Questions about implementing Domain class relationships & constraints in Grails - grails

Question

Using ArgoUML, I very quickly created this trivial representation of a few Domain classes (Person, Store, Product) and their relationships.
I'm struggling with the implementation of the relationships. Below was my initial approach for the Person domain, but it seems that I am missing something important.
class PersonToPerson {
Person from
Person to
String relation
static constraints = {
relation(inList:["Friend to", "Enemy of", "Likes", "Hates"])
}
static belongsTo = [ Person ]
}
class Person {
String firstName
String secondName
.
.
.
static hasMany= [ personToPerson:PersonToPerson,
personToStore:PersonToStore ]
}
Edit: updated question for clarity
After thinking on the problem I think I have a better way to ask the question(s). In the implementation of PersonToPerson above I have the relation as a simple string. I want the user to be able to select from a list of unique relations, which are defined in the constraints, for the string value for PersonToPerson. So this leads to the questions...
Should personToPerson and personToStore be consolidated into one list of type Relationship? Or should they stay independent lists as shown?
What is the mechanism to allow the user to add new values to the relation constraint?

Answer 1

1) Domain model
Keep your code simple. Don't create generic data model. It's way to hell. When you personToPerson and personToStore keep separate, it's much easier to follow your code.
Actually suggested solution makes it possible to access relations as consolidated and independent list simultaneously.
For this problem I would use inheritance feature in GORM.
Your classes would look like this:
class Person {
String name
static hasMany = [personToPerson:PersonToPerson,
personToProduct:PersonToProduct,
personToStore:PersonToStore]
static mappedBy = [personToPerson:"from"]
}
class Product{
String productName
}
class Relationship{
String note
}
class Store{
String storeName
}
class PersonToPerson extends Relationship{
Person from
Person to
String relation
static constraints = {
relation(inList:["Friend to", "Enemy of", "Likes", "Hates"])
}
static belongsTo = [ from:Person ]
}
class PersonToProduct extends Relationship{
Person person
Product product
String relation
static constraints = {
relation(inList:["likes", "dislikes"])
}
static belongsTo = [ person:Person ]
}
class PersonToStore extends Relationship{
Person person
Store store
String relation
static constraints = {
relation(inList:["Stock person", "Owner", "Manager", "Patron"])
}
static belongsTo = [ person:Person ]
}
DB schema for Person, Product and Store is usual. But for Relational domains look like this:
Relationship
Field Type Null Default
id bigint(20) No
version bigint(20) No
note varchar(255) No
class varchar(255) No
person_id bigint(20) Yes NULL
product_id bigint(20) Yes NULL
relation varchar(8) Yes NULL
from_id bigint(20) Yes NULL
to_id bigint(20) Yes NULL
store_id bigint(20) Yes NULL
Relationship domain makes possible to access all relational domain throw one domain.
2) Constraint
Just switch inList to validator. Than you can store constrain in file or DB.
See documentation or file example.
Example how to store constraint values in DB. First create a domain object.
class Constrain{
String name
String type
}
Than the domain class looks:
class PersonToPerson extends Relationship{
Person from
Person to
String relation
static constraints = {
relation(nullable:false, validator:{val, obj ->
def list = Constrain.findAllByType('person').collect{it.name}
return list.contains(val)
})
}
static belongsTo = [ from:Person ]
}

Answer 2

Look fine. You may want to consider a belongsTo in the PersonToPerson class.
Also, your has many in Person should be: [ personToPersons:PersonToPerson.... <- remove the s