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Grails Webapplication. This article explains how to build a Grails application. This article is based on Java 1.6 and Grails 2.4.4.

1. Grails

1.1. What is Grails?

Grails is a web framework based on Groovy and Java which can be deployed into existing Java web servers, e.g., Tomcat or Jetty.

Grails allows to quickly create web applications; its scaffolding capabilities let you create a new project within few minutes. Grails is based on the convention over configuration idea which allows the application to auto-wire itself based on naming schemes (instead of using configuration files, e.g, XML files).

Grails uses JavaEE as the architectural basis and Spring for structuring the application via dependency injection.

The Grails framework allows instance development without requiring any configuration. Just download Grails and you are ready to start. Grails accomplish this by automatically providing the Tomcat web container and the HSQLDB database during development. If you deploy you Grails application later, you can use another web container or database.

Grails is plug-in based and currently uses its own build system (Gant) but plans to migrated to Gradle. The Grails homepage provides several pre-defined plugins which extend the Grails framework.

During the start of a new development with Grails you mainly use the command line to generated new user interfaces.

1.2. Object relationship mapping (ORM) with GORM

Grails uses GORM (Grails Object Relational Mapping) for the persistence of the domain model. GORM is based on Hibernate. You can test with the HSQLDB and run in production against another database simply by changing the configuration file (DataSource.groovy).

2. Groovy

Groovy is (almost) a superset of Java, e.g., most valid Java constructs are also valid Groovy constructs. Groovy has several advanced features in addition to the standard Java features, e.g., closures, native support for lists and maps, a shorter syntax and much more.

See Groovy tutorial for an introduction into Groovy.

3. Installation

3.1. Installation of the Grails command line tools

Download the latest official release of Grails from the https://grails.org/download]]Grails download page]. Unzip the download to a directory of your choice.

Setup your GRAILS_HOME environment variable pointing to your installation directory of Grails. Also add the $GRAILS_HOME/bin to the PATH variable.

Please make sure that the environment variable JAVA_HOME is set to the JDK and not the JRE. The JDK is required to develop with Grails.

Test your installation by opening a command line and running the following command.

 grails -version

This should result in the output of the currently installed Grails version.

3.2. Installing the Grails Eclipse plug-in

The Eclipse IDE has great support for the Grails applications.

Open the Eclipse Update manager via the Help  Install New Software…​ menu entry to install the Grails Eclipse plug-in. Enter the following URL in this dialog:

http://dist.springsource.com/release/TOOLS/update/e4.4/
Install Grails support for Eclipse

The update site is Eclipse version dependent, see Groovy/Grails Tool Suiteā„¢ Downloads if you use a different release than Eclipse 4.4.

4. Exercise: Create Grails web application

4.1. Target

We want to develop a guestbook application, in this exercise see start with the intial template.

4.2. Create your application

Let’s create the application with the name com.vogella.grails.guestbook. #The name of the application is used for the URL on which the application will later run and the WAR file which will be later created.

Create a new directory that will contain your Grails application. Open a command shell, switch to this new directory and type in the following command.

grails create-app com.vogella.grails.guestbook

After a little while the command line tells you that the application was generated.

This command creates the directory structure and the base configuration of your new web application.

firstgrailsapplication10

This created already a full web application.

4.3. Run your application

The created application can already run. In the shell switch into your directory com.vogella.grails.guestbook. You can then start your application with the following command.

grails run-app

This should start the Grails internal web container and you should receive the message:

Server running. Browse to

http://localhost:8080/com.vogella.grails.guestbook

Open a browser and open the URL

http://localhost:8080/com.vogella.grails.guestbook
firstgrailsapplication20

Congratulations to your first running Grails application!

5. Exercise: Extend Grails web application

5.1. Target

In this exercise you finish the guestbook application you started in Exercise: Create Grails web application.

5.2. Stop the server

If you Grails application from Exercise: Create Grails web application is still running, stop the server via Ctrl+C. We need the command line to create more elements.

