propertyMissing doesn't work in Criteria?

Question

So I've got a couple of classes with the following relationship:

class Foo {

    Bar bar
    /* ... other fields ... */

}

class Bar {

    String name

}

In class Foo I've got a couple of named queries:

static namedQueries = {

    userFoos { user ->

        /* ... get Foos for this user ... */

    }

    limitFoos { colname, dir ->
        order(colname, dir)
    }

...which I can then chain together in a controller:

def foos = Foo.userFoos(currentUser).limit(colname, dir)

Pretty straightforward so far. The problem is when I try to sort on bar; I get the error:

could not resolve property: bar.name of: package.Foo.

Now, I also got this error when the queries were Criteria that were declared in the controller. So, I went and wrote a propertyMissing handler for Foo:

def propertyMissing(String name) {
        if (name.contains(".")) {
            def (String propertyname, String subproperty) = name.tokenize(".")
            if (this.hasProperty(propertyname) && this."$propertyname".hasProperty(subproperty)) {
                return this."$propertyname"."$subproperty"
            }
        }
    }

I don't know if this is really the best way to do it, but it did work! However, now that I've moved the query into the class as a named query, propertyMissing doesn't appear to work anymore! Is this use not supported, or am I just missing something here?

EDIT

So I tried moving the Criteria back into the controller and sure enough, the sub-property sort did not work there either! So I guess Criteria just don't support propertyMissing at all :/

To answer dmahapatro's question, I am using jQuery DataTables to present the information. Clicking on a column header does an AJAX call to a controller action with parameters to indicate which column to sort on and in which direction. Once I determine the column name, I call the named queries like so:

def foosFilteredLimited = params.sSearch ?
    Foo.userFoos(currentUser).filterFoos(params.sSearch).limitFoos(offset, max, colName, sortDir).list()
:   Foo.userFoos(currentUser).limitFoos(offset, max, colName, sortDir).list()

(filterFoos takes a search string and narrows the results of userFoos.)

Answer 1

Try modifying limitFoos namedQuery as below and it should work. There is a caveat to it though. We cannot use bar.baz.name if required. ;)

limitFoos { column, ord ->
    def colStrs = column.tokenize(/./).toList()

    if( colStrs?.size() > 1 ) {
        "${colStrs[0]}" {
            order( "${colStrs[1]}", ord )
        }
    } else {
        order(column, ord)
    }
}