Grails (framework)

Grails is an open source web application framework that uses the Apache Groovy programming language (which is in turn based on the Java platform). It is intended to be a high-productivity framework by following the "coding by convention" paradigm, providing a stand-alone development environment and hiding much of the configuration detail from the developer. Grails was previously known as "Groovy on Rails"; in March 2006 that name was dropped in response to a request by David Heinemeier Hansson, founder of the Ruby on Rails framework. Work began in July 2005, with the 0.1 release on March 29, 2006, and the 1.0 release announced on February 18, 2008. Grails was developed to address a number of goals: Provide a web framework for the Java platform. Re-use existing Java technologies such as Hibernate and Spring under a single interface Offer a consistent development framework. Offer documentation for key portions of the framework: The Persistence framework. Templates using GSP (Groovy Server Pages). Dynamic tag libraries for creating web page components. Customizable and extensible Ajax support. Provide sample applications that demonstrate the framework. Provide a complete development mode, including a web server and automatic reload of resources. Grails has three properties that differentiate it from traditional Java web frameworks: No XML configuration Ready-to-use development environment Functionality available through mixins Creating web applications in Java traditionally involves configuring environments and frameworks at the start and during development. This configuration is very often externalized in XML files to ease configuration and avoid embedding configuration in application code. XML was initially welcomed as it provided greater consistency to configure applications. However, in recent years, it has become apparent that although XML is great for configuration, it can be tedious to set up an environment. This may reduce productivity as developers spend time understanding and maintaining framework configuration as the application grows.