5.3. Create the domain model

Our application does not do anything at the moment. Lets create the a domain model. For your feedback system we would like to have:

  • Class Feedback: The feedback itself

  • Class User: The person who gives feedback

  • Class Comment: A remark to the feedback

Grails can create templates with empty classes and prepared unit tests for your domain model. Create the domain model scaffolds via the following commands:

grails create-domain-class com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Feedback
grails create-domain-class com.vogella.grails.guestbook.User
grails create-domain-class com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Comment

This creates Groovy classes for the specified domain model in the directory .\grails-app/domain. In the directory .\test\unit you find empty files for your unit tests.

Use a text editor to change the classes to the following:

package com.vogella.grails.guestbook

class Feedback {
    String title
    String feedback
    Date dateCreated // Predefined names by Grails will be filled automatically
    Date lastUpdated // Predefined names by Grails will be filled automatically

    // relationsship to the other classes
    User user
    static hasMany=[comments:Comment]

    // contrains are defined as static 
    static constraints = {
        title(blank:false, nullable: false, size:3..80)
        feedback(blank:false, nullable:false,size:3..500)
        user(nullable:false)
    }

}
package com.vogella.grails.guestbook

class User {
    String name
    String email
    String webpage

    static constraints = {
    name (blank:false, nullable:false, size:3..30, matches:"[a-zA-Z1-9_]+") 
    email (email:true)
    webpage (url:true)
    }

    String toString(){
        return name; 
    }
}
package com.vogella.grails.guestbook

class Comment {
    String comment
    Date dateCreated // Predefined names by Grails will be filled automatically
    Date lastUpdated // Predefined names by Grails will be filled automatically

    User user;
    // delete a comments for a feedback if the feedback item is deleted
    static belongsTo=[feedback:Feedback]

    static constraints = {
    comment (blank:false, nullable: false, size:5..500)
    user (nullable: true) // Comments are allowed without a user
    }
    
    String toString(){
        if (comment?.size()>20){
            return comment.substring(0,19);
        } else 
        return comment; 
    }
}

Grails allows to define constraints for the domain model via a static method. Some of these constraints, e.g., nullable are reflected in the database, others are only used to validate this value via the user interface, e.g., the URL constraint.

All model classes come with have a version and id property of type Long and a toString() method by default. These methods will be dynamically injected if the model has no implementation of it’s own. dataCreated and lastUpdated are also known by Grails and will be filled automatically.

Changes in the domain model may require a restart of the Grails server and running the following command:

grails clean

5.4. Dynamic Scaffolding

Grails supports dynamic and static scaffolding for the user interface. If you use dynamic scaffolding, then a user interface for the domain class is dynamically generated by the Grails runtime. This user interface allows the operations Create, Read, Update and Delete (CRUD).

To use dynamic scaffolding, create controllers for your domain class via the following commands:

grails generate-controller com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Feedback
grails generate-controller com.vogella.grails.guestbook.User
grails generate-controller com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Comment

This creates controller classes in the directory /grails-app/controllers.

Activate the dynamic scaffolding in each controller by replacing the line which starts with def index with def scaffold = NameOfTheDomainClass. For example, for the FeedbackController.

package com.vogella.grails.guestbook



import static org.springframework.http.HttpStatus.*
import grails.transaction.Transactional

@Transactional(readOnly = true)
class FeedbackController {
   
   

    static allowedMethods = [save: "POST", update: "PUT", delete: "DELETE"]
    //!!!!!!only change here!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
    def scaffold = Feedback // Note the capital "F"
    //!!!!!!
    
