1. A year in the life of a
Grails startup
Tomas Lin
@tomaslin tomas@secretescapes.com
Donovan Frew
donovan@secretescapes.com
Secret Escapes
Grails Exchange 2011
Saturday, 10 December 11

2. • We will focus on the lessons we
learned working with and
changing a Grails application over
a year in a London startup.
• Focus: Technology, People,
Processes.
Saturday, 10 December 11

3. Agenda
• Who is Secret Escapes?
• Before / After we launched the site
• A work environment around Grails
• Success / Challenges / The future
• Questions?
Saturday, 10 December 11

4. Secret Escapes
• Best members-only travel site for the UK
• VC-funded ( just closed series-B )
• From founders of Dealchecker.co.uk
• More than 1 million happy users + growing
• Started with 3 full time staff in November
2010, growing to 25 in January
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10. Architecture
• 2 Apps - CMS and StoreFront
• Domain classes, shared services,
controllers and views live in one
plugin.
• StoreFront and CMS live on different
servers.
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11. Before Launch - Goals
• Make app easy to deploy
• Get enough tests to make it work
• Basic CMS
• Integrate third party tools quickly
• Ship!
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16. January, 2011
Site is Launched
( Yes, you can build a fully transactional
website with Grails in 4 months )
Saturday, 10 December 11

17. After Launch
• Growing existing features - Booking engine.
• Third party integration - Facebook, Google
tracking, plugins.
• Build better tools for business - allocation
uploading, customer support.
• Pulling data out of the system.
• Integrate with other sites.
• Validate effect of changes ( A/B tests ).
Saturday, 10 December 11

18. Brief timeline
• End Of January - launch
• 1st Half of the year - CMS / CRM
improvements, Affiliates, Calendar
Booker.
• 2nd Half - Better invitation system,
exclusive deals, custom theming, third
Party Integration, A/B testing, Better
design.
Saturday, 10 December 11

19. Brief timeline
• End Of January - launch
• 1st Half of the year - Easier to work
with codebase as a team. Growing the
team. (Jenkins, Amazon Beanstalk, Git )
• 2nd Half - Making team better.
Devotion to testing. ( Unit testing,
Integration testing, agile, pairing )
Saturday, 10 December 11

20. Growing features-
Dealing with Changing
Domain Models
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21. More Flexible Bookings
Before
Hotel
Fixed Date
DropDrown
After
Fixed Date
Flexible Dates
Hotel
Packages
Travel Only
By Departure
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22. Database Migrations
• Use the dbm-gorm-diff mechanism
• Set default values via the sql( ) command
• Load automatically on application startup
• Add date of migration so that it is easier to
sort / merge across git branches
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23. Saturday, 10 December 11

24. Integrating with Third
Party Services
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25. Improve Tracking
• Google Goals Tracking
• Google eCommerce Tracking
• Google Analytics
• Third Party Tracking Tags
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28. Third Party Integrations
• Try to capture as much as possible in one
standalone plugin
• Write tests within the plugin so you don’t
have to worry about it working in the app
• Use tag libraries to make your GSP files
very clean
• Publish plugins for feedback / sharing
Saturday, 10 December 11

29. Our Plugins
• Email Validator - Email Syntax.
• Inviter - Handles inviting friends from
Yahoo, Gmail, Facebook, Windows Live,
LinkedIn, etc.
• Website Optimizer - A/B Testing.
• CDN Resources - Adds pull-down CDN
support for resources plugin.
Saturday, 10 December 11

30. CMS - Going beyond
scaffolding
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31. Better Customer Support
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32. RemoteLink to Actions
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33. Easier to add data
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35. Easy to Customize
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36. • Put into a domain classes
• Use bean fields plugin to manage
changes.
• Use one template for edit and new
actions.
• Mail templates, Sales, Affiliates, Themes.
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38. Getting data out for
analysis
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39. Reporting
• We inherited a reporting framework from
Dealchecker Applications.
• Allows you to either write a grails service
or use a SQL statement.
• Can add additional query parameters like
sale / affiliate, etc.
• Exports to Excel.
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42. Dashboard
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43. CMS Lessons
• Move things that will change into a Domain
Object in the CMS.
• Build batch operations for editing data.
• Use g:remoteField for quick edit items.
• Use the Console Plugin
• Use Bean Fields
• Work with Excel / CSV.
Saturday, 10 December 11

