userId" value="${user?.userId}" size="28" />
<span class="red">*</span>
</div>
Syntactically, everthing looks okay; I'm using appropriate naming conventions and grail's interpolation for acessing values, so I'm at wits end as to why this isn't behaving as expected.
Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated.
Thanks,
-Tom

Answer 1

If i remember correctly i thought it was something in the lines of:
def user = new User()
user.properties = params

Answer 2

You need to somehow pass the submitted values from user in register action to user in registration action. Like this:
if (params.user) {
user.properties = params.user.properties
}

Answer 3

Try explicitly calling the erorr?
Ive been using this pattern to redirect back to the same form.
if (user.save()) {
...
} else {
return error()
}
I normally use command objects in webflows, so my normal pattern looks like:
def registerFlow = {
registerPage = {
on("submit") { FormDataCommand cmd ->
cmd.validate()
if (cmd.hasErrors()) {
flow.cmd = cmd
return error()
} else {
...
}
}
}
}
class FormDataCommand implements Serializable {
User u
Profile p
static constraints = {
u(validator: { it.validate() })
p(validator: { it.validate() })
}
}