    def show(Feedback feedbackInstance) {
        respond feedbackInstance
    }

    def create() {
        respond new Feedback(params)
    }

    @Transactional
    def save(Feedback feedbackInstance) {
        if (feedbackInstance == null) {
            notFound()
            return
        }

        if (feedbackInstance.hasErrors()) {
            respond feedbackInstance.errors, view:'create'
            return
        }

        feedbackInstance.save flush:true

        request.withFormat {
            form multipartForm {
                flash.message = message(code: 'default.created.message', 
                        args: [message(code: 'feedback.label', 
                                default: 'Feedback'), feedbackInstance.id])
                redirect feedbackInstance
            }
            '*' { respond feedbackInstance, [status: CREATED] }
        }
    }

    def edit(Feedback feedbackInstance) {
        respond feedbackInstance
    }

    @Transactional
    def update(Feedback feedbackInstance) {
        if (feedbackInstance == null) {
            notFound()
            return
        }

        if (feedbackInstance.hasErrors()) {
            respond feedbackInstance.errors, view:'edit'
            return
        }

        feedbackInstance.save flush:true

        request.withFormat {
            form multipartForm {
                flash.message = message(code: 'default.updated.message', args: [message(code: 'Feedback.label', default: 'Feedback'), feedbackInstance.id])
                redirect feedbackInstance
            }
            '*'{ respond feedbackInstance, [status: OK] }
        }
    }

    @Transactional
    def delete(Feedback feedbackInstance) {

        if (feedbackInstance == null) {
            notFound()
            return
        }

        feedbackInstance.delete flush:true

        request.withFormat {
            form multipartForm {
                flash.message = message(code: 'default.deleted.message', 
                        args: [message(code: 'Feedback.label', default: 'Feedback'), 
                               feedbackInstance.id])
                redirect action:"index", method:"GET"
            }
            '*'{ render status: NO_CONTENT }
        }
    }

    protected void notFound() {
        request.withFormat {
            form multipartForm {
                flash.message = message(code: 'default.not.found.message', args: [message(code: 'feedback.label', default: 'Feedback'), params.id])
                redirect action: "index", method: "GET"
            }
            '*'{ render status: NOT_FOUND }
        }
    }
}

Do this also for UserController and CommentController.

5.5. Testing the generated application

Run the application again via:

grails run-app

Browse to

http://localhost:8080/com.vogella.grails.guestbook

You should have a full CRUD (create, retrieve, update, delete) application available. To start the app, click on UserController and create a user.

firstgrails30
firstgrails34
firstgrails40

Afterwards use the FeedbackController to create a comment.

firstgrails50

Click on New Feedback and enter a feedback.

firstgrails60

6. Exercise: Bootstrap and persists data

6.1. Target

In this exercise you create example data and store the data between application restarts. This exercise builds on Exercise: Extend Grails web application.

6.2. Bootstrapping example data

Grails allows to simulate example data (this is called bootstrapping). To create example data, you can use the class BootStrap.groovy from the directory ./grails-app/conf with some data. This class is automatically executed whenever the server is started and can be used to create some example data for testing.

Change the code to the following.

import com.vogella.grails.guestbook.*

class BootStrap {

    def init = { servletContext ->
    User user = new User(name:'lars', email:'muster@muster.com', webpage:'http://www.vogella.com')
    User otherUser = new User(name:'jim', email:'jim@muster.com', webpage:'http://www.vogella.com')
    if (!user.save()){
        log.error "Could not save user!!"
        log.error "${user.errors}"
    }
    if (!otherUser.save()){
        log.error "Could not save otherUser!!"
    }

    Feedback feedback = new Feedback(title:'First feedback', feedback:'This is my first feedback', user:user)
    feedback.save()

    Comment comment = new Comment(comment:'Hello, my name is Jim', user:otherUser)
    comment.feedback = feedback
    comment.save(); 

}

    def destroy = {
    }

}

The grails server should pickup the change automatically. Wait a while (or re-start the server to be sure) and check if you get an error message.

6.3. Store the data

By default, the data maintained in the web application is not stored. If your entries should be saved to the database after server shutdown, use the following command to start it.

grails prod run-app
Remove the bootstrapped entries as you will otherwise get errors as the system tries to create the same entries again.

6.4. Static scaffolding

To switch from dynamic scaffolding to static scaffolding, you need to have views. Grails can generate them for you.

