Archive for October, 2011

This Week in Grails (2011-43)

Monday, October 31st, 2011

The big news this week was SpringOne 2GX in Chicago. It’s always a fun conference and a great chance to learn a lot about what’s going on with the Spring and Groovy-ecosystem technologies and talk to developers creating the software that we use (or wish we were using) and the developers using these cool technologies in their jobs. I’ll be doing a separate post on this year’s conference that’ll include the slides and demo apps from my talks.

We were able to announce and demo the new Heroku plugin that we’ve been developing in collaboration with the folks at Heroku. Tomás Lin and Graeme were able to get Grails apps deployed when Heroku first announced support for Java but the process wasn’t very simple and involved Maven. The new plugin works a lot like the Cloud Foundry plugin in that it automatically reconfigures your DataSource, Redis, MongoDB, RabbitMQ, and even Memcached connection settings to use configured Heroku services, all with almost zero configuration in your application. We should have a proper release within the next couple of weeks – there are a just few more issues to iron out first.

Jochen “blackdrag” Theodorou doesn’t blog much but when he does it’s always a must-read, and this week there are two posts at his blog. Check out Feeling Grumpy? and Flow Sensitive Typing?.

Please take a moment to take this survey: Java Developers Survey of JVM Languages

Peter Ledbrook will be doing a webinar this week on new features in Grails 2.0: Webinar: Better productivity: Grails 2

We also crossed over the 700 plugin count this week – there are now 701 registered Grails plugins.


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:



Plugins

There were 2 new plugins released:

  • jsbuild version 1.3.1.8. Implements www.devunited.org JsBuild utility in grails with added features
  • oauth-scribe version 1.0. Provides oAuth integration for Grails, using the Scribe framework

and 18 updated plugins:

  • compass-sass version 0.5.5. Compass, SASS and SCSS support for Grails. Automatically compiles .scss/.sass during run-app, and adds other framework functionality
  • elasticsearch version 0.17.8.1. Adds support for the http://www.elasticsearch.com/ RESTful search engine
  • extjs version 3.4.0.0. Provides Ext JS resources
  • extjs4 version 4.0.7.0. Provides Ext JS 4 resources
  • gdsflex version 0.9.0. Provides integration between Grails and Adobe Flex using Granite Data Services
  • geb version 0.6.1. Geb is a library for headless web browsing on the JVM, suitable for automation and functional web testing
  • gsp-resources version 0.2.1. Use the resources plugin to include static files like main.css.gsp, so dynamically built CSS and JS can be served as proper files instead of inlined in a non-cacheable GSP file
  • portlets version 0.9.1. Aims to provide a simple way of developing JSR-168 portlets
  • recurly version 0.99. Communicate with Recurly servers
  • rest version 0.7. Enables the usage of HTTPBuilder
  • rich-domain version 1.0.4. Provides dependency injection for POGOs that are not Grails domain classes
  • ruby version 1.0.M3. Use Ruby code in Grails via JRuby
  • spring-security-facebook version 0.2.4. Plugin for Facebook Authentication, as extension to Grails Spring Security Core plugin
  • spring-security-saml version 1.0.0.M4. SAML 2.x support for the Spring Security Plugin
  • twitter-bootstrap version 1.3.0.11. Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework resource files
  • webdriver version 0.3.3. Integrates Webdriver with Grails to allow functional testing in both HtmlUnit and real browsers
  • xwiki-rendering version 0.2. Convert texts using XWiki Rendering Framework
  • zkui version 0.4. Seamlessly integrates ZK with Grails’ infrastructures; uses the Grails’ infrastructures such as GSP, controllers rather than zk’s zul as in ZKGrails plugin

Interesting Tweets

Jobs



User groups and Conferences



This Week in Grails (2011-42)

Monday, October 24th, 2011

The big news this week was the RC1 release of Grails 2.0. Things are progressing well for the 2.0 final release in November. If you haven’t already you should check out 2.0, and you should definitely be looking at upgrading your applications to take advantage of all the new features.

STS 2.8.0 was also released this week. Check out the New and Noteworthy docs for all of the new groovy-eclipse and Grails features (including support for Grails 2.0).

It’s hard to believe that SpringOne 2GX is already here and starts this Tuesday. And the week after that is Greach, followed by GR8Conf Australia two weeks later, and then Groovy & Grails eXchange three weeks after that. Anybody lucky enough to be going to all four?

The Spring Events plugin was updated this week to work with Grails 2.0. If you’re using the publishEvent method added to artifacts (domain classes, controllers and services) everything will still work, but if you were using the applicationEventMulticaster or eventPublisher Spring beans directly you’ll need to change to use the new asyncApplicationEventMulticaster and asyncEventPublisher beans.


