Grails Webflows

[Mark Herschberg]

This follows on my questions here.

I'm trying to create a webflow for creating two objects, User and UserInformation, at the same time; the latter belongsTo the former.

In UserController I have the following action and flow:

    def create = {
        println "\n\n in my create" 
        redirect(action:"newUser");
        println "done with my create";    ///why does this get printed?
    }
 
 
    def newUserFlow = {
         println "\n\n in newUserFlow";
         
         // create User object
         createUser {
            println "\n\n in createUser";
            
            // first display User create page
            render(view:"/user/create");
            
            on("create") {
               println "\n\n in the oncreate action";
               
               // create the User object
               def User user = new User(params);
               
               // put the user in the flow
               flow.user = user;
 
               // if there are no errors, go to UserInformation create pag
               if (!user.validate()) {
                  return error();
               }   
            }.to 'createUserInformation';    
         }
         
         createUserInformation {
            //println "\n\n in createUserInformation";
            
            // displayer UserInformation create page
            render(controller:'userInformation',action:'create');
            
            on("create") {
               // create the userInformation object
               def UserInformation userInformation = new UserInformation(params);
               // add in the User object
               userInformation.user = flow.user;
               // put the userInformation object back into the flow
               flow.userInformation = userInformation;
            
               // if there are no errors, go to save the objects
               if (!userInformation.validate()) {
                  return error()
               }
            }.to 'saveAllObjects'; 
         }
         
         // save all objects in the flow
         saveAllObjects {
            //println "\n\n in saveAllObjects";
            
            // I should do this as a service so it's transacational
            //save();
            //UserInformationController.save();
        
         
    }

I'm confused about a few things:

1) Why does "done with my create" get printed? I would think the redirect would cause that line to never be executed.
2) Why are the print statements in the webflow not getting called? The code itself does seem to get called because when I switch from render(view:"/user/create"); to render(view:"/user/list"); in createUser I do call up the correct view in each case.
3) How do I make the two calls to save both objects at the end of the flow?
4) Is this the right way to call the flow in the first place?
5) Anything else I'm doing wrong?

--Mark
[ March 17, 2008: Message edited by: Mark Herschberg ]

[Marc Peabody]

I'm not terribly familiar with Spring WebFlow, but what you've done looks pretty straight forward.

1) Why does "done with my create" get printed? I would think the redirect would cause that line to never be executed.
A redirect is not the same as a return statement. Only a return statement will end a method or closure. What you've done is similar to what can be done with a filter or with @Around in AspectJ.
2) Why are the print statements in the webflow not getting called? The code itself does seem to get called because when I switch from render(view:"/user/create"); to render(view:"/user/list"); in createUser I do call up the correct view in each case.
No clue why they aren't getting called.
3) How do I make the two calls to save both objects at the end of the flow?
Create a Service class. There's a grails command line for that. You'll see the variable that comes with the Service's skeleton method which denotes the method(?) as transactional. Call save on the domain objects (NOT the Controller) within the service method. You'll need to pass the objects over as parameters to the Service method.