Grails get child domain objects

Question

I have two domain classes one is parent and other one is child and i have a hasMany relationship between them. Parent class has many childs and child class belongs to parent

Answer 1

The issue is with the use of default JSON converter. Here are your options:

 1. Default  -  all fields, shallow associations
    a. render blah as JSON

 2. Global deep converter - change all JSON converters to use deep association traversal
    a. grails.converters.json.default.deep = true

 3. Named config marshaller using provided or custom converters
    a. JSON.createNamedConfig('deep'){
        it.registerObjectMarshaller( new DeepDomainClassMarshaller(...) )
    }
    b. JSON.use('deep'){
        render blah as JSON
    }

 4. Custom Class specific closure marshaller 
    a. JSON.registerObjectMarshaller(MyClass){ return map of properties}
    b. render myClassInstance as JSON

 5. Custom controller based closure to generate a map of properties
    a. convert(object){
        return map of properties
    }
    b. render convert(blah) as JSON

You are currently using Option 1, which is default.

The simplest you can do is use Option 2 to set global deep converter, but be aware this effects ALL domain classes in your app. Which means that if you have a large tree of associations culminating in a top level object and you try to convert a list of those top level objects the deep converter will execute all of the queries to fetch all of the associated objects and their associated objects in turn. - You could load an entire database in one shot :) Be careful.