Foreword

Grails in Action is a book for practitioners from practitioners. Glen’s “20-hour challenge,” in which he implemented the www.groovyblogs.org service in Grails, has become legendary. That site is still my one-and-only resource for staying up to date with Groovy and Grails. Not only has he been one of the frontrunners of Grails, he made his achievements publicly available, both by sharing his code and by sharing his insights through blogging and public speaking. I have long wished that he would capture his wisdom in a book, and I can hardly believe that I can now hold it in my hands.

Glen’s “from the trenches” experience is ideally complemented by Peter’s insider knowledge, which he has shown thousands of times when answering questions on the Grails user mailing list. If anybody on this planet knows what people ask about Grails, he does.

Writing a good book on Grails is a challenge. As an author, you are tempted to present the full cornucopia of features, but you would like to also get across the simplicity that Grails brings to Java web application development.

Glen and Peter have found an excellent balance between providing a low-barrier entry into the Grails world and covering the issues that you are likely to encounter when using Grails in more demanding scenarios.

Grails in Action takes a practical stance. It leads you through the process of creating a Grails application and explains the sights along the way. This applies to the various pieces of technology: models, tests, views, controllers, services, and the like, but also—and maybe even more importantly—to the sequence of when and how you go from one to the next.

For creating your first Grails application, I can only advise you to follow their path. When you later want to deviate, you will find inspiration by looking at the later chapters.

Reading this book is a bit like talking to Glen. One can almost hear his “Aussie” voice, and when reading the encouraging, conversational, humorous style I cannot help but thinking, “flying koala.”

The linkage between Grails and the style of this book is no coincidence. It’s all about rock-solid solutions delivered with ease.

Enjoy!

DIERK KÖNIG

Author, Groovy in Action