See what's new in Grails 2.0

1. What’s new in 2.0
Peter Ledbrook
SpringSource
t: @pledbrook
g: +PeterLedbrook
e: pledbrook@vmware.com
Wednesday, 2 May 12

2. The Year in Grails
• Grails 1.3
–Plugins in Dependency DSL, Groovy 1.7, Named
Queries etc.
• More and more plugins
–Spring Security Core et al.
–RabbitMQ
–Gemfire
–Resources, etc.
• NoSQL
–Redis, MongoDB, Riak, etc.
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3. High Profile Sites
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4. Grails Continued Growth
Number of Plugins
800
600
400
200
0
2008 2009 2010 2011
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5. Development Environment Features
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6. New Console UI & Interactive Mode
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7. Better Unit Test Template
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8. Better Documentation Template
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9. Enhanced Error Reporting
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10. H2 Console
• Available at http://localhost:8080/app/dbconsole in
development only!
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11. Plugin Portal Usage Tracking
• Opt-in usage tracking of plugins
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12. Upgraded Libraries
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13. New Automatic Reloading
• Reloading in run-app works with
– Typed service references
– Domain classes
– src/groovy, src/java
• Any command with -reloading
• Interactive mode and integration tests
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14. Binary Plugins
• Package pre-compiled plugins into JAR files
• Deployable as standard JARs to Maven repositories
• Declared as JAR dependencies
• Commercial plugins more viable
• No special IDE integration needed
$ grails package-plugin --binary
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15. Web Features
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16. Methods as Actions and Binding Arguments
• Actions are now declared as public methods
def save(String name, int age) {
// remaining
}
• Form parameters bound to method arguments
<g:form name="myForm" action="save">
<input name="name" />
<input name="age" />
</g:form>
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17. HTML5 Scaffolding
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18. New APIs
• Page Rendering
PageRenderer renderer
void welcomeUser(User user) {
def contents = renderer.render(view:"/emails/welcome",
model:[user: user])
...
}
• Link Generation
LinkGenerator generator
def generateLink() {
generator.link(controller:"book", action:"list")
}
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19. Servlet 3.0 Async
• Servlet 3.0 async API supported for async response
rendering
def index() {
def ctx = startAsync()
ctx.start {
new Book(title:"The Stand").save()
render template:"books",
model:[books: Book.list() ]
ctx.complete()
}
}
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20. Advanced Static Resource Handling
• Integrated resource plugin into core
– http://grails.org/plugin/resources
• Tuning static resources no longer a headache
– gzip (http://grails.org/plugin/zipped-resources)
– cache (http://grails.org/plugin/cached-resources)
– de-duplication
– bundling
• New tags to ease integration
– img
– external
– javascript
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21. Bundling Static Resources
modules = {
core {
dependsOn 'utils'
resource url:'/js/core.js', disposition: 'head'
resource url:'/js/ui.js'
resource url:'/css/main.css',
resource url:'/css/branding.css'
resource url:'/css/print.css', attrs:[media:'print']
}
utils {
dependsOn 'jquery'
resource url:'/js/utils.js'
}
}
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22. Zipping and Caching
$ grails install-plugin cached-resources
$ grails install-plugin zipped-resources
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23. Other Web Novelties
• jQuery now the default
• Easy Date Parsing
def val =
params.date('myDate', 'dd-MM-yyyy')
• Customizable URL formats
• Filter exclusions
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24. Persistence Features
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25. GORM API
• Plugins should not assume Hibernate!
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26. GORM Plugins
• Redis - http://grails.org/plugin/redis-gorm
• MongoDB - http://grails.org/plugin/mongodb
• Amazon SimpleDB - http://grails.org/plugin/simpledb
• Amazon DynamoDB - http://grails.org/plugin/dynamodb
• Neo4j - http://grails.org/plugin/neo4j
• Riak - http://grails.org/plugin/riak
• GORM JPA - http://grails.org/plugin/gorm-jpa
• Hibernate - http://grails.org/plugin/hibernate
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27. Where Queries
• New, compile-time checked query DSL
def query = Person.where {
firstName == "Bart"
}
Person bart = query.find()
• Uses native Groovy operators ==, !=, >, <, <=, >= etc
def query = Person.where {
firstName == "Fred" && !(lastName == 'Simpson')
}
• Aggregate functions supported avg, sum, max, min etc.
def query = Person.where {
age > avg(age)
}
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28. Multiple Data Sources
• Support for defining multiple scoped data sources
class ZipCode {
String code
static mapping = {
datasource 'auditing'
}
}
• Each data source accessible via static property
def zipCode = ZipCode.auditing.get(42)
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29. SQL Database Migration
Hibernate ‘update’
+
Production data
=
?
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30. SQL Database Migration
• Install the Database Migration plugin:
$ grails install-plugin database-migration
• Official Docs at:
– http://grails-plugins.github.com/grails-database-migration/
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31. SQL Database Migration
Pre-production, Hibernate ‘update’ or ‘create-drop’
dbm-generate-changelog
dbm-changelog-sync
Change domain model
dbm-gorm-diff
dbm-update
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32. SQL Reverse Engineering
$ grails install-plugin db-reverse-engineer
$ grails db-reverse-engineer
class Person {
String name
Integer age
...
}
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33. Other GORM Improvements
• Abstract base domain classes
– These now result in a table
• findOrCreateWhere()
• findOrSaveWhere()
def user = User.findByLogin('admin')
if (!user) {
user = new User(login: 'admin')
user.save(failOnError: true)
}
def user = User.findOrSaveWhere(login: 'admin')
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34. Better Unit Testing
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35. Unit Testing 1.x
• mockDomain() had only partial GORM support
– always lagged changes in GORM
• Inheritance-based
– hierarchy duplicated for Spock
– difficult to extend
• Weak support for web-related testing
– controllers
– tag libraries
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36. The Mixin Approach
@TestFor(MyController)
@Mock(Person)
class MyControllerUnitTests {
void setUp() {
new Person(...).save()
new Person(...).save()
}
void testIndex() {
def model = this.controller.index()
...
}
}
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37. Spockified
@TestFor(MyController)
@Mock(Person)
class MyControllerUnitSpec extends Specification {
void loadPeople() {
new Person(...).save()
new Person(...).save()
}
def 'Test index action'() {
given: 'Some people'
loadPeople()
when: 'The index action is called'
def model = this.controller.index()
then: 'The people variable is in the model'
model.people != null
}
}
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38. In-Memory GORM
• Full GORM implementation against ConcurrentHashMap
• Based on GORM for NoSQL codebase
• Support for
– Criteria queries
– Where queries
– Dynamic finders
– Detached criteria
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39. Support for testing...
• Tag libraries
• Command objects
• XML & JSON responses
• File upload
• View and template rendering
• Filters
• URL mappings
• Criteria queries
• and more!
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40. Contributions
• 110+ pull requests on grails-core
• 60+ pull requests on grails-docs
• More and more plugins
• GitHub for the win!
– grails-core
– grails-docs
– grails-website
– grails-maven
– and many, many plugins
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41. Grails in the Cloud
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42. Roadmap
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43. Thank you!
Questions?
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