SpringOne 2GX

Static type checking and compilation in Groovy 2

Guillaume LaForge — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:16:00 CST

This Week in Grails (2012-04)

Burt Beckwith — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:24:00 CST

Peter Ledbrook started a HOWTO series this week for Grails; the first one is on upgrading to Grails 2.0 and there’s also a HOWTO on writing HOWTOs.

We could use your help finding invalid JIRA issues (e.g. already fixed or no longer an issue). Check out the section “Reviewing issues” in the wiki page on contributing to Grails for how to use the new “Last Reviewed” and “Flagged” fields.

Tomas Lin wrote up his experiences deploying Grails applications to AppFog. It’s great to know that there’s another viable cloud provider for Grails developers.

STS 2.9.0.M2 was released this week. Check out the new and noteworthy PDF for what’s been updated in the Groovy, Grails, and Gradle support.

I released a new plugin this week, to support using Ratpack in a Grails application. Thanks to James Williams for his post that got me started and inspired the plugin. And within a day there was already a blog post by Matthias Hryniszak on using the plugin.

If you want to keep up with these “This Week in Grails” posts you can access them directly via their category link or in an RSS reader with the feed for just these posts.

Translations of this post:

Miscellaneous Items
Plugins
Interesting Tweets
Jobs
User groups and Conferences

Miscellaneous Items

The Wizard Design Pattern
- Not Grails-specific, but an interesting approach, especially for DSLs and builders
Groovy DSL – A Simple Example
Apache Tomcat 7.0.25 released
Grails on Jelastic
Have you upgraded a #grails application to version 2 yet? Let us know how it went!
Custom Grails Test Types/Phases
- Older but cool
C.R.A.P. metrics for Grails
Static compilation for Groovy poll results
Groovy annotations for ToString and EqualsAndHashCode
- A good reminder, and useful tip about adding to the domain class template
Grails Database Migration Gotchas
Upgrading your app to Grails 2.0.0? Better wait for 2.0.1
Using the Tomcat 7 JDBC Connection Pool in Production
Grails: Bootstrapping data with DomainBuilder
Groovy Goodness: Solve Naming Conflicts with Builders
Static type checking talk from Paris Groovy/Grails User Group
Java Groovy / Grails Developer in Toronto
Grails, Weceem and Apache2
- Getting the GR8Conf sites running on new hardware
CacheManager’s diskStorePath
- Interesting stuff on configuring Ehcache
http://observatoriodegrails.com/hoy/?date=2012-01-23
http://observatoriodegrails.com/hoy/?date=2012-01-24
http://observatoriodegrails.com/hoy/?date=2012-01-25
http://observatoriodegrails.com/hoy/?date=2012-01-26
http://observatoriodegrails.com/hoy/?date=2012-01-27
This Week in Gradle (2012-4)
This Week in Spring, January 24th, 2012

Plugins

There were 3 new plugins released:

jquery-ui-timepicker version 0.9.8.1. Provides resources for http://trentrichardson.com/examples/timepicker/
eco-resources version 0.1. Compiles Eco templates to Javascript
ratpack version 1.0.1. Lets you use Ratpack inside Grails

and 17 updated plugins:

atmosphere version 0.4.2.1. Provides integration with the Atmosphere project, a portable AjaxPush/Comet and WebSocket framework
ckeditor version 3.6.2.1. Implements the integration layer between Grails and the CKEditor web rich text editor.
date-formatting version 0.2.5. Adds functions to the Date object to convert into various string formats
foundation version 2.1.4.3. Provides the Foundation CSS framework resources
google-visualization version 0.5. Provides a taglib for the interactive charts of the Google Visualization API
grails-melody version 1.11. Integrates the JavaMelody system monitoring tool
gsp-taglib version 0.3.2. Makes it possible to declare tags in a gsp in grails-app/taglib
jasper version 1.5.2. Enables use of JasperReports
rich-domain version 1.0.6. Provides dependency injection for POGOs that are not Grails domain classes
spring-security-mock version 1.0.1. Mock authentication support for Spring Security
spring-security-saml version 1.0.0.M11. SAML 2.x support for the Spring Security Plugin
spring-security-shibboleth-native-sp version 1.0.2. Shibboleth Naitive SP support for the Spring Security grails plugin
syntax-highlighter version 3.0.83. Adds a Syntax Highlighter for displaying code samples in GSP pages
tiny-mce version 3.4.7. Integrates the TinyMce editor javascript and tags to embed the editor in your GSP pages
twitter4j version 0.3.2. Send and receive Twitter messages using the twitter4j library
xwiki-rendering version 0.4. Convert texts using XWiki Rendering Framework
zkui version 0.4.1. Seamlessly integrates ZK with Grails’ infrastructures; uses the Grails’ infrastructures such as GSP, controllers rather than zk’s zul as in ZKGrails plugin

Interesting Tweets

@CedricChampeau: More details about my talk, static type checking at the Paris #groovy #grails user group. http://t.co/mUwPQcJD
@LondonGGUG: Anyone free and willing to talk about their #grails deployment setup at next GGUG? 20th Feb. Length 10-30 mins.
@joshareed: ‘git clean -df’ is great for cleaning up all the images, css, js that a grails upgrade re-creates
@wangjammer5: Great discussions with #Grails team this morning yielded this idea to replace install-plugin: http://t.co/fQcHbXeJ
@CodersUniverse: SpringPeople launches open house training in India: … Tomcat, Apache, Groovy & Grails, Testing, Databases, Ope… http://t.co/DfnHxmk7
@fifthposition: Grails 2.0 and emacs shell-mode: http://t.co/ruPXN0i2. (Thanks to @ataylor284 for this.) #grails #emacs
@aalmiray: hacking groovy/javafx by day; griffon/grails by night. 2012 is certainly looking interesting as days pass by
@gr8conf: We’re happy to announce, that SpringSource is the premium sponsor of #gr8conf Europe 2012. #groovy #grails #gradle #griffon #vmware
@nhoussos: New release of Free/Open source applicant tracking (e-Recruitment) system by EKT (developed in Grails!): http://t.co/n7qaC2Fy
@jatin_Shephertz: I created group Grails 4 Newbie on Linkedin.: http://t.co/FNjG7dEq
@bmuschko: Released #grails Google Visualization plugin v0.5: http://t.co/LL6aqysm. New visualizations, minor bugfixes, JS API taglib, updated docs.