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:



Plugins

There were 2 new plugins released:

  • spring-security-facebook version 0.2.3. Plugin for Facebook Authentication, as extension to Grails Spring Security Core plugin
  • rich-domain version 0.1. Provides dependency injection for POGOs that are not Grails domain classes

and 20 updated plugins:

  • bean-fields version 1.0.RC5. Provides a suite of tags for rendering form fields for domain and command objects
  • cloud-bees version 0.1.2. Adds scripts to integrate with the CloudBees client API
  • compass-sass version 0.5.1. Compass, SASS and SCSS support for Grails. Automatically compiles .scss/.sass during run-app, and adds other framework functionality
  • grails-ui version 1.2.1. Provides a standard UI tag library for ajaxy widgets using YUI
  • gsp-resources version 0.2. Use the resources plugin to include static files like main.css.gsp, so dynamically built CSS and JS can be served as proper files instead of inlined in a non-cacheable GSP file
  • jesque-web version 0.12. Web interface to view and manage jesque queues, jobs and workers
  • mongodb version 1.0.0.RC1. Aims to provide an object-mapping layer on top of MongoDB
  • mongodb-morphia version 0.7.5. Alternative MongoDB GORM based on the Morphia library (former gorm-mongodb)
  • navigation version 1.3.2. Implements simple menu navigation using convention
  • new-doc version 0.3.0. A backport of the additional functionality offered in the doc command in Grails 2.0.x
  • proxool version 0.3. Proxool jdbc connection pool plugin
  • resources version 1.1.1. A resource management and processing framework
  • screencasts version 0.5.4. Allows the upload, management and display of screencasts
  • serializable-session version 0.4. Enforces that the session will only accept serializable objects
  • spring-events version 1.2. Provides asynchronous Spring application event processing for Grails applications
  • spring-security-core version 1.2.4. The official Grails security plugin; integrates with Spring Security
  • spring-security-saml version 1.0.0.M3. SAML 2.x support for the Spring Security Plugin
  • twitter-bootstrap version 1.3.0.9. Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework resource files
  • zk version 1.0.6. Adds ZK Ajax framework (www.zkoss.org) support to Grails applications
  • zk-ee version 1.0.6. Enterprise Addons for the ZK plugin

Interesting Tweets

Jobs



User groups and Conferences



This Week in Grails (2011-41)

Monday, October 17th, 2011

I released the initial version of the atomikos plugin this week. This works with the new multiple datasources support in Grails 2.0 (and should work with the datasources plugin although I haven’t tested that yet) to add two-phase commit support for JDBC and JMS. The documentation describes how to use it and includes an extensive tutorial covering both multiple databases and combining a database call with sending a JMS message. Coincidentally this interesting blog post on Using JMS in Grails was posted this week.

The Groovy team released version 1.8.3 and beta 4 of 1.9 this week. Check out Guillaume’s post to see what’s new in the two releases.

Do you live in the Seattle area? Do you have 9 friends who are good at Grails? You’re in luck – a company there is looking for 10(!) Grails developers – see the item in the jobs section below.


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:



Plugins

There were 6 new plugins released:

  • atomikos version 1.0. Integrates Atomikos TransactionsEssentials to support two-phase commit for JDBC and JMS transactions
  • cdn-resources version 0.2. Loads static resources using Content Delivery Networks using the Resources plugin framework
  • cxf-client version 1.0. Use existing (or new) Apache CXF wsdl2java generated content to invoke SOAP services
  • random-test-order version 0.2. Run unit, integration, and functional tests in a random order
  • scorm version 0.2. Adds SCORM reading capabilities
  • gsp-resources version 0.1. Use the resources plugin to include static files like main.css.gsp, so dynamically built CSS and JS can be served as proper files instead of inlined in a non-cacheable GSP file

and 17 updated plugins:

  • compass-sass version 0.5. Compass, SASS and SCSS support for Grails. Automatically compiles .scss/.sass during run-app, and adds other framework functionality
  • date-formatting version 0.2.2. Adds functions to the Date object to convert into various string formats
  • email-confirmation version 1.0.5. Sends an email to a user with a link to click to confirm site registration
  • external-config-reload version 0.4.7. Polls for changes to external configuration files (files added to grails.config.locations), reloads the configuration when a change has occurred, and notifies specified plugins by firing the onConfigChange event in each
  • file-viewer version 0.2. Provides a user-friendly way to view folders and files
  • flyingcow version 1.0. Fork of the ui-performance plugin with some enhancements
  • fsm version 0.6.6. Finite State Machine behavior
  • google-visualization version 0.3. Provides a taglib for the interactive charts of the Google Visualization API
  • grails-melody version 1.9. Integrates the JavaMelody system monitoring tool
  • jquery-mobile version 0.2. Provides jQuery mobile framework resource files
  • mongodb-morphia version 0.7.4. Alternative MongoDB GORM based on the Morphia library (former gorm-mongodb)
  • mongodb-multitenant version 0.2.2.6-BETA. Enables multitenancy for MongoDB
  • portlets version 0.9. Aims to provide a simple way of developing JSR-168 portlets
  • portlets-liferay version 0.4. Uses the Portlets Plugin and adds Liferay Portal specific configurations and adapters
  • spring-security-core version 1.2.3. The official Grails security plugin; integrates with Spring Security
  • spring-security-twitter version 0.3.3. Twitter authentication as extension to the Spring Security Core plugin
  • twitter-bootstrap version 1.3.0.8. Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework resource files

Interesting Tweets

Jobs



User groups and Conferences



This Week in Grails (2011-40)

Monday, October 10th, 2011

Cédric Champeau has added a new Groovy Enhancement Proposal (GEP) for static type checking. This is for an optional stricter “grumpy” mode of Groovy similar to Groovy++ where the compiler will generate more warnings and errors to give developers feedback about problems earlier than if they were in traditional Groovy.

