Groovy
Why Groovy is so groovy or a beginners guide to hacking Groovy
Gregory Dickson's blog post about his first impressions with Groovy. Interesting thoughts about some methods in Groovy which facilitate iteration: .times{}, .eachLine{}, .eachWithIndex{}, .each{}.
Spock
Testing Your API Assertions with the Spock Framework
Grigor Avagyan shows how to test an API endpoint with Spock and explains every line involved in the specification. You will immediately see one big advantage of Spock; succinctness. Another key feature of Spock is the use of JUnit Runner.
Another big pro for Spock is that it uses the JUnit runner. This means that if you’ve already been running your tests with it, you can keep doing so, and you don’t need to learn how to use a new runner! In addition, this makes your tests compatible with all existing JUnit tools.
Grails
Grails 3 Angular 5 Profile CRUD Web Application Example
Grails Scaffolding plugin allows you to create a GSP CRUD application for your domain classes in seconds. However, Grails 3 applications often use other view technologies such as React, AngularJS, Angular etc. There are Grails Profiles which ease the development of view layers with those technologies in Grails 3 apps. Didin Jamaludin shows how to use the Grails Angular Profile to create CRUD example but Angular 5 based.
Leveraging Spock Spring Module in Grails Unit Tests
The Spring module enables integration with Spring TestContext Framework.
@musketyr explains how to use this Spock module in the context of a Grails 3 application.
The benefit of using Spock Spring module is that the mock will be automatically autowired to any service which requires it. The mocks can be also autowired back to the specification if AutowiredTest trait is implemented.
Libraries
BOM - Maven "Bill of Materials"
Have you ever wonder why you don't specify version numbers for Grails main dependencies in build.gradle? Grails uses a BOM.
Maven supports the concept of a “bill of materials” (BOM) dependency. You can import the spring-framework-bom in your dependencyManagement section to ensure that all spring dependencies (both direct and transitive) are at the same version. An added benefit of using the BOM is that you no longer need to specify the <version> attribute
Both Groovy 2.4.13 and Grails 3.3.2 were released last week. Both bring bug fixes and improvements. Both in time for G3 Summit. A while ago, I heard the phrase Grails and Groovy use conference-driven-development. There is some truth to that statement. Conferences provide deadlines and a great opportunity to discuss roadmaps and features.
Sergio del Amo