Archive for February, 2011

This Week in Grails (2011-08)

Sunday, February 27th, 2011

Lots of good stuff this week, in particular the conference news. Spring I/O was last week in Madrid and it looks like it was great based on the writeups and tweets. View several slide decks here and articles here (via @tomaslin)

The two GR8Conf conferences announced their speakers and talks this week (I’ll be speaking at both and I’m really psyched for both of them). GR8Conf Europe is May 17th-19th in Copenhagen and GR8Conf US is June 27th-28th in Minneapolis, MN. Early ticket prices are cheap now so get yours before the prices go up.

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

Plugins

There were 6 new plugins released:

There were also several updated plugins:

  • aws version 1.1.7.1. Provide easy access to simpler functions of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • batch-launcher version 0.4.3. Load and run batch (non-webapp) Grails applications
  • binary-artifacts version 1.0.1. Lets you create plugins comprised of compiled classes and handles their registration as artifacts
  • cache-headers version 1.1.4. Improve application performance with browser caching
  • dojo version 1.4.3.8. Integrates the Dojo javascript toolkit
  • dynamic-domain-class version 0.3. Create domain classes dynamically at runtime
  • feature-flipper version 0.2. Provides a mechanism to turn features on and off
  • filterpane version 2.0. Adds filtering capabilities
  • freemarker-tags version 0.6.0. Use Grails Dynamic Tag Libraries as Freemarker directives
  • ic-alendar version 0.3.1. Export event data in the iCalendar format
  • jalarms version 0.2. Send application notifications using a wide range of protocols via JAlarms
  • lesscss version 0.9.4. Less CSS framework plugin
  • mongodb version 1.0-M4. Aims to provide an object-mapping layer on top of MongoDB
  • paypal version 0.6.1. Adds PayPal integration
  • spring-security-core version 1.1.2. The official Grails security plugin; integrates with Spring Security
  • twitter4j version 0.1.1. Send and receive Twitter messages using the twitter4j library
  • vaadin version 1.4. Adds Vaadin (http://vaadin.com/) integration
  • zk version 1.0.2. Adds ZK Ajax framework (www.zkoss.org) support to Grails applications
  • zk-ee version 1.0.2. Enterprise Addons for the ZK plugin

Interesting Tweets

Jobs

User groups and Conferences

grails, grailsplugin, groovy, java, ThisWeekInGrails | Comments (4)

This Week in Grails (2011-07)

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

The big news of the week was the 1.3.7 release of Grails. This was a fairly small release with some important fixes, and will most likely be the last 1.3.x release. Groovy 1.7.8 and 1.8 RC1 were also released, so there’s a lot of interesting stuff to look at there too.

The Spring I/O conference in Madrid was also this week and judging from the tweets it was a great conference. Google Translate has been very helpful this week 🙂

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

Plugins

There were 6 new plugins released:

  • ajax-uploader version 0.2. Tag Library which implements Andrew Valum’s excellent file uploader
  • jquery-datatables version 1.7.5. Supplies jQuery DataTables plugin resources to avoid resource duplication and conflicts
  • spawn version 0.2. Allows you to specify a specific template for a domain class
  • spring-security-appinfo version 1.0. Provides a basic UI to view the security configuration
  • transactional-controller version 0.1. Wraps controller actions in transactions (although my strong preference would be to move persistence logic to a transactional service method).
  • twitter4j version 0.1. Send and receive Twitter messages using the twitter4j library

There were also several updated plugins:

  • database-migration version 0.2. Official Grails plugin for database migrations
  • db-reverse-engineer version 0.3. Reverse-engineers a database to Grails domain classes.
  • extended-validation version 1.0.1. Provides partial validation of (groups) of fields, cascaded validation and instance validators for non-domain objects.
  • fixtures version 1.0.5. Load test data via a convenient DSL
  • grails-melody version 1.1. Integrates the JavaMelody system monitoring tool
  • jms version 1.1. Makes it easy to both send and receive JMS messages
  • jquery-validation-ui version 1.2. Client Side Validation without writing JavaScript
  • mongodb version 1.0-M3. Aims to provide an object-mapping layer on top of MongoDB
  • nerderg-form-tags version 1.2. Bringing Readability, Convention, Consistency and CSS to form design
  • rabbitmq version 0.3.1. Integrates with Rabbit MQ messaging
  • rest version 0.6.1. Enables the usage of HTTPBuilder
  • riak version 1.0.0.M3. GORM for the Riak NoSQL datastore
  • spring-mobile version 0.2. Uses the Spring Mobile project to detect mobile devices
  • spring-security-acl version 1.1. ACL support for the Spring Security plugin
  • spring-security-cas version 1.0.2. Jasig CAS support for the Spring Security plugin
  • spring-security-ldap version 1.0.2. LDAP authentication support for the Spring Security plugin
  • spring-security-openid version 1.0.1. OpenID authentication support for the Spring Security plugin
  • springcache version 1.3.1. Caches Spring bean methods and page fragments generated by Grails controllers
  • ulc version 0.3.3. Provides access to the Canoo UltraLightClient (ULC) RIA kit
  • weceem version 1.0-M2. A content management system
  • weceem-spring-security version 1.0. Provides the glue needed to make Weceem plugin use Spring Security for authorisation and authentication

Interesting Tweets

Jobs

User groups and Conferences

grails, grailsplugin, groovy, java, ThisWeekInGrails | Comments (6)

This Week in Grails (2011-06)

Sunday, February 13th, 2011

This week saw another mega thread on the User mailing list, this time on hosting options. Looks like the winner is Amazon Elastic Beanstalk and there’s a lot of useful information in the thread, so be sure to check it out.