Jobs

Groovy/Grails Developer (contract) in Slovakia
Sr. Developer Analyst (Grails) – Columbus, Ohio
Freelance Grails/Java udviklere – København
@SaraJaneJones2: @lakah Hey John, I’m looking for #groovy/grails developer for a client in #nyc. Would you have any referrals? Plz rt!
Groovy / Grails Developer in NYC
Java Groovy/Grails Developer – Toronto, ON, Canada
Java/Grails Developer in Phoenix, AZ
Groovy Grails Developer in NYC
Sr. Consultant (Java/Grails/iOS) at Object Partners in Minneapolis, MN
Remote Java / JVM / Grails Developer
@coryhodnett: Looking for a Web Developer for Java Script, Grails, & AJAX contract. Call me! 6022242486
@mobiquityinc: Still looking for #mobile #developers. Especially with #Cocos2D and #Grails experience. #Jobs #Boston #PVD.
Looking for Java Developers, Java / Grails developers
@gsuhm: Are you a #grails developer in Atlanta? Drop me a note for a great opportunity…
@jvandersande: 2 groovy/grails development roles for a new startup. Great company w/ a great story. Willing to look at java, python, ruby, etc engineers
@errr_: Are you a bad ass Java developer? Do you know groovy and grails? Do you also know vmware? We NEED you!! Shoot me your resume!
Java Dev – Grails in Nashville
Java, Grails/Groovy, Restful Web Services
Java Developer in Bristol, UK
Java udviklere søges (Grails, Groovy, Spring) – Sjælland & Hovedstad
Contract Java Developer in Vancouver
Senior Java Grails/Groovy Developer (contract) in NYC
@DevelopmenGC: Recherche Analyste programmeur Groovy (Grails) (Montréal)
Contactez : cv@developmen.ca
Lead Java Developer / Architect – Groovy, Grails in Northampton, UK

User groups and Conferences

Spring I/O 2012
- February 16^th and 17^th in Madrid

Thursday, February 9, 2012
- Seattle Groovy/Grails Users Group
March 8, 2012
- Seattle Groovy/Grails Users Group

Grails plugin for Ratpack

Burt Beckwith — Sun, 29 Jan 2012 00:13:00 CST

I saw James Williams’ post on Running Ratpack inside Grails earlier this week and thought that it should be implemented as a Grails plugin, so I started playing with it. There isn’t much in the way of documentation yet, but what’s there is at the plugin portal page. The source for the plugin is here if you have any fixes or suggestions.

Running Ratpack inside Grails

James Williams — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 12:30:00 CST

When I would present on Ratpack at conferences, one of the main questions I'd get would be around the migration path from Ratpack to Grails. I'd usually answer noting that you could run Ratpack along side Grails. It turns out it is incredibly simple to run a Ratpack app inside Grails. I don't think it's a long term solution and best as an intermediary step to migrate from one side to the other.

1. Grab and build Ratpack.

Provided you already have Gradle installed, run gradle buildDistro. The only file you need is the main Ratpack-x.x file. Grails will provide the Groovy and servlet container run time for you. Add this to the lib directory of your Grails app.

2. Create your Ratpack app class.

Putting the script into a proper class, as shown below, makes it easier to reference it from our Servlet.

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat

import com.bleedingwolf.ratpack.*

class SampleApp {

def app = Ratpack.app {

set 'port', 4999

get("/") {

def ua = headers['user-agent']

"Your user-agent: ${ua} from Ratpack"

}

get("/foo/:name") {

"Hello, ${urlparams.name}"

}

get("/person/:id") {

"Person #${urlparams.id}"

}

public static void main(String[] args) {

SampleServlet.serve(new SampleApp().app)

}

3. Subclass *RatpackServlet*.

If you don't mind getting an logging error, you can use something as simple as the following file:

import com.bleedingwolf.ratpack.*

class SampleServlet extends RatpackServlet {

			

            void init() {

		app = new SampleApp().app

}

4. Add the servlet information to your application.

There is a really confusing way to do it using the resources.groovy file but I prefer just adding it to the web.xml by hand. Run

grails install-templates

and navigate to src/templates/war/web.xml and add the following:

<servlet>

<servlet-name>SampleServlet</servlet-name>

	

        <servlet-class>SampleServlet</servlet-class>

	

       </servlet>

	<servlet-mapping>

<servlet-name>SampleServlet</servlet-name>

		

                <url-pattern>/ratpack/*</url-pattern>

</servlet-mapping>

The servlet needs to be put on a url-pattern that isn't root (/*) so I used (/ratpack/*). Run grails run-app and you're all set.

This Week in Grails (2012-03)

Burt Beckwith — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 07:53:00 CST

You only have a few more weeks to get your talk proposals in for GR8Conf EU and US. The EU page is here and the US page is here; both conferences have a February 15^th deadline.

Lots of Spring Security items this week. I broke war deployment in the spring-security-core 1.2.7 release so I released version 1.2.7.1 to address that. There’s a new plugin to integrate a Shibboleth native SP, and one for mock authentication. And Carsten Block did a blog post on restricting concurrent user sessions (also see the updated post).

Check out Tsuyoshi Yamamoto’s summary of the Groovy & Grails eXchange 2011 in London. Lots of cool photos, including one of the three developers of the Acegi plugin – it was the first time we were all in the same place together.

I released a new plugin this week to help with deploying applications to JBoss. Each version of JBoss has various things that need to be done to get an app deployed, so I thought it’d be best to encapsulate that in a plugin that does the work for you. It works with version 5 and 6, but no support for version 7 since there isn’t one that supports Grails yet (due various bugs that will hopefully be addressed in 7.2).

If you want to keep up with these “This Week in Grails” posts you can access them directly via their category link or in an RSS reader with the feed for just these posts.

Translations of this post:

Miscellaneous Items
Plugins
Interesting Tweets
Jobs
User groups and Conferences

Miscellaneous Items

Plugins

There were 4 new plugins released:

spring-security-shibboleth-native-sp version 1.0.0. Shibboleth Naitive SP support for the Spring Security grails plugin
activiti-shiro version 0.1.1. Integrates Shiro Security to Activiti
kendo-ui version 1.0.0. Supplies Kendo UI dependencies
jbossas version 1.0. Assists in deploying to JBoss

and 14 updated plugins:

build-info version 1.2.2. Provides a controller/view that display basic information about the war file
clover version 3.1.3. Integrates the Clover code coverage tool
commentable version 0.7.7. Mark up any of your domain classes as having comments and then use the tag library and partial templates to integrate comments into your views
dao-artefacts version 0.4. Provides a way of using DAOs in Grails applications.
external-config-reload version 0.4.8. Polls for changes to external configuration files (files added to grails.config.locations), reloads the configuration when a change has occurred, and notifies specified plugins by firing the onConfigChange event in each
hibernate-search version 0.4. Integrates Hibernate Search for domain classes
infinispan version 0.4.5. Adds support for the JBoss Infinispan distributed cache
jasypt-encryption version 1.1.0. Integration the Jasypt encryption library
mahout-recommender version 0.5.2. Use Apache Mahout recommendation algorithms in your project
marshallers version 0.1.1. Easy registration and usage of custom XML and JSON marshallers supporting hierarchical configurations
pusher version 0.2. Wrapper for pusher.com REST api
simpledb version 0.3. Integrates the AWS SimpleDB datastore into Grails, providing a GORM API onto it
spring-security-core version 1.2.7.1. The official Grails security plugin; integrates with Spring Security
spring-security-mock version 1.0.0. Mock authentication support for Spring Security

