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Groovy is Seamed

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With the new Groovy 1.1 beta out and its support for Java 5 annotations, wouldn't it be great to be able to write Seam applications in Groovy? Indeed it is great and you can do that with JBoss Seam (in CVS HEAD at the time of writing).

What is supported, how does it work?

You can write any entity and any action in Groovy. By simply annotating your Groovy classes with Seam annotations, they become Seam components. 

@Scope(ScopeType.SESSION)
@Name("bookingList")
class BookingListAction implements Serializable
{
    @In EntityManager em
    @In User user
    @DataModel List<Booking> bookings
    @DataModelSelection Booking booking
    @Logger Log log

    @Factory public void getBookings()
    {
        bookings = em.createQuery('''
                select b from Booking b
                where b.user.username = :username
                order by b.checkinDate''')
            .setParameter("username", user.username)
            .getResultList()
    }
    
    public void cancel()
    {
        log.info("Cancel booking: #{bookingList.booking.id} for #{user.username}")
        Booking cancelled = em.find(Booking.class, booking.id)
        if (cancelled != null) em.remove( cancelled )
        getBookings()
        FacesMessages.instance().add("Booking cancelled for confirmation number #{bookingList.booking.id}", new Object[0])
    }
}

En passant, you can use Groovy to write your Entities, Hibernate support them out of the box. No constraint, no limitation, no XML ;-) 

@Entity
@Name("hotel")
class Hotel implements Serializable
{
    @Id @GeneratedValue
    Long id

    @Length(max=50) @NotNull
    String name

    @Length(max=100) @NotNull
    String address

    @Length(max=40) @NotNull
    String city

    @Length(min=2, max=10) @NotNull
    String state

    @Length(min=4, max=6) @NotNull
    String zip

    @Length(min=2, max=40) @NotNull
    String country

    @Column(precision=6, scale=2)
    BigDecimal price

    @Override
    String toString()
    {
        return "Hotel(${name},${address},${city},${zip})"
    }
}

Groovy files are compiled by the groovyc compiler in your build system ; they then appear like regular classes to the container.

Push it even Groovier

Let's go further, when Seam is in development mode, the .groovy files can be deployed as is with no groovyc build time compilation involved. Like hot redeployable Java Seam components, deploy (and I mean copy) your .groovy files in your WEB-INF/dev directory.

No need to restart the application (not even speaking of the container): the next hit will reload the Groovy classes transparently providing a pretty smooth development environment. Fast development time, fast deployment time.

This mode is currently limited to Seam JavaBean components: EJB 3.0 Session Beans and Entities do not (yet) support hot redeployment. We are considering enhancing the JBoss EJB 3 container to get rid of this limitation (you will still hit this limitation in other containers though).

How can I set that up?

By using seam-gen, you can generate a ready to use development environment supporting Groovy in a minute. 

./seam setup
# use project type WAR, the rest is at your will

./seam new-project
# that's it

And you are done, feel free to write .groovy code in either src/model or src/action Remember in Seam development mode, you don't have to restart the application when you change code in src/action (whether it be Groovy or Java). A simple ./seam explode (to copy the Groovy files) will do the trick.

For a complete working Groovy project, have a look at the groovybooking project in JBoss Seam examples (CVS HEAD at the time of writing).

This feature (already available in CVS HEAD) is expected for the next major JBoss Seam release: we still have some more surprises in our bag :-)

NB: if you are interested in Groovy and are in San Francisco tonight, don't miss the G2One , I will be there if you have any question.

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