What "grails package" actually does?

Grails Package Structure

• I am picking up an existing codebase that is Groovy and Grails, but the package structure seems very odd to me. For a domain class they put it in the following package com.company.domain then for the controller of that class it is com.company.controller That structure seems very off to me since the domain and controller classes are already organized under their own folders in the grails-app folder. My plan is to redo the packages and group based on actual use such as com.company.billing and com.company.util . Are there any disadvantages to my plan? Is there anything good about the current package structure that I'm missing?

• Answer:

  I think package names should separate code belonging to different business aspects. For e.g. a shopping website, I'd recommend: com.mycompany.myfancywebsite.product to all product related stuff (e.g. Product domain class, ProductDetailController etc.) com.mycompany.myfancywebsite.cart to all shopping cart related stuff (e.g. CartController, ShippingCostCalculationService etc.) com.mycompany.myfancywebsite.payment to all payment related things IMHO it does not make sense to use package names to distinguish the "type" of code (e.g. domain, controller, service...), this simply adds no value to it. I'd also recommend carefully using util in package names, this might be a sign that your code is not focussed enought. For further reading, see the excellent book "Clean code". Also see http://weblog.dangertree.net/2008/11/22/grails-package-naming/