Interesting Tweets

@ewolff: Tech Talk #adessoAG #Groovy #Grails in Stralsund http://t.co/JkqqRUof Feb 2nd
@aaronzirbes: I just published a #Grails Spring Security plugin for those using #Shibboleth. Check it out @ http://t.co/kHqF58qY
@padcom: #GContracts is just awesome! Finally a good use of closure annotations in #Groovy
@doylecentral: sts just checked for a duplicate string in json builder. WOW #sts #grails
@nagai_masato: When you learn the AST DSL of Groovy, AstSpecBuilder woks as a great reference. http://t.co/LyhoHetB #groovy
@glaforge: #groovy is back at the 36th rank in the #tiobe index. It’s playing yoyo http://t.co/lrWqUTmb
@hiranasu: GrailsでAjax実装するのが簡単すぎてやばい。jsの知識ゼロで書ける。楽しすぎる！
@FinGGUG: Where are you all the Finnish #Groovy and #Grails developers? We need people to join the action! Please spread the word.
@TimSporcic: Finally pushed up GORM Recipes to GitHub. Samples of using GORM with Grails 2.0. #GORM #grails http://t.co/Wvj8Rc1c
@rstepanenko: published 0.3 release of #AWS #simpledb gorm plugin for #grails. Release notes: http://t.co/IvBAV0xE (numeric ids, aws retries etc.)
@milcom_: TIL there is a #groovy sub reddit. http://t.co/Pg1LTbLj
@CedricChampeau: Slides from my talk about static type checking at the #groovy #grails user group http://t.co/8AjXvWqM
@nmartignole: #Groovy users in the south of France, there’s now a Groovy/Grails User Group at Sophia Antipolis http://t.co/8bE92CQs cc @sebi2706
@nobusue: 公式公認!ドキュメント翻訳 / “Grails Framework リファレンスドキュメント” http://t.co/bJpXnped

Jobs

@GCSdigitalmedia: Looking for Java Groovy/Grails developers for an immediate start, please contact Kevin on 020 7710 4121
@albertovilches: ¿Algún programador Groovy #Grails está buscando trabajo en Madrid? que se ponga en contacto conmigo!
Java/Grails Application Developer at Devis in Arlington, VA
@bredo: We’re hiring! Looking for a Grails/Java developer http://t.co/pLTDu0A2 – fun team, fun project, great tech, cake, booze, beauty, clerkenwell
@BKBRecruiter: Searching for a Groovy and Grails developer in Toronto if interested Msg me… #in
Software Engineer at SRA International in Charlottesville, VA
Web Developer / Grails Developer in Northamptonshire
Grails Web Developer at Coresystems AG in Windisch, Switzerland
Looking for a Lead Developer to migrate ERP systems based in SilverStream over to Grails
Java/JVM Languages Developer at Excella
Grails Developers at Acrede
Java Dev – Grails at Moxy in Nashville, TN
@noelwiland: NOW HIRING: Senior Level Developer with experience with RESTful Web Services & Grails Framework. Please contact me if you are interested. n…
Lead Java Developer / Architect – Groovy, Grails in Northampton
Desarrollador Junior de Java – Madrid
Freelance Grails/Java udviklere – København
Web Developer, Grails / ColdFusion, London
Sr. JAVA/Groovy Grails Developer
Groovy Grails / Java | NYC
Sr Grails / Java Developer in Vancouver, BC

User groups and Conferences

Spring I/O 2012
- February 16^th and 17^th in Madrid

Thursday, March 8, 2012
- Seattle Groovy/Grails Users Group

Grails: Bootstrapping data with DomainBuilder

Andres Almiray — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 06:35:00 CST

A few days ago I was discussing the topic of builders during a Grails training session. After surveying the usual suspects found in the standard Groovy distribution (MarkupBuilder, SwingBuilder, Antbuilder and ObjectGraphBuilder) we jumped into Grails' DomainBuilder. Once we got familiar with it the team seized the opportunity to refactor an existing application they've been working on for a few weeks. The idea was to remove a very verbose data setup during the bootstrap sequence.

Like many other applications out there, this one requires setting up users and roles to secure access to some areas. The User and Role classes looked like the following ones
class User { String username String name static hasMany = [roles: Role] static constraints = { username(nullable: false, blank: false, unique: true) name(nullable: false, blank: false, unique: true) } } class Role { String name static constraints = { name(nullable: false, blank: false, unique: true) } }

Nothing complex really. Now, during bootstrap there were a handful on instances of both classes being created and saved. A few users would share roles which meant keeping a reference to the common role to later use Grails relationship methods. This caused the code to be not so much DRY, and while it's good to be WET from time to time this wasn't the case. Let me show you how the code looked like before we added the builder
import com.acme.* class BootStrap { def init = { servletContext -> User user1 = new User(username: 'user1', name: 'Regular') User user2 = new User(username: 'user2', name: 'Super') User user3 = new User(username: 'user3', name: 'Über') User user4 = new User(username: 'user4', name: 'Admin') Role role1 = new Role(name: 'Observer') Role role2 = new Role(name: 'Executor') Role role3 = new Role(name: 'Collector') Role role4 = new Role(name: 'Administrator') user1.addToRoles(role1) user2.addToRoles(role1) user2.addToRoles(role2) user3.addToRoles(role1) user3.addToRoles(role2) user3.addToRoles(role3) user4.addToRoles(role4) role1.save() role2.save() role3.save() role4.save() role1.save() user2.save() user3.save() user4.save() } }

We could have saved a few lines by collecting all domain classes in Lists then applying *.save() on the lists, however that would still have left the relationship methods being defined explicitly. This is where DomainBuilder came in. With it we were able to define the domain instances and the relationships at the same time. We ended up with code looking like the following one
import com.acme.* import grails.util.DomainBuilder class BootStrap { def init = { servletContext -> DomainBuilder builder = new DomainBuilder() builder.classNameResolver = 'com.acme' builder.identifierResolver = { 'nodeId' } builder.registerFactory 'list', new ListFactory() builder.childPropertySetter = new CustomChildPropertySetter() List instances = builder.list { role(nodeId: 'role1', name: 'Observer') role(nodeId: 'role2', name: 'Executor') role(nodeId: 'role3', name: 'Collector') role(nodeId: 'role4', name: 'Administrator') user(username: 'user1', name: 'Regular') { role(refId: 'role1') } user(username: 'user2', name: 'Super') { role(refId: 'role1') role(refId: 'role2') } user(username: 'user3', name: 'Über') { role(refId: 'role1') role(refId: 'role2') role(refId: 'role3') } user(username: 'user4', name: 'Admin') { role(refId: 'role4') } } instances*.save() } }

DomainBuilder understands perfectly well the relationships between domain class instances. It also makes some assumptions on how the model is setup, but we still need to give it a few hints. In line 7 we can see a classNameResolver set on the builder. By convention the builder will use an strategy to construct fully qualified classnames out of node names. If the classes happen to be defined inside a package then you must define a custom classNameResolver. In our case the classes we're interested in live under the same package so we only need to specify it, the builder will do the rest to figure out the correct class name.

Next, we must set a custom identifierResolver because the id property is of semantic meaning to domain classes. The builder can keep references to all instantiated nodes, it will use the id property by default, assuming that's a synthetic property. This means it will treated in a different way than the rest of properties. Because id is used by domain classes we set a different synthetic property named nodeId. Finally we define a custom factory to serve as the root of the object graph. This custom factory requires additional setup to handle its children, which is why we also register a custom ChildPropertySetter on the builder. These two helper classes can be seen in the following snippets
private static class ListFactory extends AbstractFactory { Object newInstance(FactoryBuilderSupport builder, Object name, Object value, Map attributes) { [] } }private static class CustomChildPropertySetter extends DomainBuilder.DefaultGrailsChildPropertySetter { void setChild(Object parent, Object child, String parentName, String propertyName) { if (parent instanceof List) { parent << child } else { super.setChild(parent, child, parentName, propertyName) } } }

Basically the code inspects the type of the parent node. If it's a List then we append the child to it, otherwise we let the standard behavior take control. You can read more information on the builders used at FactoryBuilderSupport and ObjectGraphBuilder.

