Word Games (The Domain Model)

This is a continuation of the previous blog entry (Word Games).

We've now created the logic for generating the Word Puzzles, however, we need to store the generated puzzles somewhere (in a database).

Ideally I would like to store all possible paths for a given word combination/path length as a single record.
For example, I know that there are 2 possible ways to get from aback to stank in 3 intermediate steps

aback -> alack -> slack -> slank -> stank
aback -> alack -> slack -> stack -> stank

I would like a single record that has a start word of aback, an end word of stank and stores 2 possible paths (the ones above).

With that requirement, here is the domain model.
It consists of a Puzzle object and a Path object. The Puzzle object consists of information about the Puzzle (start word, end word etc) and a collection of paths.

To see this in action, here is the sample Groovy code to retrieve it

import com.wordpath.Puzzle

def puzzle = Puzzle.findByStartWordAndEndWord('aback', 'stank')
println puzzle
puzzle.paths.each{ path ->
    List lst = path.toString().tokenize(',[]')   //Convert a string presentation of a list to a List
    println lst
   
}

The output is as follows

{161} aback stank possible paths = 2 [[aback, alack, slack, slank, stank], [aback, alack, slack, stack, stank]]
[aback,  alack,  slack,  slank,  stank]
[aback,  alack,  slack,  stack,  stank]

Here are the 2 domain classes. Note the unique constraint (startWord, endWord, length).

Puzzle

package com.wordpath
import com.wordpath.Path

class Puzzle {
 
 String startWord
 List paths
 String endWord
 Integer possiblePaths
 Integer wordLength
 boolean isActive 
 
 static hasMany = [paths: Path]

    static constraints = {
  id generator: 'identity', column: 'id'
  startWord blank: false
  paths nullable: true
  endWord blank: false
  possiblePaths nullable: false
  wordLength nullable: false
  isActive nullable: false
  startWord(unique: ['endWord','wordLength'])
    }
 
 String toString(){
  String recordInfo = "{$id} ${startWord} ${endWord} possible paths = ${possiblePaths} ${paths}"
  return recordInfo  
 }
}

Path

package com.wordpath
import com.wordpath.Puzzle

class Path {
 String path
 Puzzle puzzle
 
 static belongsTo = [puzzle: Puzzle]
 
 String toString(){
  String recordInfo = "${path}"
  return recordInfo
 }
}

I am using a shortcut in storing the path as a String that is easily converted to a List using Groovy (see the comment in the first code listing above)