Type in the following to create a scaffold for the controller and the view.

grails generate-views com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Feedback
grails generate-views com.vogella.grails.guestbook.User
grails generate-views com.vogella.grails.guestbook.Comment
If you receive the error "Error starting Sun’s native2ascii", then make sure that your environment variable JAVA_HOME points to the JDK and not JRE. The JDK is required for this step.

Remove def scaffold = true in your controller to use your generated views.

This creates the GSP (Groovy Server pages) for your actions in the directroy grails-app\views. GSP are standard HTML code with Groovy mixed in. Have a look at the coding. The controller defines several actions (list, show, delete, edit). For all these actions corresponding views have been created under grails-app/views.

7. Change the layout of your Grails application

7.1. Changing the generated views

If you are not satisfied with the order of the fields, you can change the views directly. For example in the following view I did change the order of the fields so that name is displayed before comment.

<html>
    <head>
        <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"/>
        <meta name="layout" content="main" />
        <title>Create Feedback</title>         
    </head>
    <body>
        <div class="nav">
            <span class="menuButton"><a class="home" href="${createLinkTo(dir:'')}">Home</a></span>
            <span class="menuButton"><g:link class="list" action="list">Feedback List</g:link></span>
        </div>
        <div class="body">
            <h1>Create Feedback</h1>
            <g:if test="${flash.message}">
            <div class="message">${flash.message}</div>
            </g:if>
            <g:hasErrors bean="${feedback}">
            <div class="errors">
                <g:renderErrors bean="${feedback}" as="list" />
            </div>
            </g:hasErrors>
            <g:form action="save" method="post" >
                <div class="dialog">
                    <table>
                        <tbody>
                        
                        <tr class="prop">
                                <td valign="top" class="name">
                                    <label for="name">Name:</label>
                                </td>
                                <td valign="top" class="value ${hasErrors(bean:feedback,field:'name','errors')}">
                                    <input type="text" id="name" name="name" value="${fieldValue(bean:feedback,field:'name')}"/>
                                </td>
                            </tr> 
                            
                            <tr class="prop">
                                <td valign="top" class="name">
                                    <label for="feedback">Feedback:</label>
                                </td>
                                <td valign="top" class="value ${hasErrors(bean:feedback,field:'feedback','errors')}">
                                    <input type="text" id="feedback" name="feedback" value="${fieldValue(bean:feedback,field:'feedback')}"/>
                                </td>
                            </tr> 
                        
                            
                        
                        </tbody>
                    </table>
                </div>
                <div class="buttons">
                    <span class="button"><input class="save" type="submit" value="Create" /></span>
                </div>
            </g:form>
        </div>
    </body>
</html>

7.2. Using CSS

Grails created the default CSS style sheets under the directory web-app/css/main.css

You can directly change the main.css to make your application look different. For example if the feedback field should be larger than the name field add the following to main.css.

#feedback {
    height: 80px;
    width: 160px;
}

8. Create a WAR archive

Type the following command to create a war archive. This archive can be deployed to a web container, for example, Tomcat.

grails war

9. Testing your application

The command create-domain-class automatically creates a test for the domain-class. Go to your directory test/integration and open the file FeedbackTests.groovy.

You can run your test via the following command.

grails test-app

10. Using Eclipse for Grails development

The following requires that Eclipse is installed with the Groovy plug-in. Please see Groovy Eclipse Plugin for more information.

After running grails create-app you may notice the .project and .classpath file. These Eclipse related files are created automatically and allow you to import the project into Eclipse. Import your project via File  Import  General  Existing Project into Workspace

eclipse10

The environment variable GRAILS_HOME may not be set in Eclipse. Select your project, right-click on it and select properties. Select the Java Build Path and here the tab Libraries. Press Add Variable and then Configure Variables. Press New and add GRAILS_HOME.

At least for me the configuration dialog showed an error. I did ignore this error and the re-compiled project did not show errors.

A tighter integration of Grails is achieved by the SpringSource Tool Suite (STS).

11. Grails links

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