Reviewed and endorsed by Guillaume Laforge and Dierk Koenig of Groovy, The Definitive Guide to Grails, by Grails lead Graeme Rocher, is for anyone looking for a more agile approach to web development with a dynamic scripting language such as Groovy. It will show you the new direction web frameworks are taking and specifically how a dynamic scripting language like Groovy can be harnessed on the JavaTM platform for productive Grails development.
This book takes you through the Grails development life cycle, including its project infrastructure, screen generation, full automatic object mapping to relational database systems, and a flexible, easy-to-use web layer. This book also demonstrates how Grails complements Java web development. Topics include creating domain classes in the Java platform while still accessing advanced features like dynamic persistent methods, using Grails controllers to call business logic written in the Java specification, and testing your Java application logic using Grails test cases.
- The author tackles new issues like writing web applications with dynamic languages, an agile approach, Ajax, and more.
- The Java platform has always been about choice, and this book demonstrates how you can use select aspects of Grails that you choose.
- The book makes up for the current lack of solid Groovy documentation.
Grails forms just one framework that is driving the movement toward dynamic language–based frameworks. In this sense, anyone who is interested in the dynamic language field, whether you are from a Perl, Ruby, or Python background, would gain something from reading this book, if just to acquire insight into what the alternatives are.
If platform is not a choice, and Java is the way your project is going, Grails can provide features like no other framework. In this circumstance, Grails may have the answers you are looking for. Primarily, however, this book will provide the most benefit to those who know and love the Java platform, those who see the Java language for all of its strong points but want something better as a web framework.
Grails is providing the answers to the long search for something better in the Java world by presenting a framework that solves the common problems in an unobtrusive, elegant manner. This is not to say the subject matter within this book is trivial.
I’ll be challenging you with advanced usages of the Groovy language and real-world examples. Furthermore, you’ll be pushing the boundaries of what is possible with a dynamic language like Groovy, extending it into every tier of a typical web application from the view layer with Ajaxenabled technology, to the persistence tier with rich domain models. For experienced Java developers, it should be an enlightening experience, as features not found in Java such as closures, builders, and metaprogramming are explored.
Through all this, however, although the subject matter and examples are advanced, the solutions are simple, and along the way you may learn a new way to approach web application development.