Keep on Groovying!

Say No to iBooks Author

James Williams — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:00:00 CST

Apple, at their recent event announcement, unveiled a new innovation in the textbook market with iBooks Author. Most of the words around this event use flowery language of how groundbreaking it is and how it will change the market. I think it stands to do more damage to the market than help.

Let's start with the ridiculous EULA, Apple requires any work that is created with iBooks Author(IBA) to be sold only in the Apple iBooks store. Apple doesn't have the right to tell me where I can sell the work I create on my own equipment. This seems to be nothing more than a ploy to bolster the paltry selection of books in iBooks, an elite bookstore. I don't fault them for wanting to upset the publishing world because as an author, my cut of the take isn't that great with a traditional publisher. Crafting a means for authors to get a more equitable cut could only be good for them, right? In this case, I'd argue not. You would be trading masters. Get a little more money but also a master that is more ruthless.

iBooks will have to be appoved just like normal iOS apps. Though much improved in recent years, releasing an app on iOS is often unpredictable. In addition to not knowing precisely when a book will be available for purchase, you are dependent on Apple. ONLY Apple.

As Daniel Glazman, a member of the W3C CSS Working Group, notes, IBA uses a proprietary format that is not compatible with any current software. He asserts a point that is hard to argue. Had Apple participated in the standards process openly, we could have a more robust EPUB standard AND Apple would have first to market advantage. John Gruber rebuts Daniel's post stating that it IBA need not be standards compliant and throws out the canard of Amazon's mobi format being proprietary. A key difference is the mobi format is largely open, setting aside the .azw DRM variant for a second, and many tools can create them. Good or bad, anyone can publish a book to the Kindle store and have access to hundreds of millions of devices when you count that Kindle apps exist for Android, iOS, WP7, and the Chrome Web browser.

Let's go back in time a couple years to the start of the Android vs iOS debate. You'd ask devs why they didn't develop for Android and first they'd say "The iOS market is bigger." After Android activations surpassed iOS, the excuse became "The Android market is fragmented." Let's turn that argument on its head.

When you have

more open formats like MOBI and EPUB that benefit from a number of tools that can create them,
many online stores that sell books in those formats (SmashWords and Amazon to name a few), and
the ability to create your own e-commerce site with your content, and,
access to hundreds of millions devices of all shapes and sizes,

do you really want to give that all up for Apple?

This Week in Grails (2012-02)

Burt Beckwith — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:40:00 CST

Gr8Conf Europe announced a new look this week for their site (based on Weceem) and that their Call for Papers is open. If you want to speak in Copenhagen be sure to get your proposals in by the February 15^th deadline.

The plugin portal got a few new features recently. Plugin pages now display the syntax for declaring the plugin in BuildConfig.groovy instead of using install-plugin. For example the spring-security-core plugin’s value is compile ":spring-security-core:1.2.7". Plugins that use extra jar repositories also display that information, for example spring-mobile. Plugins now display usage data (although it’s limited so the numbers aren’t very valid yet). The spring-security-core plugin displays “Used by approximately 35% of Grails users”.

Peter’s started a project to collect HOWTO guides for Grails. Hopefully this will evolve into a large collection, created both by the core team and the community.

Bobby Warner is back this week with two screencasts, both on CoffeeScript. Check out
Getting Groovy with CoffeeScript and Another Adventure with Grails and CoffeeScript.

If you want to keep up with these “This Week in Grails” posts you can access them directly via their category link or in an RSS reader with the feed for just these posts.

Translations of this post:

Miscellaneous Items
Plugins
Interesting Tweets
Jobs
User groups and Conferences

Miscellaneous Items

Plugins

There were 4 new plugins released:

foundation version 2.1.4.1. Provides the Foundation CSS framework resources
fbootstrapp version 0.1.1. Provides FBootstrapp CSS framework resource files
spring-security-mock version 0.9.8. Mock authentication support for Spring Security
jquery-mobile-scaffolding version 0.1. Provides mobile templates that can be used during the scaffolding process

and 21 updated plugins:

atmosphere version 0.4.2. Provides integration with the Atmosphere project, a portable AjaxPush/Comet and WebSocket framework
bubbling version 2.1.4. Provides integration with the Bubbling Library YUI extension
build-info version 1.2.1. Provides a controller/view that display basic information about the war file
commentable version 0.7.6. Mark up any of your domain classes as having comments and then use the tag library and partial templates to integrate comments into your views
cucumber version 0.2.2. Test your Grails apps with Cucumber
dao version 0.4.2. Enables a grails-app/dao directory to setup beans. See https://github.com/basejump/grails-dao
dojo version 1.7.1.3. Integrates the Dojo javascript toolkit
excel-import version 1.0.0. Excel & CSV Importer & Exporter using Apache POI
facebook-sdk version 0.1.2. Allows your application to use the Facebook Platform and develop Facebook apps on Facebook.com or on web sites (with Facebook Connect)
geolocation version 0.4. Adds HTML5 geolocation support and offers some utility methods to calculate distances and range checks
gorm-jpa version 1.0.0.M1. Implementation of GORM for JPA 1.0
grails-ui version 1.2.3. Provides a standard UI tag library for ajaxy widgets using YUI
hibernate-jpa-provider version 1.0.0.M1. Integrates Hibernate as a JPA provider
jasper version 1.5.1. Enables use of JasperReports
jquery-validation-ui version 1.2.3. Client Side Validation without writing JavaScript
rateable version 0.7.1. Adds a generic mechanism for rating domain objects
release version 1.0.1. Publishes Grails plugins either to a public or private repository
routing version 1.1.6. Send and route messages to a wide variety of destination endpoints directly from your Controllers and Services using Camel
screencasts version 0.5.6. Allows the upload, management and display of screencasts
svn version 1.0.2. Provides SVNKit as a dependency; an SvnClient class that makes it easier to work with Subversion; and integration with the Release plugin
uploadr version 0.5.8. HTML5 Drag and Drop file uploader

Interesting Tweets

@smaldini: good work in progress for the #grails plugin platform with the event mechanism and its Spring Integration impl – targeting a release asap
@grails_rocks: Well #Grails Functional Test plugin 2.0 (upgraded from previous name of 1.5) is coming along well. New REST API testing mode, dep fixes etc
@GavinInNY: Working on @ApacheShiro documentation for @grailsframework. Anyone want to help? https://t.co/pgE8dM22
@ldaley: I’ll be in Portland for Gradle training (places still open: http://t.co/Wee0pVII) next week if anyone wants to talk Gradle, Grails, Geb etc.
@pniederw: I’ve always wanted true named parameters for #groovy. Time to take action… https://t.co/w6GD59Wv
@glaforge: #springio 2012 (Feb 16-17, Madrid) has quite a few nice #groovy #grails #gcontracts #cloudfoundry talks! Check it out! http://t.co/UWR4h2uK
@CedricChampeau: De retour du @nantesjug. Mes slides “Introduction aux #DSL en #Groovy” http://t.co/7MFJr3sK
@tahmed: #OpenLogic announces 2011 open source trending report. #Grails #11 in overall growth. http://t.co/YF8wE5R0 #Groovy
@grailsframework: In Madrid or near by? Then check out Spring IO – a February conference for all things #springframework & #groovy – http://t.co/OZT64FBZ
@nikostheimpaler: Converting old half-finished side project to Grails. Roughly 90% done after 3 hours. #imsold