Maybe it has been a common practice and I’ve only noticed it because I watch new and updated plugins for these posts, but it seems like most recent plugin releases require the latest (or a very recent) version of Grails as the minimum version. When you run grails create-plugin the generated plugin descriptor defaults to def grailsVersion = "1.3.6 > *" (assuming you use Grails 1.3.6). A lot of developers will still be using older versions of Grails and won’t even be able to test your plugin. This may be intentional – if you don’t have users, you won’t get bug reports 🙂 Be sure to drop the minimum version (and fill out the rest of the fields!) but make sure you test with earlier versions.

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

There were 4 new plugins released:

  • dbconsole version 1.0. Provides a web based database console for pre-1.4 apps
  • multi-tenant-proxy version 1.0. Multi-tenant add-on to use domain tenant resolver with http proxy in front of your app server
  • spring-security-bcrypt version 0.3. Use the bcrypt encryption algorithm to hash your users’ passwords with the spring-security-core plugin
  • tropo-webapi-grails version 0.1. Use Tropo’s cloud API to add phone, SMS and Instant Messaging support

There were also several updated plugins:

  • ajaxflow version 0.2.0. Enables Ajaxified Webflows
  • autobase version 0.11.0. Database migrations
  • aws version 1.1.5.1. Provide easy access to simpler functions of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • dojo version 1.4.3.7. Integrates the Dojo javascript toolkit
  • ibatis version 1.3.1. Integrates the MyBatis persistence framework
  • navigation version 1.2. Implements simple menu navigation using convention
  • rabbitmq version 0.3. Integrates with Rabbit MQ messaging
  • sanitizer version 0.6. Sanitizes markup(HTML, XHTML, CSS) using OWASP AntiSamy Filters
  • screencasts version 0.5.1. Allows the upload, management and display of screencasts
  • shiro version 1.1.3. Secure your Grails application quickly and easily using the Apache Shiro security framework
  • spring-security-acl version 1.0.2. ACL support for the Spring Security plugin
  • taggable version 0.6.3. Adds support for associating tags with domain classes

Interesting Tweets

Jobs

User groups and Conferences

grails, grailsplugin, java, ThisWeekInGrails | Comments (3)

This Week in Grails (2011-05)

Sunday, February 06th, 2011

I guess the big item of the week was the mammoth Grails User mailing list thread on “Grails Adoption”. It’s easily one of the longest threads I’ve seen since being a subscriber to the mailing list (currently at 102 messages), and it’s been a very interesting read.

Translations of this post:

One item that you might have missed was the release of STS 2.6.0 M1. Looking at the “New and Noteworthy” document there are plenty of new and improved features of interest to Groovy and Grails developers:

  • Support setting ‘env’ parameters for deploying Grails Apps on Tc server
  • UI support for setting System properties passed to Grails Commands
  • Compilation of Grails projects will no longer produce warnings in the problems view for dependent plugin source files.
  • Overriding the plugin install location (grails.project.plugins.dir) in a Grails project will now correctly be reflected in any linked source folders created for plugins.
  • Code assist performance has been improved
  • Find occurrences in groovy files (CTRL-Shift-U) now works
  • Mark occurrences now works
  • Improved syntax highlighting
  • Better type inferencing for closures inside DGM calls
  • Ability to set Method entry breakpoints
  • Fixed some issues preventing the setting of breakpoints

and I know that there will be plenty more added before the full release (this is just the 1st milestone).

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.

Miscellaneous Items

Plugins

There were 3 new plugins released:

  • horn version 1.0. Easily embed data semantically in your HTML and extract it for use as your JavaScript model.
  • spring-mobile version 0.1. Uses the Spring Mobile project to detect mobile devices
  • spring-security-kerberos version 0.1. Adds Kerberos single sign-on support

There were also several updated plugins:

  • activiti version 5.2. Integrates the Activiti BPM Suite and workflow system
  • app-info version 0.4.2. provides a UI for inspecting and altering various aspects of the application’s configuration
  • aws version 1.1.4.1. Provide easy access to simpler functions of Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • cxf version 0.7.0. Expose Grails services as SOAP web services via CXF
  • dojo version 1.4.3.6. Adds support for the Dojo JavaScript toolkit
  • eclipse-scripts version 1.0.4. Downloads and links sources and javadocs for dependencies from public repositories
  • fixtures version 1.0.4. Load test data via a convenient DSL
  • ibatis version 1.3.0. Integrates the MyBatis persistence framework
  • invitation-only version 1.1. Manages user invitations to your application
  • lang-selector version 0.3. Provides a tag to display flags for countries of the languages your application supports and switch locales
  • remote-control version 1.1.1. Execute code inside a remote Grails application
  • webdriver version 0.3.1. Integrates Webdriver with Grails to allow functional testing in both HtmlUnit and real browsers

Interesting Tweets

Jobs

Check out this cool heat map of the locations of jobs posted at grailsjobs.com (via @tomaslin)

Also check out these interesting trend graphs from indeed.com that were mentioned in that mammoth mailing list thread; the trend for Grails, and the relative trend compared to Ruby, Scala, PHP, Python, and Java

User groups and Conferences

grails, grailsplugin, groovy, java, ThisWeekInGrails | Comments (3)

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.