Question

I have the following domain entities:

class Customer {

   // Customer properties...

   static belongsTo [user: User]
}

class User {

   // User properties...

}

When i try to validate a Customer instance that includes a User instance with errors, validation succeeds. In my unit test:

Customer customer = new Customer()
// Set customer properties...

User user = new User()
// Set user properties that contain errors...

customer.user =  user

assertFalse user.validate()     // succeeds
assertFalse customer.validate() // fails!

The same behaviour is observed on the runtime application as well. I have run my application in debug mode and verified that user’s errors property is null.

I have also tried invoking validate(deepValidate:true) on my customer instance (which according to the documentation is the default setting anyway), with no success.

Any tips?

Answer 1

I still have no idea why grails will not cascade validations to nested objects by default, or at least why it doesn’t work in my example.

However, i found the following workaround which works for me. In the parent class i define the following validator:

class Customer {

  static belongsTo = [user:User]

  static constraints {
    user: nullable: false, validator: {it?.validate()}
  }
}

When validate() is invoked on a Customer instance, the associated User is also validated.