27/02/2024
Is Grails good and for what?
Grails is a web application framework based on the Groovy programming language that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It is designed to provide a high-productivity framework by leveraging convention over configuration, sensible defaults, and seamless integration with other Java technologies.
Grails is good to start web applications for the following reasons:
Scaffold: In minutes you are ready to show a prototype to the clients;
GORM: Dealing with databases is very easy;
Spock and GEB: Testing IS a happy activity;
MVC: Very easy to separate concerns in its layers;
The extensive list of plugins: Easy to integrate your application with almost everything (ElasticSearch, Databases, Redis, Camunda, and so on);
GSPs: Program the views in Groovy/HTML/CSS/Javascript;
Spring Boot: It is on top of Spring Boot, so it can use all the Spring Boot’s facilities.
Also, Grails is very good for starting backend-only applications, to be integrated with mobile, or other kinds of frontend applications for these reasons:
Easy endpoint definition: You can use URLMappings to define the APIs in the same place;
Content negotiation: Grails can do automatic content negotiation, serving XML, JSON, or any other kind of content;
Grails views: You can specify (in Groovy) how your JSONs and XMLs will be defined;
Spring Security Rest: You can cluster your application;
Microservices: It is very easy to define microservices with Grails;
So, Grails is good for teams with Java background that want to get more productive. Since Grails uses Groovy and runs on JVM, all the Java libraries are compatible with it, so Grails has the “Java Advantages”. Many people know Java, tons of libraries ready to use, JVM is everywhere, very mature ecosystem, etc.
Grails is a great choice for building enterprise web applications that require high productivity, performance, and scalability.