Jobs

@sebi2706: Wants to work with #Groovy and other exciting technos while living on the french Riviera ? please DM me or RT #sun #sea #groovy
Senior Grails Server Developer at Mobiquity in Wellesley, MA or Providence, RI
@amontalenti: Any software engineers interested in a senior development role at a startup using #Groovy or #Grails? DM or @ me for more information. #in
@DimitrisTI: Όποιος θέλει να εφαρμόσει (ή να αποκτήσει) την εμπειρία του σε Grails σε νέο, ενδιαφέρον project @ me
@carribus: Can anyone point me in the direction of a #JavaEE/#Groovy on #Grails guru who would be interested in a lucrative opportunity?
@mariocruz: Looking for a Java / Grails Developer temp to perm in Coral Gables spread the word.
@BKBRecruiter: Searching for a Java / Groovy and Grails Developer if interested Msg me @ bbarry@bevertec.com
@DedicatedTech: Java – Groovy/Grails position in NYC. Anyone know someone who is looking for employment? http://t.co/yLVa1qgM
Multiple opportunities for Open Source Architects, Engineers & Consultants (Java/Spring/Groovy Grails etc)
@JuDelisle: Recherche un développeur Groovy (Grails) pour un mandat débutant à la mi-février – pendant 8 mois. Centre-ville de Montréal. Analyste programmeur Groovy (Grails) – Contractuel, Montréal
Senior Business Systems Analyst Programmer – Java Technical Lead in Mumbai, India
Looking for a Lead Developer to migrate ERP systems based in SilverStream over to Grails
Lead Java Developer / Architect – Groovy, Grails in Northampton, UK
@MansfieldNeil: New requirement for a Junior Groovy on Grails developer – Berlin – 6 Months ++ please contact me on neil.mansfield@darwinrecruitment.com
Web Developer Grails / Groovy / Java in Brisbane, AU
Developer: Ruby/ Groovy/ Grails in Bryanston, Sandton, South Africa
Seeking 2-4 Senior Java developers with Groovy, grails, drools competences for contract in Copenhagen
Sr Grails / Java Developer in Vancouver
Java Developer in London
Web Developer, Grails / ColdFusion, London
Grails Software Engineer at Bloom Health in Minneapolis

User groups and Conferences

Thursday, January 19, 2012 – Groovy 2.0 : un pas vers le typage statique
- Paris Groovy and Grails User Group
Monday, January 23, 2012
- SF Bay Groovy and Grails Meetup Group

Running Spring Security's Tutorial Sample in Spring Tool Suite

Rob Winch — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 19:29:00 CST

Note
Note: Vote on these JIRA's if you would like STS to be able to import Spring Security without use of the command line.
Introduction

This blog will teach you how to run the sample applications/tests for Spring Security 3.1.x in STS. It is assumed that you have already installed STS. Since STS is a flavor of Eclipse, the process for doing this in Eclipse is similar.

The main goal is to demonstrate how to setup a workspace with STS. In later posts I will describe how to run the other sample applications within STS. Once you can run Spring Security in an IDE, I will describe how to contribute back to Spring Security.

Screencast

If you want to see this in action, you can view the screen cast too.

STS Setup

Spring Security uses git to manage the source code. There are quite a few different git clients to choose from, but in this blog I will demonstrate how to obtain the source using EGit.

Some of the tests are written in Groovy. If you want to run the tests, you will need to install the Groovy Eclipse plugin.

To install the plugins:

Open up STS to a new workspace
You should see an option to Open Dashboard
At the bottom of the Dashboard View select the Extensions tab
In the Find box type in EGit and select the check box next to it
In the Find box type in Groovy Eclipse and select the check box next to it
Click the Install button in the lower right
Follow the instructions on any dialogs that pop up
After everything is installed, restart STS

Checking Out the Source Code

Once STS starts back up navigate to File->Import->Git->Projects from Git
Click the Clone... button
Fill out the URI with git://github.com/SpringSource/spring-security.git
Click the Next button to view the branches for this repository
Ensure that all the branches are selected
Click the Next button again to clone all the branches
Accept all the defaults and click the Finish button
The repository will be cloned and the local location will be displayed next to it
Remember the path to the repository as the Destination Directory

Generating the Eclipse Configuration Files

Open up a command prompt and navigate to the Destination Directory from the previous step
When using EGit, I have to add the execution bit the gradle wrapper. Since this does not happen when I use git from the command line, I suspect it is an EGit bug. To change the permissions in a Linux environment execute chmod +x gradlew from the command line.
Linux/Mac users run ./gradlew eclipse
Windows users run .\gradlew.bat eclipse
Gradle will automatically be downloaded, installed, download the required dependencies, and then the Eclipse configuration will be generated

Importing the Projects

Navigate back to Eclipse and click the Next button
Ensure Import Existing Projects is selected
Click the Next button
Click Select All
Click the Finish button
The project will be imported and there should be no errors.

Running the Code

At this point you should be able to run all of the unit tests by right clicking the project and navigating to Run As -> JUnit Tests. Of course that is not all that fun, so instead we will run the tutorial sample on tc Server. To run the tutorial follow these steps:

Right click spring-security-samples-tutorial and select Run As -> Run on Server
Select Finish
When prompted if you want to enable Spring Insight click No
The application will be opened up in Spring Tool Suite
When prompted to login, you can use the users defined in spring-security-samples-tutorial/src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/applicationContext-security.xml (i.e. rod / koala)

What Next?

You can read about Running Spring Security's CAS and PreAuth Samples in STS

HTML5 Game Programming FAQ Day 2

James Williams — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 02:00:00 CST

This week I'm answering questions about HTML5 and Game Programming in general over at CodeRanch. Wednesday's questions seems to be dominated by inquiries of cross-browser feature compatibility with several variants.

*Q: What are some device considerations when making HTML5 apps?*

A: The best guide to check is CanIUse.com. It lists the capabilities of the mobile browsers along side the desktop browsers. YMMV when it comes to mobile browsers.

*Q: What is HTML5 geolocation sometimes wrong?*

A: Geolocation can be inferred in many different ways, one of which is your IP address. Sometimes your IP address can be assigned to a location other than your physical location. For example, your company or ISP might be giving you an IP for a different locality or might be routing your traffic to another site which serves as the IP of record for your request.

*Q: What's the point of the audio tag?*

A:The key value in this is that it doesn't require a plugin. It's built into the browser. There are compatibility issues between browsers on what formats are supported. The three audio types that are supported in some shape or form are OGG(Ogg Vorbis), MP3, and WAV. The audio tag does have function called *canPlayType* that tells you if the specific browser might support a file type.

If you want to use a library to test availability of HTML5 features, check out Modernizr(http://modernizr.com).

Though not as widely supported, you should look into the WebAudio API. It picks up where the Audio tag leaves off like better support for volume/gain management, multiplexing sound, etc.

