Mastering Grails 101 by Berglund and McCullough
Summary: Really, really good introduction to Grails
Mastering Grails 101 is a really good introduction. Assuming that you have a zero knowledge related to the topic, after watching the video, and following it carefully, you will end up with working Groovy/Grails environment and basic knowledge of Grails and Groovy.
At first, you will be guided through the Groovy. The very basis of Groovy. This introduction consist of the things you have to know and understand before you start working with Grails. You will learn what Groovy is, how to write simple applications and execute them, how to install Groovy and configure the environment (basic knowledge of your CLI is assumed here). You will be told how to deal with strings, string interpolation and heredocs. You will learn basics of collections – some really nice features are awaiting here if you are new to Groovy. Then, you will be told what closures are and how to use them. BTW – in 5:10 of that part you can sneak into lecturer’s environment and see what they are using for the development.
After introducing Groovy, Matthew and Tim will guide you through the basics of the Grails. You will be told how to build simple web app that uses ORM in order to store data into database. You will learn how to create and use domain classes and how to build domain controllers. Then you will be shown how to configure Grails, how to configure external database and eventually how to link everything so you get a working web application.
What was missing? Downloadable examples. Maybe they will show up sometime. The other thing is the interaction between Tim and Matthew with the people sitting at the table. At some point I was not sure whether people took active part in the class at all. Even though, I still give five stars here. In my opinion, this is a really good introduction for people who have never worked with Groovy or Grails. The fact is, that after three hours spent with Matthew and Tim, you will have everything set up, and ready for development. You will know some basics of how to develop apps for Grails and how to cope with Groovy. I, personally, really enjoyed this one. But, I had never ever done anything with Grails before. I assume, that for people who already know Grails this won’t be as exciting. So, just to make sure. Only for beginers.
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