Question

Suppose I have two domain objects, Document and Author

Class Document {
    Author author
    String title
}

Class Author {

    String lastName
    String firstName

    String toString() {

        return lastName + ", " + firstName
    }
}

The view list.gsp looks something like this:

<g:sortableColumn property="title" title=... />
<g:sortableCOlumn property="author" title=... />

....

<td>${fieldValue(bean: documentInstance, field: "author"}></td>
<td>${fieldValue(bean: documentInstance, field: "title"}></td>

The displayed values in the table work as intended – the table row will show the author as (lastName, firstName) next to documentInstance.title.

However, clicking the Author column header to sort causes “documents” to be sorted by author.id .

What is the most expedient way to get sorting by author.toString() or “author.lastName, author.firstName” instead of sorting by author.id?

I’d prefer to avoid falling back to .withCriteria{} if possible – I have four different columns that need this functionality, and it seems like that would get messy.

Answer 1

I’m just a Grails beginner so maybe my answer is not optimal, but this was the easiest way for me:

Instead of using Document.list(params) I used Document.findAll(). Is worth mentioning that in my application I do needed some kind of filter in my lists, so findAll() was the best approach. Anyways, here is how I would do it:

Document.findAll( "from Document as d order by d." + params.sort + ' ' + params.order, params ) //supports pagination

And in the View:

<g:sortableCOlumn property="author.lastName" title=... />