Free Groovy and Grails training and copy of Beginning Groovy and Grails

On March 10th, I made the offer to provide free 1 1/2 hours of Groovy and Grails training to any companies in the Central Ohio area. This offer has been very popular. With the recent publication of my book Beginning Groovy and Grails, I want re-offer this opportunity and sweeten the deal by providing one free copy of Beginning Groovy and Grails to any companies receiving the training. The training defines Groovy and Grails and demonstrates their capabilities with a live coding demo including some AJAX examples. If you are interested in learning more about taking advantage of this offer, please email me at groovy@juddsolutions.com.

Eclipse ${project_loc} errors during Grails development

In your Grails development with Eclipse, if you have ever used the Run Launch configuration provided by Grails or followed Add domain classes etc. instructions on the Grails Eclipse IDE Integration wiki page, you may have received the Eclipse error message “Variable references empty selection: ${project_loc}”.

This is caused by the fact that certain actions can cause Eclipse to loose focus of the current project. To resolve the issue, simply select your current project in the Package Explorer or Navigator and repeat task that caused the error. This can get annoying so another alternative is to replace ${project_loc} with ${workspace_loc}\project_name if your project in your workspace directory.

Announcing Beginning Groovy and Grails Book

Ok, Beginning Groovy and Grails has been available for about a week and my co-authors have already announced it but I wanted to wait to make my announcement when the electronic/PDF version was available. It was a long but fun process and I am very proud of the results. I think we have managed to put together a book that will easily enable developers to get up to speed with what they need to know in Groovy to begin being productive in Grails. I think the remainder of the book does a good job of providing a strong foundation of the common things, plug-ins and tips a new Grails developer will need to know in order to put together a fully functional Web 2.0 application. Currently Amazon.com is sold out of print versions but you can still order and they will be getting more soon. Or you can purchase the print or electronic version from the Apress website.

eApps is great for Grails hosting

In episode 58 of the Grails Podcast, Glen and Sven spoke about a Grails hosting service that costs about a dollar a day if used in production. So, I thought I would share my experiences in hosting Grails applications. For the past year I have used eApps for my Java, PHP and Grails hosting. I have been extemely happy with them from a support, feature and price perspective. I have used many hosting services in the past including other Java hosting services and eApps is definitely the best. My Beginning Groovy and Grails co-authors, Joseph Nusairat and Jim Shingler also use them for hosting as well.

eApps starts Java hosting at $20 a month for Tomcat and a offers a $30 option for JBoss or Glassfish which is less than a dollar a day. It also includes database options of MySQL, PostgreSQL or Derby. It has a load of other standard options such as email, ftp, control panel, PHP, Ruby On Rails, etc. But my favorite features are root access to my own virtual server, DNS configuration through control panel, easily hosting of multiple domains with one account (which can bring the daily cost down furture) and a Subversion or CVS repository.

I personally use the JBoss option while Joseph and Jim are using the Tomcat option.

Agile Web Development with Groovy and Grails at ITX Forum

I will be presenting "Agile Web Development with Groovy and Grails for the Java Platform" at the ITX Forum sponsored by Compuware on Tuesday May 27, 2008 from 5:30 pm to 7:30 pm at the Compuware Columbus Branch located 8351 North High Street Suite 200, Columbus Ohio 43235. This is a free event. If you are interested in attending, please RSVP to sara.christian@compuware.com by Friday May 23, 2008.

Posted my Agile Development with Groovy and Grails presentation

I have given a presentation I call Agile Development with Groovy and Grails at CodeMash, the Columbus Ruby Brigade, and other places around Columbus, Ohio. Unfortunately most of the presentation shows the power of Groovy and Grails in demo but if you are interested you can download it at http://www.juddsolutions.com/downloads/AgileDevelopmentwithGroovyandGrails.pdf.

In addition, I offer to freely give this presentation to any companies or organizations interested in Groovy and Grails in the central Ohio area.

Grails Integrated Framework Documentation

One of the things I really like about Grails is that it does not suffer from "Not Invented Here" syndrome. Instead or reinventing the wheel, it integrates with best of breed proven open source frameworks. It then goes on to make the integration seamless hiding much of the complexities of those frameworks. But sometimes you need to access those frameworks more explicitly and therefor you must learn there apis, configurations and other details. So, below is a compiled list of the documentation for the frameworks Grails integrates.

Groovy - User Guide - API & GDK
Spring Framework - User Guide - API
Hibernate - User Guild - API
SiteMesh - User Guide - API
Jetty - User Guide - API
HSQLDB - User Guide - API
JUnit - User Guide - API
Ant - User Guide
script.aculo.us - User Guide - API
Prototype - User Guide - API
OpenRico - Demos

Free Groovy and Grails lunch and learn

Over the last year, I have become a huge fan of Groovy and Grails. I believe the speed of development combined with the short learning curve and the power of the Java platform will make them the future of the Java platform. If you want know why I believe this, I am offering a free hour and a half lunch and learn to companies in the Central Ohio area. This is a presentation I gave at CodeMash and to several companies in the area. The presentation defines Groovy and Grails and then demonstrates their capabilities with a live coding demo including some AJAX examples. If you are interested in learning more about scheduling me to speak at your next lunch and learn, please email me at groovy@juddsolutions.com.