RESTful Grails: how do I include related entities in my XML?

Question

Let's say I have a class called Store that has many Employees. My RESTful listXML method looks like this:

def listXML = {
    render Store.list() as XML
}

And the result looks like this:

<stores>
  <store id="1">
   <name>My Store</name>
   <employees>
     <employee id="1" />
   </employees>
  </store>
</store>

My question is, how do I include all the data of each Employee class, so that my XML looks something like this?

   <stores>
      <store id="1">
       <name>My Store</name>
       <employees>
         <employee id="1">
           <name>John Smith</name>
           <hireDate>2008-01-01</hireDate>
         </employee>
       </employees>
      </store>
    </store>

Answer 1

In your controller, you'll want to import the deep converter:

import grails.converters.deep.XML

You can read about it in the first couple of paragraphs of the Converters Reference.

Answer 2

As of Grails 1.1 you will be able to configure Grails to default to deeply serializing by including this in your grails-app/conf/Config.groovy:

grails.converters.xml.default.deep = true

1.1 also introduces named configurations for Converters. The deep converters will be deprecated and the named configuration "deep" should be used instead.

XML.use("deep") {
   render model as XML
}