Last year we introduced support for MongoDB in GORM (along with many other GORM implementations) and it has been extremely well received by the community. We have had a ton of feedback, and today we are pleased to announce a new release (Milestone 2) which addresses some of the feedback we have received.

Embedded Document Support

The number one requested feature was nested document support and in this release we have improved that significantly. Now you can embed other domains using the standard embedded mapping in GORM:

class Person {
  String firstName
  String lastName
  Address address
  static embedded = ['address']
}

The embedded domains get stored in a nested document within the primary Mongo document. In addition, lists and maps of basic types can now also be persisted to native Mongo ArrayList and hashes:

class Person {
	List<String> friends
	Map pets
}
...

new Person(friends:['Fred', 'Bob'], pets:[chuck:"Dog", eddie:'Parrot']).save(flush:true)

Both embedded domains and lists and maps get stored within the primary Mongo document for the domain allowing more of the common MongoDB patterns to be implemented using GORM.

Geospacial Indexing and Querying

MongoDB has native support for Geospacial indexing and querying and this is now supported in GORM for MongoDB. You can define a list or map as being "geo-indexed":

class Hotel {
	String name
	List location
	static mapping = {
		location geoIndex:true
	}
}

And then easily persist the geo data using a two-dimensial list representing latitude and longitude:

new Hotel(name:"Hilton", location:[50, 50]).save()

Alternatively, and possibly more readable, you can use a map containing the latitude and longitude values:

new Hotel(name:"Hilton", location:[lat: 40.739037, long: 73.992964]).save()

Once persisted a domain class can then be queried with the new findBy*Near syntax:

def h = Hotel.findByLocationNear([50, 60])
assert h.name == 'Hilton'

You can also use bound queries to locate a position within a rectangle using the findBy*WithinBox method :

def box = [[40.73083, -73.99756], [40.741404,  -73.988135]]
def h = Hotel.findByLocationWithinBox(box)

Or within a circle using the findBy*WithinCircle method:

def center = [50, 50]
def radius = 10
def h = Hotel.findByLocationWithinCircle([center, radius])

Schemaless Domain Models

MongoDB is completely schemaless meaning you are not limited to a fixed number of columns like in a relational database. GORM for MongoDB now supports schemaless domain models. You can continue to specify your fixed domain properties inside your domain model:

class Plant {
    boolean goesInPatch
    String name
}

However, you can now also persist additional properties using the Groovy subscript operator:

def p = new Plant(name:"Pineapple")
p['color'] = 'Yellow'
p['hasLeaves'] = true
p.save()
p = Plant.findByName("Pineapple")

println p['color']
println p['hasLeaves']

There are many more improvements including the ability to customize index creation, support for query-by-example and more complete support for the GORM API. The documentation has been updated to cover all these new features. Let us know what you think, your feedback is invaluable.

One final plug, if you are in the Madrid area and want to know more about GORM for MongoDB come down to the Spring IO conference this Thursday where there will be many more talks on Spring, Grails and GORM.