To order null values in createcritera.list

Question

I have a problem when sorting a list created using createCriteria. The problem is when I sort according to some a property its value is null , then the whole object is excluded from the list. (the sort parameter is passed through sorttable column )

Here is a sample of my code.

SomeClass.createCriteria().list {
 eq('sth', sth)
if (sort == 'someValue') {
                  nestedClass1 {
                   nestedClass2 {
                    nestedClass3 {
                       order('name', sortOrder)
                              } } }
                        }}

The problem is for instance when nestedCalss1 is null then the whole object is dropped from the list

Answer 1

Association queries like that are inner joins by default, to include nulls you need to use left outer joins, which you can do with createAlias

import org.hibernate.criterion.CriteriaSpecification

SomeClass.createCriteria().list {
  eq('sth', sth)
  if (sort == 'someValue') {
    createAlias("nestedClass1", "nc1", CriteriaSpecification.LEFT_JOIN)
    createAlias("nc1.nestedClass2", "nc2", CriteriaSpecification.LEFT_JOIN)
    createAlias("nc2.nestedClass3", "nc3", CriteriaSpecification.LEFT_JOIN)
    order("nc3.name", sortOrder)
  }
}