Posts Tagged ‘ grails

Ruby on Rails experience of a java developer

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Although it has not been a long time since I started to develop a small rails application, I would like to share notes.

the first point ,for me and for all the Java developers like me, should be: “what kind of language is this  ???” :) yes it is not  structured and well defined like Java , there are lots of tricks going around.  Even the simple for loops seems complex.

and for such a tricky language you cannot expect to find a full-functional CTRL-SPACE support. and for me it is still a pain.

To save yourself from any more pain I would suggest you to setup your environment with instantRails and aptana radrails.

however after you get used to this alien language, you would start to enjoy it. that is what started to do.  I really understood the real meaning of light-weight and agile. Although I do feel myself as secure and powerful as in Java, I still enjoyed it.

what was missing grails?

almost a year ago I tried grails also, I have seen some sparkles in it but that wasn’t the tool I have been looking for. it was not agile, the development cycle is painful. it was a pre-configured spring-hibernate setup with groovy.

the pain of grails does come from its power actually, spring-hibernate. it is really HEAVY.

The Sparkles

I don’t have too much experience, but I can easily say, development with it is way faster than Java or grails and way powerful than PHP.if you are looking for easy way to develop a web site that is the language you should look first.  It has  good and simple web-life cycle and built in support for web standard like json,xml and ajax.

The Volcano: Java

Although rails has good point it is not as powerful as java, and it is not complete alternative to java either.(don’t hesitate  to post your comments). So for the moment I am searching for integration strategies.

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Grails Productivity Tip: Depend on Your Plugin

Grails
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Grails has amazing plugin infrastructure. In short it enables almost everything the core application can do and has really good  list of plugins: http://grails.org/Plugins

Here what I want to say is something a little bit different:

Do all your business in your application plugin

Reminder: Plugins are enabled in Grails

You can reuse all implementation in your plugins:

  • Model Object
  • Services
  • Controllers
  • Gsp pages

Plugins can define their plugin dependency, just like maven dependency.

Goal: Extreme Modularity

Model all your business in a single plugin.

You can consider grails an application container in this case which manages transactions and persistence, and ui and enable each plugin with all customization.  What you need to do is using config. groovy and ConfigurationHolder for configuration issues.

What grails will do is just starting up plugins and and the applications one by one and expose all services, domain class and controllers which will work fine.

It will increase your modularity and ease your integration issues. You can also run your plugins while your are developing them. This is the most amazing part of all the scenario. You do not need to enter pack-install cycle to test anything.

Tough Part: IDE

If you have already established something like this before with Java you would have setup your IDE for this kind of integration. But for grails there is not support as far as far as I know :( So be ready run some console commands:

cd mycore

grails package-plugin

cd ../myapp

grails install-plugin ../mycore/grails-mycore-plugin-0.1.zip

Reference Guide:

http://www.grails.org/The+Plug-in+Developers+Guide

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Grails 101:GroovyBlogs.org

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If you are trying to learn groovy and grails like me you should visit http://groovyblogs.org . Really nice aggregator for grails and groovy blogs and posts.

But the most important part this site is, it is open-source !!! Read more

Which java stack do you use ?

hi every body,

I am just just running a poll about which java stack  are you using ?

and any comments are welcome !

[poll id="2"]

have a nice weekend

Is Grails too much Groovy ?

Groovy (programming language)
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I think so…

You think in java but write in groovy that is quite freaky/weird. Read more

alternative year 2009

this is the first 5 days of the new year,
Although 2008 has brought lots of changes to me, 2009 seems more promising. Read more

Grails Days 1: GORM-CRUD

A basic calculator
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It has been more than a week since I downloaded Grails, Although my first Grails impressions are not so well, I am playing with Grails with lots of curiosity and joy, Read more