Build your first grails application

Grails is an open source web application framework, that has been built with the aim to enable rapid application development (RAD). Grails uses groovy as it's primary programming language. It uses Convention over Configuration to speed up the process of web application development. Grails takes its inspiration from Ruby on Rails but for the java world. Grails runs on the JVM and brings the power of the scripting world since it uses groovy which is a dynamic language built on top of java. Read more about grails and it's features here.

In this article we will quickly build an application using Grails. You will be surprised to see that you have your web-app running within 15 minutes, save data to the database, even deploy you application on your favourite application server! Enough talking, let's get into action.
( find a download link for the source code of the sample plugin at the bottom of the page)

Welcome Grails to your life!

We all know how painful web development in java can be! Maintaing endless configuration xml files, writing hibernate layers & complex build scripts for compiling & packaging can make your experience of developing a web app in java nightmarish. But we would not want to sacrifice the capabilities and power of the Java platform for the sake of ease and agility.

And this is where web frameworks like Grails fit in. These framework take care of the overhead tasks such as configuration, builds, integration, and enable us to concentrate on our business requirement. 
If you are looking for a framework that supports agile development and enables RAD (Rapid application Development), Grails could be your first choice!

Create your first grails plugin

Crucial to the success of grails, is its support for plugins. Grails was designed keeping pluggability in mind right from the start. Ease in development, testing, building and distribution of plugins has led to a larger community interest in the framework, with loads of plugins available for developers to choose from.

If you’ve worked with grails, chances are you’ve used at least one grails plugin such as hibernate, logging, acegi, grails UI, mail, searchable etc. Grails maintains a plugin repository that you can search to find a plugin most suitable for your requirements. But have you ever found yourself in a situation where you’re rewriting the same code in multiple views, or duplicating code between controllers and services and even between multiple grails applications? If yes, this could be your chance of trying your hand at a plugin!

I’m presenting a very basic tutorial to create a very simple grails plugin, with a service and a taglib that can be reused across grails applications.( find a download link for the source code of the sample plugin at the bottom of the page)