Chapter 2. Dealing with Basics: Entity Objects

In this chapter, we will cover:

• Using a custom property to populate a sequence attribute

• Overriding doDML() to populate an attribute with a gapless sequence

• Creating and applying property sets

• Using getPostedAttribute() to determine the posted attribute's value

• Overriding remove() to delete associated child entities

• Overriding remove() to delete a parent entity in an association

• Using a method validator based on a view object accessor

• Using Groovy expressions to resolve validation error message tokens

• Using doDML() to enforce a detail record for a new master record

Introduction

Entity objects are the basic building blocks in the chain of business components. They represent a single row of data and they encapsulate the business model, data, rules, and persistence behavior. Usually, they map to database objects, most commonly to database tables, and views. Entity object definitions are stored in XML metadata files. These files are maintained automatically...