Groovy Finesse

Why would we use Groovy?

General Information
HomePage - http://groovy.codehaus.org Groovy is open source using a BSD / Apache style licence Sun's defacto scripting language (JSR-241) http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=241 Dynamic Language that is compiled into Java class bytecode The company behind Groovy and Grails (G2One) was just bought by a respectable company called SpringSource (the same one that does the support for Spring) 70k downloads in November 2007 and growing

Benefits
Easy for Java Developers to understand and adopt Is the Only JVM language interchangeable with Java code Compiled Groovy classes can be used from Java Compiled Java classes can be used from Groovy Can use Java syntax in Groovy seamlessly Growing community and interest The company behind Groovy G2One was just bought by a respectable company called SpringSource With the new stable release (1.6) that came out last week it brings forth performance improvements GroovyConsole provides a quick way to test out any arbitrary code

Benefits over Java

More concise, cleaner syntax and has less syntax noise than Java Can be ran as shell scripts (just like Perl) Closures Closures are Objects that encapsulate behavior Have a scope that allows for clean exiting of external resources without writing explicit code Closing files gracefully Closing JDBC connections gracefully etc Currying allows to make more concise closures from other closures by providing defaults to parameters

Benefits over Java

MOP - Meta Object Protocol Allows to inspect any arbitrary object Helper methods dump() or inspect() will expose the underlying attributes and their values Allows addition or modification of methods at runtime Allows the creation of DSLs

Benefits over Java

Builders (a nice and clean patterns that allows to build complex objects using nested closures) MarkupBuilder - for HTML, XML etc JMXBuilder SwingBuilder

Features not Found in Standard Java

The Groovy language is largely a superset of the Java language. One can usually rename a .java file to a .groovy one and it will work (though there are a few gotchas). Groovy has a number of features not found in standard Java. This makes the learning curve for Java developers almost zero, since they can start with Java syntax and gradually learn to add Groovy features. [1] Groovy features not available in Java include both static and dynamic typing (with the def keyword), closures, operator overloading, native syntax for lists and associative arrays (maps), native support for regular expressions, polymorphic iteration, expressions embedded inside strings, additional helper methods, and the safe navigation operator "?." to automatically check for nulls (for example, "variable?.method()", or "variable?.field")

Groovy Modules
COM Scripting script Windows ActiveX and COM components with Groovy Gant GFreeMarker an integration of the FreeMarker template engine for Groovy GMaven GMaven provides integration of the Groovy language into Maven. Google Data Support makes using the Google Data APIs easier from within Groovy Gram a simple xdoclet-like tool for processing doclet tags or Java 5 annotations GraphicsBuilder GraphicsBuilder is a Groovy builder for Java 2D Grapplet Griffon Dekstop Enhancements for Groovy Groosh Provides a shell-like capability for handling external processes. Groovy Jabber-RPC allows you to make XML-RPC calls using the Jabber protocol

Groovy Modules
GroovyJMS GroovyLab Provides a domain specific language (DSL) for math engineering (matlab-like syntax). Groovy Monkey is a dynamic scripting tool for the Eclipse Platform GroovyRestlet Groovy DSL for constructing Restlet application Groovy Science Groovy SOAP create a SOAP server and make calls to remote SOAP servers using Groovy GroovySWT a wrapper around SWT, the eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit GroovyWS GroovySOAP replacement that uses CXF and Java5 features GSP means GroovyServer Pages, which is similar to JSP (JavaServer Pages) GSQL supports easier access to databases using Groovy HTTP Builder provides a convenient builder API for complex HTTP requests JideBuilder JideBuilder is a Groovy builder for the open source JIDE

Groovy Modules
Native Launcher a native program for launching groovy scripts Proxy-o-Matic Proxy-o-Matic lets you create dynamic proxies fast and in an homogeneous way Windows NSIS-Installer a Windows-specific installer for Groovy Windows Services framework for Groovy-based WinNT (Windows) Services WingSBuilder WingsBuilder is a Groovy builder for the wingS Framework XMLRPC allows you to create a local XML-RPC server and/or to make calls on remote XML-RPC servers Grails a Groovy-based web framework inspired by Ruby on Rails GORM the Grails Object-Relational Mapping persistence framework GroovyPlugin A Groovy plugin for JSPWiki OCM Groovy A Object Content Mapping implemented in Groovy leveraging the Java Content Repository (JCR) Tellurium A test framework built on top of the Selenium test framework implemented in Groovy

IDE Support
Debugging with JSwat Eclipse Plugin IntelliJ IDEA Plugin IntelliJ IDEA Plugin (JetBrains Edition) JEdit Plugin NetBeans Plugin Oracle JDeveloper Plugin Other Plugins TextMate

Project Build Management

Maven Ant Gradle

Groovy Books
Groovy In Action (Manning) Programming Groovy: Dynamic Productivity for the Java Developer (Pragmatic Programmers) Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java (Pragmatic
Programmers)

Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional

(Apress)

Groovy Programming: An Introduction for Java Developers

(Morgan Kaufmann)

Groovy and Grails Recipes: Recipes a Dynamic Approach

(Apress)

The Definitive Guide to Grails (Apress) The Definitive Guide to Grails: Second Edition (Apress) Getting Started with Grails (Lulu.com)

Who Uses Groovy?

Mule ESB ServiceMix ESB Spring Grails LinkedI