Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java

by Scott Davis

Each recipe in Groovy Recipes begins with a concise code example for a quick start, followed by in-depth explanation in plain English. These recipes will get you to-to-speed in a Groovy environment quickly. You'll see how to speed up nearly every aspect of the development process using Groovy. Groovy makes mundane file management tasks like copying and renaming files trivial. Reading and writing XML has never been easier with XmlParsers and XmlBuilders. Breathe new life into Arrays, Maps, and Lists with a number of convenience methods. But Groovy does more than just ease traditional Java development: it brings modern programming features to the Java platform like closures, duck-typing, and metaprogramming. As an added bonus, this book also covers Grails. You'll be amazed at how quickly you can have a first-class web application up and running from ground zero. Grails includes everything you need in a single zip file⎯a web server (Jetty), a database (HSQLDB), Spring, Hibernate, even a Groovy version of Ant called GANT. We cover everything from getting a basic website in place to advanced features that take you beyond HTML into the world of Web Services: REST, JSON, Atom, Podcasting, and much much more.

Genres: Programming, Software, Technology

249 pages, Paperback

First published March 11, 2007

About the author

About the Author from Amazon:

Scott Davis is an internationally recognized author, speaker, and software developer. His books include Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java , GIS for Web Developers , The Google Maps API, and JBoss at Work . He writes two ongoing article series for IBM DeveloperWorks: "Mastering Grails" and "Practically Groovy." Keep up with him at http://thirstyhead.com.

Reviews

[Christopher Patti · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sorry to say that I was somewhat disappointed with this book. I had hoped it would have the depth of one of the O'Reily 'Cookbook' series, with handy little snippets on everything from basic data structure wrangling to more complex tasks.

However, the selection of 'recipes' leans heavily toward the complex side of things - lots of web services, XML and the like.

The recipes are at least clearly written and presented, which is certainly something. I guess I just wish there were more of them, and more depth / breadth to their coverage of language topics.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

when i put a book down without finishing it i need a good reason. in this case, i am making a shift from groovy to scala, and just ordered the scala book, and no point in spending the time to finish this one for now.

i got up to the section on web programming. in general, this is a good book for people new to the language, who want to learn some of the basic language idioms for programming and scripting. not a sophisticated text but serves a simple purpose.

[Guy McArthur · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is a decent intro to Groovy for programmers who are already familiar with Java, though it is far from comprehensive (regular expressions, for example, are not covered at all). But, frankly, the online User's Guide is a better starting point. The actual recipes here are for things like XML and Web Services (topics that were hot when the book was written). It doesn't offer much of anything for developers of other types of applications.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great book, so long as you've a head for learning from examples and being able to deconstruct things pragmatically, you should find what you need in here without too much fluff or filler. It'd be great to see Groovy creeping back up the TIOBE list, and this is a very good book for a quick start if you are already familiar with Java.

[Mike Arvela · Rating 4 out of 5]

Groovy effectively combines the power of the Java Platform with the easiness of scripting languages. It basically extends the JDK, making it more simple and efficient at the same time.