Mapping Collection Fields

Introduction

The collection-descriptor maps a collection attribute into JCR nodes.

Based on our model defined here, the following collection-descriptor is used to map the "paragraphs" field into the JCR node called "paragraphs".

 				
<class-descriptor className="org.apache.portals.graffito.jcr.testmodel.Page" jcrNodeType="graffito:page">
	<collection-descriptor fieldName="paragraphs" jcrName="paragraphs" 
			       elementClassName="org.apache.portals.graffito.jcr.testmodel.Paragraph" />
	<!-- other field, bean and collection mapping here !-->
</class-descriptor>
																		
<class-descriptor className="org.apache.portals.graffito.jcr.testmodel.Paragraph" jcrNodeType="graffito:paragraph">
	<field-descriptor fieldName="path" path="true" />
	<field-descriptor fieldName="text" jcrName="graffito:text"/>
</class-descriptor>

The collection-descriptor contains the elementClassName attribute which specify the collection element class.

Result in the JCR repository

Following our example, the resulting JCR structure can be : 

 
/mysite/page1	
	/mysite/page1/paragraphs
		/mysite/page1/paragraphs/paragraph1
			graffito:text = "This is the content of para1"
		/mysite/page1/paragraphs/paragraph2
			graffito:text = ""This is the content of para2"
	... other subnodes for page1 ...

Creating a subnode like this example (mysite/page1/paragraphs) is the default behaviour. See the section Reviewing the collection-descriptor to get other collection-field mapping strategies.