*Q: What can I use for easing functions?*

A: If you aren't using RaphaelJS(SVG) which has built-in functions for easing, you could implement them yourself or try out Trident.js(https://github.com/kirillcool/trident-js) which allows you to almost any JavaScript property or element.

Elvis carried away by spaceships

Kenneth Kousen — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 00:25:00 CST

I love teaching Groovy to existing Java developers, because they have such a hard time holding back Tears Of Joy when they see how much easier life can be. Today, though, I did a quick demo that resulted in a line of Groovy that was so amusing I had to post it here.

Consider a trivial POGO (Plain Old Groovy Object) called Course:

class Course
    String name
    int days
    String toString() { "($name,$days)" }
}

The goal was to take a collection of courses and sort it by the number of days. That’s really easy in Groovy:

def courses = [
    new Course(name:'Groovy',days:4),
    new Course(name:'Grails',days:3),
    new Course(name:'Spring',days:4),
    new Course(name:'Hibernate',days:3)
]

assert courses.toString() == '[(Groovy,4), (Grails,3), (Spring,4), (Hibernate,3)]'

courses.sort { it.days }

assert courses*.days == [3, 3, 4, 4]

The sort method in the java.util.Collection class is part of the Groovy JDK, meaning it’s one of the methods Groovy adds to the standard Java libraries. It takes a closure of either one or two arguments. In this case, I’m using the one-argument closure, which is used to select a property on which to base the sort. By specifying it.days in the closure, I’m telling the sort method to sort the courses based on their days property. Then I verify that the sort worked by checking that the courses are the right order, using the spread-dot operator to just look at the number of days.

In class the question that always comes up is, can I sort by days and then by name? In other words, if two courses have the same number of days, can I then sort by the name property?

That’s what the two-argument closure on the sort method is for. The two arguments are references to any pair of courses, and the closure should return a negative number, zero, or positive number according to whether the first course is less than, equal to, or greater than the second.

Here’s where things get amusing. The sort I want is:

courses.sort { a,b ->
    a.days <=> b.days ?: a.name <=> b.name
}

assert courses.toString() == '[(Grails,3), (Hibernate,3), (Groovy,4), (Spring,4)]'

The body of the closure on sort uses the spaceship operator <=>, which returns -1, 0, or 1 depending on whether the left side is less than, equal to, or greater than the right side. I use spaceship to compare the days properties. Then I add the Elvis operator ?: which means if the days comparison is not zero, use it, but otherwise use the following comparison, which uses another spaceship to compare by name.

It’s only after writing the code in class that one of the students pointed out that I had Elvis in between two spaceships, leading to the following observations:

The spaceships are there to return Elvis to his home planet
It takes two spaceships, working in tandem, to carry Elvis away, in much the same way two swallows can carry a coconut in tandem
Therefore, the Elvis being carried away must be the fat Elvis from the 70s, rather than the thin, cool Elvis from the 50s

Either way, after the sort is finished, Elvis has left the building.

Thank you, thank you very much.

“What’s New In Grails 2.0″ at NEJUG

Burt Beckwith — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 23:10:00 CST

I gave a talk at NEJUG tonight on the new features in Grails 2.0, with some coverage of the new features in Groovy 1.8 and a live coding demo of the “Twitter in 40 minutes” application. Many thanks to the organizers for the invitation, Constant Contact for hosting, and to the attendees for the great questions and enthusiasm.

You can download the talk slides here and the completed demo application here.

To see the earlier recorded talks that I based mine on check out Peter Ledbrook’s screencast of the new 2.0 features and Guillaume’s talk at Greach on Groovy 1.8.

Mon One Man Show au Paris JUG

Guillaume LaForge — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 04:26:10 CST

GR8Conf Europe Call for Paper open

Guillaume LaForge — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 03:35:00 CST

HTML5 Game Programming FAQ Day 1

James Williams — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:00:00 CST

This week I'm answering questions about HTML5 and Game Programming in general over at CodeRanch. Here are a couple of the questions I answered today. Questions may have been tweaked for brevity.

*Q: What I use for animation, setTimeout or requestAnimationFrame?*

A: Use requestAnimationFrame. Check out Paul Irish 's requestAnimationFrame shim for an easy way to address all the variants and fall back to setTimeout.

*Q: What could I use to recreate Legend of Zelda?*

A: Check out Akihabara(http://www.kesiev.com/akihabara/). Some of the examples are in the retro console style.

*Q: What is the relationship between WebGL and HTML5? How does it relate to Canvas?*

Canvas2D is a 2D drawing API. WebGL is a 3D drawing API. WebGL is hardware accelerated whereas Canvas2D is not. Both APIs use the Canvas tag for their drawing surfaces. All three are commonly considered to be part of HTML5.

*Q: I'm a Java developer... can you suggest a page to convince me that HTML5 is awesome?*

A: Check out the HTML5Rocks slide deck (http://slides.html5rocks.com). There are also a number of tutorials at the HTML5Rocks site(http://www.html5rocks.com/en/), even one penned by yours truly. Because you are a Java dev, you might also want to check out PlayN (http://code.google.com/p/playn). It's a game library that allows you to write in Java but build HTML5, Desktop Java, or Android games.

Scandinavian Developer Conference 2012

Sam Brannen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:39:00 CST

Sam Brannen will be presenting “Spring 3.1 to 3.2 in a Nutshell” at the Scandinavian Developer Conference in Gothenburg, Sweden on Tuesday, April 17, 2012.

SDC2012 is about bringing together people who work with software development to discuss new ideas, views on industry trends, and exchange experiences. Topics covered include the latest tools and frameworks for both the Java and .Net platforms, as well as plenty about development for the Web, IBMi, and Mobile devices.

For further details about the conference and to register, visit the official Scandinavian Developer Conference Website.

Spring I/O 2012

Sam Brannen — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:16:00 CST

Sam Brannen will be presenting “Spring 3.1 to 3.2 in a Nutshell” at the third annual Spring I/O conference in Madrid, Spain on February 16, 2012.

Spring I/O 2012 will be a 2-day event full of presentations delivered by development leads, book authors and professionals on Spring, Groovy/Grails and Cloud technologies. The perfect place to obtain critical skills to help you build, run and manage tomorrow’s software solutions. Don’t miss the chance to meet and learn from experts and professionals who drive innovation for these technologies.

For further details about the conference and to register, visit the official Spring I/O Website.

Book Promotion at CodeRanch

James Williams — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:30:00 CST

In promotion of my book Learning HTML5 Game Programming, I'll be answering questions about my book and gaming in general all this week on the HTML5, CSS, and JS forum at CodeRanch. Four random posters at CodeRanch will be awarded a free copy of my book.

They won't eligible for the drawing but feel free to ask questions on this thread or on Google+ as well.

Tweets sympas sur Free Mobile

Guillaume LaForge — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 10:02:33 CST

Hans Dockter interview on Gradle

Guillaume LaForge — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:09:00 CST

Hans Dokter interview on Gradle

Guillaume LaForge — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 07:16:57 CST

This Week in Grails (2012-01)

Burt Beckwith — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 21:38:00 CST

Graeme updated his blog and has committed to posting more often – check out the new digs.

Bobby Warner’s published a great screencast this week on using Grails 2.0 and Spring Security – Jump Into Grails 2.0

Jochen Theodorou wrote up an in-depth overview of the invokedynamic API. I think I may need to read this one a couple of times before it sinks in

If you want to keep up with these “This Week in Grails” posts you can access them directly via their category link or in an RSS reader with the feed for just these posts.

