Explorations in software

Run a Java web application within grails

2009-12-17T15:28:00.005-05:00

Ever needed to run an existing java web application side by side with your grails project? I found myself in exactly that position this week, and discovered that it (like most things in grails) was rather simple to accomplish. Considering I work in a predominately Java environment, I often need to run a java web application side by side with my grails work. To date, I would simply run grails

Easy in-place delete with ajax and grails

2009-11-27T13:37:00.005-05:00

I was recently asked to implement new delete functionality on a list of items. The catch of this request was that the removal of an item would be done without reloading the page. This required me to write a boatload of code in both JavaScript and Java to successfully implement. After this somewhat painful experience, I wanted to see how elegantly this experience would be handled in grails. I

Invoke test classes from groovy

2009-11-19T10:38:00.001-05:00

Just a quick note, mostly for myself. If a unit test extends GroovyTestCase, it can be run from groovy. class GroovyTest extends GroovyTestCase { void testString { assertEquals 'Test failed!', "Test", "Test" } } To execute this test, run the following command: $ groovy GroovyTest.groovy Time: 0.125 OK (1 test)

Grails, validation, constraints, oh my!

2009-11-13T15:05:00.001-05:00

I must admit that I am continually impressed by the ease with which grails makes previously tedious tasks simple and easy. In my current project I found it necessary to enforce a constraint that a date be in the future. My first reaction was along the lines of "no problem, I'll just validate the data in the business tier", and then luckily discovered a much more elegant solution in grails:

Grails 1.1, integration tests, and unsaved transient instance errors

2009-11-07T10:55:00.004-05:00

In the grails documentation, and every book on the subject you will find an example similar to: class Author { static hasMany = [ books : Book ] String name } class Book { static belongsTo = Author Author author String title } The belongsTo reference ensures that saves, updates, and deletes are cascaded. All the information that I have found provides an example to save your

The Grails journey begins

2009-11-06T23:01:00.001-05:00

After working with ColdFusion and becoming frustrated with some of it's shortcomings, I decided to use a "grown up" language; Java. It's been quite a few years since I made the leap to Java, and it has been a very interesting journey. I have had the "pleasure" to work with many different frameworks, tools, and technologies. With each I began with the same goal: to find an easier way to do X,