"public class Foo" v.s. "class Foo" in Groovy domain classes

Question

The following Groovy code creates a GORM-persisted domain class called Foo when written to grails-app/domain/Foo.groovy:

class Foo {
  String someField
}

However, if I instead write "public class Foo" the class does NOT get GORM-persisted (i.e. no save() method injected, no database table created, etc.):

public class Foo {
  String someField
}

I'm running the latest stable release of Grails (1.1).

Question: Is this a bug or is it the expected behaviour? Why?

Update #1: Related sub-question: Am I the only one hitting this problem? It would be nice to know if anyone else is able to replicate this. Thanks!

Answer 1

Sounds like a bug.

I'd enter the details into JIRA and get the answer from the source.

http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/GRAILS

Answer 2

Groovy classes are public by default (likewise for Groovy methods), so there should be no change in behaviour if you add public. However, I cannot reproduce this behaviour/bug in Grails 1.1.1

Answer 3

I am not getting this behavior on 1.3.3

check the "isDomainClass" method in DomainClassArtefactHandler.groovy. you will see (at least in 1.3.3) the only types that are excluded are closures and enums