Translations of this post:

Miscellaneous Items
Plugins
Interesting Tweets
Jobs
User groups and Conferences

Miscellaneous Items

Plugins

There were 4 new plugins released:

jxl version 0.5. Export data to Excel using the JXL library
swiss-post-code version 0.1.2. Provides all available Swiss post codes
ajax-proxy version 0.1.1. Ajax Proxy Plugin (for cross-domain requests)
facebook-sdk version 0.1.1. Allows your application to use the Facebook Platform and develop Facebook apps on Facebook.com or on web sites (with Facebook Connect)

and 13 updated plugins:

asynchronous-mail version 0.3. Send email asynchronously by storing them in the database and sending with a Quartz job
audit-trail version 2.0.0. Adds created/updated audit fields to domain classes and updates them after a new insert or update
bulkload version 0.1.4. Export or bulkload all the instances of a given class from the client browser
compass-sass version 0.6. Compass, SASS and SCSS support for Grails. Automatically compiles .scss/.sass during run-app, and adds other framework functionality
cucumber version 0.2.1. Test your Grails apps with Cucumber
cxf-client version 1.2.5. Use existing (or new) Apache CXF wsdl2java generated content to invoke SOAP services
date-formatting version 0.2.3. Adds functions to the Date object to convert into various string formats
facebook-graph version 0.14. Provides access to the Facebook Graph API and makes easier the development of a single sign-on using the Facebook Authentication proposal.
jasper version 1.3.0. Enables use of JasperReports
routing version 1.1.5. Send and route messages to a wide variety of destination endpoints directly from your Controllers and Services using Camel
routing-jms version 1.1.5. JMS integration for the grails-routing plugin
translate version 1.2.1. Translates text from one language to another using the Google Translate API
uploadr version 0.5.7. HTML5 Drag and Drop file uploader

Interesting Tweets

@albertovilches: Conocíais Ratpack? Un mini-framework web para Groovy inspirado en Sinatra http://t.co/Ou5ks0Mq #groovy
@renescheibe: Anybody using #Java7 Update2? I am seeing up to 20% performance increase over #Java6 when running some #Groovy benchmarks.
@smakela_: @FinGGUG is #Finnish #Groovy and #Grails User Group http://t.co/Yw7Cma3P @grailsframework @grailsinfo @ReaktorNow @FinJUG
@renescheibe: Looking forward to more #invokedynamic in #groovy. Already 40% speedup for untyped fibonacci with blackdrag’s 1st draft.
@smakela_: Good video about Spring Security 3.1 http://t.co/BrNt0SBu Even if you are using #Grails plugin it’s good to know what’s under the hood.
@grails_rocks: For those who do/did use Functional Test plugin, I have started work on a 1.5 release to fix all those Grails compatibility problems…
@scottyfred: @graemerocher #grails and #maven: they go together like peanut butter and motor oil. Understand the need though, good luck.
@rfletcherEW: Proper docs for the #Grails Fields plugin: http://t.co/nGgWTpos
@eqe: San Francisco, where the help wanted posters ask for Java and Grails. http://t.co/iQ84LojY
@marcoVermeulen: My blog had a much needed facelift: http://t.co/72CY9Z3m #groovy #grails
@seletz: really great #groovy examples at http://t.co/JCaytnvK — even a offline version is on git hub: https://t.co/71Yeiz6V thanks! @mrhaki

Jobs

MTS Integration Engineering at VMworld Labs in Cambridge, MA or Palo Alto, CA
Sr Developer and Do-gooder for energy-saving SaaS (Groovy, Grails) at EnergyScoreCards in NYC
Grails Developer – Wavre, Belgium
@marty_pleasant: Are you a Java Developer that wants to work with Grails? I have a great 6 month project for you! 651-788-9632
Experienced Grails Developer (contract) at SupaJam in Westerham, Kent, UK
Junior Grails Developer (contract) at SupaJam in Westerham, Kent, UK
@Ramona_Batista: Need #Groovy #Java Dev for #NYC Job…email resume to ramona@trineaspects.com @groovymag @grailsframework @grailspodcast
Grails Software Developer (Boston/Cambridge)
Web Application Developer (contract) at Closely in Denver, CO
Senior Software Engineer (contract) at Taulia Inc. in San Francisco, CA
Grails Developer (contract) in Scottsdale, AZ
Lead développeur(se) web / VoIP
@alexandrevs: Vaga para trabalhar com JBoss, Java, Grails e Groovy em Holambra -SP. Interessados falar comigo.(RT pls)
@DedicatedTech: New to Twitter! I’m a Technical Recruiter with a Java – Groovy/Grails position in NYC. Anyone know someone who is looking for an assignment?
Senior Java Developer with Spring, Hibernate, SQL, HQL, Grails in Bethesda, MD
@dwmarley: #canada #jobs Now Hiring: Java Integration (Camel) and Grails Developer – Work From home on open source projects www.middleware360.com
Agile Java/J2EE Programmer Analyst with Grails in Westlake, TX
Bookmark and Share Lead Java Developer / Architect – Groovy, Grails in Northampton, UK
Experienced Grails Developer and Junior Grails Developer at SupaJam
Java Developer at CareWorks Technologies in Columbus, OH
Groovy Grails / Java in NYC
Développeur Web Java / Grails at Auctelia in Court-Saint-Etienne, Belgium
@mbnrecruitment: Fantastic opportunity just in for a Java Developer (Grails) – North West, c£45K. Visit http://t.co/xgROIElU or contact Joshua Smith.
@DIS_IT_Berlin: Groovy/Grails Projekt in Berlin, ca. 2 bis 3 Monate. Wer hat Kapazität? #freelance #berlin #dev #grails

User groups and Conferences

Thursday, January 12, 2012
- Seattle Groovy/Grails Users Group
Thursday, January 12, 2012 – What’s new with Grails 2.0
- New England Java Users Group
Thursday, January 19, 2012 – Groovy 2.0 : un pas vers le typage statique
- Paris Groovy and Grails User Group
Monday, January 23, 2012
- SF Bay Groovy and Grails Meetup Group

Moved

Graeme Rocher — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 03:04:37 CST

This blog has moved home to Tumblr.

This Week in Grails (2011-52), and the year in review

Burt Beckwith — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:25:00 CST

Happy new year! This is the final “This Week in Grails” for 2011. I went back through the previous 51 posts and counted up the totals for what I’d posted throughout the year (including this week): there were 840 miscellaneous items, 693 tweets, 888 Jobs (including several reposts), and 167 new plugins (only 3 weeks without a new plugin) and 724 plugin updates. I didn’t count meetup listings because I repeated most of them several times.

