[ColdBox-BE 4.0] ORMService - List as query with no results

Communities ColdBox HMVC
1

I’ve got the following entities:

Business.cfc

`

component persistent=“true” table=“hier_Businesses” {
property name=“businessID” fieldType=“id” generator=“increment” ormtype=“integer”;
property name=“business”;
property name=“businessName”;
property name=“centers” fieldtype=“one-to-many” cfc=“Center” fkcolumn=“businessID” inverse=“true”;
}

`

Center.cfc

`

component persistent=“true” table=“hier_Centers” {
property name=“centerID” fieldType=“id” generator=“increment” ormtype=“integer”;
property name=“centerAbbr”;
property name=“center”;
property name=“def_start”;
property name=“def_end”;
property name=“tzStd”;
property name=“is24” type=“boolean”;
property name=“clrClass”;
property name=“dataInterval” type=“numeric”;
property name=“business” fieldtype=“many-to-one” cfc=“Business” fkcolumn=“businessID”;
}

`

I’m using Criteria Builder to filter Centers that match a certain Business.BusinessID like so:

`

property name=“businessService” inject=“entityService:Business”;
property name=“centerService” inject=“entityService:Center”;
…

// new Center criteria
local.c = centerService.newCriteria();

// restrict Center to specified Business
c.and(c.restrictions.eq(“business.businessID”, javaCast(“int”, rc.businessID)));

// list the Centers
local.q = c.list(asQuery=true);

`

When there are records, the query result set is as expected with the full column list and rows:

Query
Execution Time: 0 ms
Record Count: 3
Cached: No
Lazy: No

centerID centerAbbr center def_start def_end tzStd is24 clrClass dataInterval
1 1 NAO New Albany true true US/Eastern false green 60
2 2 PHX Phoenix true true US/Arizona false orange 60
3 3 LPK Lake Park true true US/Mountain false blue 60

However, if there are no results and I am listing as a query, the result set contains not only 0 rows, but no columns.

Query
Execution Time: 0 ms
Record Count: 0
Cached: No
Lazy: No

I can see this being the intended if I am returning an Array of entities where I could easily check the array length. However, for queries, I need to have a consistent result set regardless of the rows. Do I need to take a different approach on how I am filtering associated entities?

2

That is a ColdFusion issue itself, maybe not an issue but expected behavior. Under what circumstances do you need the columns if no rows exist?

3

Upon looking at the BaseORMService and how it calls entityToQuery, you’re correct on expected behavior… well, expected based on how it’s implemented, but not what I expected.

In this scenario, we’re converting an application to ORM from a DAO/gateway model. The front-end application receives a serialized representation of the query, which includes an array of data along with column names regardless of whether rows exist. This is just a standard serializeJson(qData). Upon switching to ORM and utilizing the BaseORMService.list(asQuery=true) functionality, we get identical serialized results when compared to the standard serialized query assuming results are returned. However, with no results comes no column names which does not match the behavior I would expect when serializing a query.

Looks like I will be needing to gather that information myself to return to the client.

Thanks.