Add default sort and order by property to domain classes

This is an excellent idea Paul. I was just about to submit an issue and saw that you did for me. I have a large domain model and I find it annoying to have to always mention what I want to sort something by. I'd like to be able to declare in my model what the default is, and then I'll get automatic sorting with the list and findAllBy* methods without having to further specify things. Most if not all times you query for a list of things, you're going to show it to the user so I hold the opinion that you should get a consistent order in the default case (without having to specify anything). I think the id (which would amount to the insertion order) should be the default. This means you'll always get a sort.

By the way, this feature should also apply to hasMany on the domain – they should also benefit automatically from the user-supplied sort order.

Can now be achieved with the following code:

class Book {
    String title

    static belongsTo = [author:Author]

    static mapping = {
        sort title:'desc'
    }

}
class Author {
    String name
    static hasMany = [books:Book]

    static mapping = {
        sort 'name'
        books sort:'title'
    }
}

I tested it but it is not functioned yet. I tested this with grails-1.1-snapshot(GRAILS-GRAILS11JDK15-343).

All my attempts to implement Graeme's suggestion have not succeeded.
I will try to attach the code (w/test) I used.

I found that this doesn't work when the property is a camelCased word. For example:

class Book {
Date dateCreated
}

class Author {
static hasMany = [books:Book]

static mapping =

}

Running the app produces an exception similar to the following:

ERROR util.JDBCExceptionReporter - Column not found: BOOKS0_.DATECREATED in statement ...

The problem is that the database column is date_created, not datecreated. The camelHumps property should be translated in the query to two words separated by an underscore.

Did the issue that Josh reported above get resolved? I'm seeing this same problem in 1.2.1.

The problem persists. I have just upgraded from 1.1.2 to 1.3.1 and the application even did not started. I have an attribute in the domain 'int itemOrder', using for default sort and for the 1.3.1 it was necessary to change: name 'itemOrder' -> name 'item_order'.

Broken in 1.3.7 when sorting dates, order is always ascending.