It was an interesting year for the Grails/Groovy ecosystem:

Grails had its final 1.3 release (1.3.7) and the big one, 2.0
There were four Groovy 1.7.x releases (1.7.7-1.7.10) and six 1.8.x releases (1.8.0-1.8.5) along with beta releases of 2.0 (currently at Beta 2)
Gradle also had several milestone releases and is getting close to a 1.0 beta and final 1.0 release
There were several Groovy++ releases, although development seems to have stalled given that Groovy code is getting static features
SpringSource Tool Suite had several releases, 2.5.2, 2.6.0, 2.6.1, 2.7.0, 2.7.1, 2.7.2, 2.8.0, and 2.9.0.M1 and the Groovy-Eclipse plugin also had several; both added tons of cool new features to help Groovy and Grails development
Grails now has excellent options for deployment to various cloud providers thanks to the aws (Amazon), cloud-foundry, cloud-bees, and heroku plugins
Marco Vermeulen created Ubuntu packages for Grails and Groovy
Stéphane Maldini and Damien Vitrac reworked the look and feel of the reference docs
We migrated JIRA from Codehaus to http://jira.grails.org/ and now each plugin has its own project instead of being a component in one huge project
Erik Pragt and Marcin Erdmann did some very cool stuff to get Groovy working in Android with their discobot project. I’m looking forward to seeing more of that
We now have the “This week in Spring”, “This week in Gradle”, and the occasional “This week in Discobot” series

There were nine conferences that were entirely based on the Groovy ecosystem or had multiple related talks:

Spring IO in Madrid
GR8Conf Europe in Copenhagen
GR8Conf US in Minneapolis
GeeCON 2011 in Krakow
SpringOne/2GX in Chicago
Greach in Madrid
CamelCaseCon in Düsseldorf
GR8Conf Australia in Canberra
Groovy & Grails eXchange in London

Lots of cool posts from a few notable bloggers: Mr Haki (http://mrhaki.blogspot.com/), Tomas Lin (http://fbflex.wordpress.com/), Bobby Warner (http://www.bobbywarner.com/), and Jochen Theodorou (http://blackdragsview.blogspot.com/). I won’t highlight anything in particular – just go to their blogs and read everything Set aside extra time for Mr Haki though; he’s done approximately one million posts so far.

I released 10 new plugins:

database-migration
spring-security-kerberos
spring-security-appinfo
cloud-foundry
cloud-foundry-ui
standalone
memcached
cloud-support
atomikos
heroku

(11 if you count reworking the webxml plugin and adding a new feature for filter-mapping element sorting).

This series is now translated into Spanish (Aitor Alzola), Chinese (Jian Hu), Portuguese (Paulo Pereira), and Italian (Luca Canducci). These guys do a great job every week.

If 2011 is any indication of the future, 2012 will be a very good year to be a Grails developer.

If you want to keep up with these “This Week in Grails” posts you can access them directly via their category link or in an RSS reader with the feed for just these posts.

Translations of this post:

Miscellaneous Items
Plugins
Interesting Tweets
Jobs
User groups and Conferences

Miscellaneous Items

Plugins

There were 2 new plugins released:

stripe version 1.0.M6. Use Stripe to process credit card transactions
quartz2 version 0.2.2. Integration with Quartz 2 framework from quartz-scheduler.org

and 18 updated plugins:

activiti version 5.8.2. Integrates the Activiti BPM Suite and workflow system
activiti-spring-security version 0.4.6. Integrates Spring Security to Activiti as custom IdentityService
ajax-uploader version 1.0. Tag Library which implements Andrew Valum’s excellent file uploader
browser-detection version 0.3.3. Provides a service and tag library for browser detection
bulkload version 0.1.2. Export or bulkload all the instances of a given class from the client browser
cloud-foundry version 1.2.1. Integrates Cloud Foundry’s cloud deployment services to manage the running of Grails applications in the cloud from the command line
cxf-client version 1.2.4. Use existing (or new) Apache CXF wsdl2java generated content to invoke SOAP services
jasypt-encryption version 1.0.1. Integration the Jasypt encryption library
oauth-scribe version 1.3. Provides oAuth integration for Grails, using the Scribe framework
quick-input version 0.1.2. Provides new input tags supporting some mass input capabilities
rabbitmq version 0.3.3. Integrates with Rabbit MQ messaging
routing version 1.1.4. Send and route messages to a wide variety of destination endpoints directly from your Controllers and Services using Camel
routing-jms version 1.1.4. JMS integration for the grails-routing plugin
spring-security-core version 1.2.7. The official Grails security plugin; integrates with Spring Security
spring-security-facebook version 0.5.4. Plugin for Facebook Authentication, as extension to Grails Spring Security Core plugin
spring-security-radius version 1.1.1. RADIUS support for the Spring Security plugin
twitter-bootstrap version 1.4.0.14. Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework resource files
viaboxx-dbmigrate version 1.3.2. Setup and migrate the database of your project

Interesting Tweets

@epragt: Just did my first pull request for #groovy. https://t.co/V5QGs6sR
@kenliu: playing around with #grails 2.0.0 on #heroku. flash-to-bang time is even quicker than AWS Elastic Beanstalk
@foo2bar: Just relased new version of #Grails Spring Security RADIUS plugin with failover support. Docs: http://t.co/zl9FYxhJ
@tednaleid: released grails jasypt-encryption 1.0.1, upgraded to grails 2.0 & jaspyt 1.9…thanks to Jon Palmer for his pull request https://t.co/X5KDXeUz
@sapsiero: Just added a short demo video about the features of the #grails quick input #plugin. Check it out: http://t.co/zUlzd2fM
@marcinerdmann: great progress on #discobot – just released gradle-discobot-plugin to github based maven repo, now we only have to finish patching #groovy!
@valenmope: If you wanna attend to one of the best free #spring and #groovy event at Spain, registration is now open http://t.co/9x0whkhk #springio
@skepticalhumor: I hope that #Groovy is the next COBOL. So that I can program in it for the rest of my life.
@wangjammer5: I missed this before – @glaforge‘s useful page with links to all the Groovy & Grails Exchange 2011 videos http://t.co/Z5y1u7Ct
@mittie: #gpars 1.0 is on its way. First beta available at http://t.co/nC52ErTm #groovy #concurrency
@honzam399: #gpars 1.0 is on its way. First beta available at gpars.codehaus.org/Download #groovy #concurrency
@grails_rocks: Many parts of the #grails plugin platform work are now coming together. Expect an “early access” within a few weeks!

Jobs

Java developer – Groovy/ Grails – London – 6 month rolling contract
Sr. J2EE Developer – Federal Practice – DC Area
Senior Grails Developer in Loveland, CO
@rahulsom: Let me know if you want to work at a #Grails #HealthCare company in San Jose, CA – The Engineering team at @CertifyData needs UI, BE, QA ppl
@CV_TechSearch: seeking Grails framework and Groovy language developer with #ecommerce exposure #NYC
Software Developer – Grails, Java, Mobile and etc – Sao Paulo, Brazil
Groovy & Grails Developer (contract) in Toronto
Sr. Grails contract developer in Piscataway, NJ
@brandyjfordcpc: Hiring Now Software Engineer II exp with Java Web Standards Server side JVM Grails framework Direct Hire Paid Relocation contact Brandyjford
Développeur Java / J2EE expérimenté / Grails / CDI / IDF/ – Paris

User groups and Conferences

Thursday, January 12, 2012
- Seattle Groovy/Grails Users Group
Thursday, January 12, 2012 – What’s new with Grails 2.0
- New England Java Users Group
Thursday, January 19, 2012 – Groovy 2.0 : un pas vers le typage statique
- Paris Groovy and Grails User Group
Monday, January 23, 2012
- SF Bay Groovy and Grails Meetup Group