Part 3. Everyday Grails

In part 2 of this book, you learned about the basic building blocks of Grails applications. In part 3, you’ll apply that knowledge to building all the necessary pieces of a real-world application.

Chapter 8 introduces Grails plugins—ways of extending your applications using third-party code modules. We’ll use plugins to give Hubbub an extreme UI makeover introducing you to charting, graphics, tooltips, rich text editors, and a wealth of other UI enhancements along the way. We’ll also add some important functional enhancements, like email integration and full text search.

In chapter 9, we’ll take a tour of Grails Webflow—a lightweight state engine that lets you easily add wizard-like flows to your applications. By building a basic shopping-cart feature for Hubbub’s online store, you’ll learn how Grails makes it easy to walk your user through a series of steps, branching to special subflows as required. You’ll also learn how to thoroughly test it all.

Security is a vital topic in deploying any kind of application on the internet, so chapter 10 will give you a thorough grounding in web security issues. After learning about the common vulnerabilities in web applications, you’ll learn how to mitigate them and keep everything secure. We’ll also take you on a tour of a popular Grails security plugin that allows you to add all sorts of access-control features to Hubbub.