Chapter 13. Griffon in front, Grails in the back

 

This chapter covers

  • Building a Grails server application
  • Building a Griffon UI
  • Connecting Grails and Griffon via REST

It’s hard to find a web developer these days who hasn’t come across an Ajax- or RIA-powered website. These technologies have become so ubiquitous that we can’t go back to the times when Web 2.0 didn’t exist. There are myriad options for building a web application that has Ajax built in or that presents a rich interface, in both the frontend and backend tiers. Grails happens to be one of the front runners when dealing with the JVM.

We’ve mentioned Grails a few times already in this book. If you’re a developer working on web applications and you haven’t given Grails a try, you owe it to yourself to do so. We can guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

Grails is a full-stack web development platform whose foundations lie in Spring and Hibernate, so it shouldn’t be hard for a Java developer to pick it up and get to work. But what really makes it revolutionary is its choice of default development language: Groovy, the same as in Griffon.

13.1. Getting started with Grails

13.2. Building the Grails server application

13.3. To REST or not

13.4. Building the Griffon frontend

13.5. Querying the Grails backend

13.6. Alternative networking options

13.7. Summary