Groovy and Grails Recipes (Expert's Voice in Open Source) [Paperback]

Bashar Abdul-Jawad (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 9, 2008 | ISBN-10: 143021600X | ISBN-13: 978-1430216001 | Edition: 1

Groovy and Grails Recipes is the busy developer's guide to developing applications in Groovy and Grails. Rather than boring you with theoretical knowledge of “yet another language/framework,” this book delves straight into solving real–life problems in Groovy and Grails using easy–to–understand, well–explained code snippets. Through learning by example, you will be able to pick up on Groovy and Grails quickly and use the book as an essential reference when developing applications.

What you’ll learn

• Discover elegant and efficient solutions to common programming problems and web development tasks.
• Get and reuse practical examples for both Groovy language and Grails framework, using the latest stable versions of each.
• Perform a wide range of development tasks that cover all of the web development tiers, from View Layer to Service Layer to Domain Layer.
• Access the wide range of available Grails framework plug–ins.
• Obtain the recipes to integrate Spring, Hibernate, SiteMesh, and more with the Grails web framework.

Who this book is for

This book is for Java and web developers who are interested to learn more about Groovy and/or Grails and are looking for real–life, working examples of how to achieve common programming tasks in Groovy and Grails.

Table of Contents

1. Getting Started with Groovy
2. From Java to Groovy
3. Groovy Data Types and Control Structures
4. Object-Oriented Groovy
5. Closures
6. Builders
7. Working with Databases
8. Testing with Groovy
9. Miscellaneous Recipes
10. Getting Started with Grails
11. The Web Layer
12. The Data Layer
13. Scaffolding
14. Security
15. Testing
16. Miscellaneous Recipes

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Bashar Abdul Jawad is a senior software engineer at Video Monitoring Services, Inc., as well as a practicing Java, Groovy, and Grails expert, and he has a number of web sites in operation today based on Groovy and Grails.

Product Details

• Paperback: 424 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 143021600X
• ISBN-13: 978-1430216001
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #486,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good introduction into Groovy and Grails, January 13, 2009

By 

Lars Vogel (Heidelberg) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Groovy and Grails Recipes (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

Groovy and Grails Recipes is an good introduction into programming with Groovy and Grails.

Personally I find the title misleading; from a "Recipes" book I would general expect typical solutions for complex problems. This book is an introduction into Groovy and Grails and not necessary a recipes book which you uses for specific problems.

Despite this the book can be used to start Groovy and Grails. It is devided into two parts (Groovy Page 3 -203) and Grails (Page 207 - 376). The Groovy part covers the basic concepts of the language, describes builders, connection with databases, testing and some handling of XML.

The Grails part covers the the creation of controllers, GSP, domain models, security and testing.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sweet and to the point, December 24, 2008

By 

M. Hirzalla (Gurnee, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Groovy and Grails Recipes (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

I bought this book as a first Groovy and Grails reference since I am already a Java programmer and I was not disappointed. It served exactly what I needed it for through a very easy to follow structure and good organization.

The author does an excellent job in explaining ideas in simple terms and great examples. The passion of the author clearly shows in the text and in the overall style of the book.

I think the book is oriented towards those who understand programming in general and have some Java knowledge in particular. If you are totally new to programming, I would recommend another book in addition to this one where programming principles are explained. This book will always have a place on my desk since I can always refer to short snippets of useful code and solutions. I think the online version of the book is great as well since you can find things faster.

Overall, a great book and fills a gap in the available books about Groovy and Grails.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great book to start working with groovy and grails, December 14, 2008

By 

Steven Shucker (Tucson, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Groovy and Grails Recipes (Expert's Voice in Open Source) (Paperback)

This is a great book to dive into groovy and grails with. It's written for someone familiar with web development but no experience with groovy or grails. Ignore the publisher's roadmap on the back cover - this is the first book to read, not the second. There's some comparison with traditional java development, but you could pick up this book coming from almost any language.

I got this book after working with grails for a month or so. Grails is an easy environment to learn (especially since I already knew hibernate and spring), but I still picked up a lot from going back and reading - especially the groovy section. The whole first half of the book is dedicated to groovy before even touching on grails. I would have preferred some more coverage of how easy/powerful ajax is, but the thorough coverage of closures and builders more than makes up for it.