44. Some interesting tech
we built -
Stuff other people never seem to talk
about
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45. Custom Theming Apps
• We keep all our customizations in a Theme
domain object.
• Partners can overwrite our site defaults via
a CSS file and a JS file.
• Use image references in CSS files to make
it easy to change.
• Themes are loaded by domain name or url
parameter
Saturday, 10 December 11

46. What can you change?
• Application Name. Text displayed for static Paypal Payment Page
• Domain Name pages on the Site • Background Color
• Theme CSS file • About Us • Background Image
• Theme JavaScript file • Contact Us • Footer Text Color
• Favicon. • Faq • Header Background Color
• An URL to redirect • Terms and Conditions • Header Height
• Privacy Policy • Font for the Logo
Technical Support • Current Sales Sidebar • Color of the Logo Font
• Email • Logo Image
• Phone Number Email Templates • Logo Image Position
• Title • Logo Text
Embedded Header of Footer • Background Color • Order Summary Background Color
• A header URL • Header Text • Custom Image for Order Summary
• A footer URL • Header Logo • Color of the Pay Now Button
• Footer Signature • Text color of the Pay Now Button
Social Networks • Footer Text • Section Background Colors
• Name of Facebook Page • Blurb Title • Color of the byline
• Description for application • Blurb Test
• Image for Sale Now • Title Color
• Color for Sale Title
• Color for destination
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47. Saturday, 10 December 11

48. A/B Testing
• Allows us to verify and test different designs
against one another.
• Via Google Website Optimizer and the
GWO plugin.
• Validates that changes we have made do not
significantly affect conversion.
Saturday, 10 December 11

49. Adding new A/B Tests
• Create Variations.
• Define experiments.
• Insert <gwo:includes/> tags in code.
• Insert <gwo:conversion/> tag in code.
• Run Experiment.
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50. Saturday, 10 December 11

51. Goals At this Stage
• Make changes without breaking the site.
• No longer just ‘make it work’, need to
make it really nice.
• Adapt to rapidly changing business needs.
• Scaling up development.
Saturday, 10 December 11

52. How do you build up a
team around Grails?
Saturday, 10 December 11

53. Identifying the right people to
work with
• Grails Programmers are hard to find
• But we can always find Java developers
• Builds on industry-leading frameworks.
Spring / Hibernate. Those developers are
available.
• Attitude / fit
Saturday, 10 December 11

54. Making it attractive
• Put together job specs as a team
• Blogging / social networks / twitter
• Conferences and User Group Meetings
• Letting our work get out there.
• Recruiters are expensive and bad. DIY.
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55. Silicon Milk Roundabout
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56. Other places
• http://www.grailsjobs.com
• London Groovy Grails User Group
• Reddit
• Here!
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57. How we work?
• Pair Programming
• Daily Standups
• Retrospruktions
• Features in pairs are more robust
• Hack Days fortnightly ( every 2 weeks )
• Team Activities ( Lunches, conferences )
• No a lot of hierarchy.
Saturday, 10 December 11

58. Communication
• Across different teams
• Pivotal Tracker / Trello
• Validation of features
• Team Lunches with a friend
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61. Communication
• Within the team
• Stand ups
• Retrospectives
• Document via tests
• Common Environments
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62. Code Quality
• Writing more tests. Commitment to write unit /
integration / functional tests.
• Boy Scout Rule
• Shared Ownership
• TDD using Geb and Spock.
• Jenkins to make sure it works on the other machine.
• CodeNarc to enforce best practices.
Saturday, 10 December 11

63. Increase in Unit Tests over time
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64. Increase in Integration Tests over time
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65. Useful Stuff
• Git Flow
• Continous Integration Game for Jenkins
• Less
• Start / Stop / Continue / Less / More
• Pairing with Designers
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68. Is Grails right for my startup?
• Penetration test by the Telegraph showed us value of
best practices.
• Can build things quicker. Make us more responsive.
• “At Last Minute this would have taken 6
months”
• Awesome Community.
Saturday, 10 December 11

69. Challenges
• Speed running Functional test and Integration tests.
• Finding the right people.
• Cost of Idea licenses.
• Deployment.
• Services are US-based. Difficult in the UK.
• Failed Amazon Beanstalk Experiment.
Saturday, 10 December 11

70. The Future
• £5 Million Marketing initiative
• Mobile
• More integrations
• Grails 2.0
•?
Saturday, 10 December 11

71. Questions?
Saturday, 10 December 11

72. come work with us
http://www.secretescapes.com/jobs
Saturday, 10 December 11