Inserted Nested Item in Generated JSON in Groovy/Grails - json

Question

I am using Grails 2.1 to render JSON as part of a RestFul API I created. The Domain class, based on a SqlServer table, looks like this:
String firstName
String lastName
String officialAddress1
String officalAddress2
String preferredAddress1
String preferredAddress2
(etc.). . .
Which returns JSON similar to this:
{
"firstName": "Joe",
"lastName": "Hill",
"officialAddress1": "1100 Wob Hill",
"officialAddress2": "Apt. # 3",
"preferredAddress1": "1100 Wobbly Lane.",
"preferredAddress2": "Apartment 3."
}
It is working fine but the client wants me to nest the results in this fashion:
{
"firstName": "Joe",
"lastName": "Hill",
preferredAddress {
"preferredAddress1": "1100 Wobbly Lane.",
"preferredAddress1": "Apartment 3."
},
officialAddress {
"officialAddress1": "1100 Wob Hill",
"officialAddress2": "Apt. # 3"
}
}
My question is since the domain class, and the database, are not structure in a way to return this type of nested result how can I easily change this in my returned JSON? Do I have to abandon my way of just regurgitating the JSON based on the database/domain object and do a custom converter of some kind?

Answer 1

i'm new to this stackoverflow thing and i hope i will not mess it but i think i know what you need. in your bootstrap.groovy file you find "def init = { servletContext -> " line
put in there something like this:
JSON.registerObjectMarshaller(YourDomainName) {
def returnArray = [:]
returnArray['firstName'] = it.firstName
returnArray['lastName'] = it.lastName
returnArray['preferredAddress'] = [it.preferredAddress1 ,it.preferredAddress2]
returnArray['officialAddress'] = [it.officialAddress1 ,it.officialAddress2]
return returnArray
}
now when you use the render with JSON as you did grails will look in bootstrap and
render the domain as you asked.
hope this helps

Answer 2

The posted answer was correct. I just wanted to add the slight change I made to get the exact results I needed:
Thanks! That did it. I originally that it would not work exactly how I needed it but I was wrong. I changed the syntax slightly to get the results I needed.
returnArray['preferredAddress'] = [address1: it.preferredAddress1?.trim(),
address2: it.preferredAddress2?.trim(),
address3: it.preferredAddress3?.trim(),
city: it.preferredCity,
state: it.preferredState,
postCode: it.preferredPostCode,
country: it.preferredCountry
]