Lots of job activity this week, including five listings at Taulia in San Francisco.

Only two more weeks until SpringOne/2GX – it should be another great conference this year.


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:



Plugins

There was one new plugin released:

  • recurly version 0.98. Communicate with Recurly servers

and 13 updated plugins:

  • cloud-foundry version 1.2. Integrates Cloud Foundry’s cloud deployment services to manage the running of Grails applications in the cloud from the command line
  • cloud-support version 1.0.6. Support plugin to help cloud plugins update service provider connection information from the cloud environment
  • compass-sass version 0.4.3. Compass, SASS and SCSS support for Grails. Automatically compiles .scss/.sass during run-app, and adds other framework functionality
  • dbconsole version 1.1. Provides a web based database console for pre-1.4 apps
  • fsm version 0.6.5. Finite State Machine behavior
  • html-validator version 0.3. Uses JTidy to do sanity checks on html files
  • image-builder version 0.2. A simple image builder
  • new-doc version 0.2.1. A backport of the additional functionality offered in the doc command in Grails 2.0.x
  • sharding version 0.6. Defines multiple database shards to horizontally scale data
  • spring-social-core version 0.1.29. Allows you to connect your applications with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers such as Facebook and Twitter
  • spring-social-twitter version 0.1.28. Connect your applications with Twitter
  • taggable version 1.0. Adds support for associating tags with domain classes
  • tropo-webapi-grails version 0.2.1. Use Tropo’s cloud API to add phone, SMS and Instant Messaging support

Interesting Tweets

Jobs



User groups and Conferences



This Week in Grails (2011-39)

Monday, October 03rd, 2011

Graeme announced that the release date for Grails 2.0 has been pushed back to November since we’re integrating Spring 3.1 and their schedule has slipped. This is a bummer for users who want to get their hands on the 2.0 final release, but good news since we’ll have some extra time to fix more bugs and polish things.

The Gradle team has started their own “This Week in Gradle” series. This is great news for me since I don’t actively follow things in the Gradle space (yet anyway) but a weekly summary will be very useful to keep up on where things are headed. Add their RSS feed to your favorite RSS reader to be automatically notified of new posts.

The Groovy development team will increase by one this week. Cédric Champeau will be starting Monday as a Groovy developer at SpringSource. This is great news for Groovy.


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:



Plugins

There were 11 new plugins released:

  • gordon-flash version 0.5. Protects flash scope from being cleared out unnecessarily
  • hibernate-spatial version 0.0.4. Provides support for using Hibernate Spatial in Grails
  • hibernate-spatial-hdb version 0.0.4. Hibernate Spatial Provider for H2/GeoDB
  • hibernate-spatial-mysql version 0.0.4. Hibernate Spatial Provider for MySQL
  • hibernate-spatial-oracle version 0.0.4. Hibernate Spatial Provider for Oracle
  • hibernate-spatial-postgresql version 0.0.4. Hibernate Spatial Provider for PostgreSQL/PostGIS
  • hibernate-spatial-sqlserver version 0.0.4. Hibernate Spatial Provider for Microsoft SQL Server
  • website-optimizer version 0.1. Provides tags to easily integrate Google Website Optimizer experiments into your Grails application
  • jquery-mobile version 0.1. Provides jQuery mobile framework resource files
  • memcached version 1.0.1. Helps integrate Memcached as the Hibernate 2nd-level cache provider
  • cloud-support version 1.0.3. Support plugin to help cloud plugins update service provider connection information from the cloud environment

and 7 updated plugins:

  • console-enhancements version 0.4. Enhances the grails console output for better visibility
  • google-visualization version 0.4.2. Provides a taglib for the interactive charts of the Google Visualization API
  • notifications version 0.2.5. Implements a publish-subscribe model to push information to subscribers through different communication channels
  • ruby version 1.0.M2. Use Ruby code in Grails via JRuby
  • twitter-bootstrap version 1.3.0.6. Twitter Bootstrap CSS framework resource files
  • weceem-spring-security version 1.1. Provides the glue needed to make Weceem plugin use Spring Security for authorisation and authentication
  • yui-minify-resources version 0.1.2. Minifies static css and js resources using the YUI Compressor library

Interesting Tweets

User groups and Conferences



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