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.
Scott Davis is the Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com. He isalso an author and independent consultant. He is passionateabout open source solutions and agile development. He hasworked on a variety of Java platforms, from JEE to JSE to JME(sometimes all on the same project).He is the co-author of JBoss At Work (O'Reilly), and author ofGoogle Maps API (Pragmatic Bookshelf) and GIS for WebDevelopers: Adding Where to Your Web Applications(Pragmatic Bookshelf).
Well organized with useful examples. Though it took a while for me to come up with the right project for Groovy, when I needed to write a logfile parser that generated an excel workbook, I reached for groovy recipes and I had a great program running in just a day or so.
5/23/2008
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Great book for getting into Groovy
By Paul Wiedel
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Groovy Recipes:
Groovy Recipes is an excellent introductory book into Groovy programming.
The first few chapters give clear instructions for learning how to use Groovy. The remaining chapters give clear instructions for using some of Groovy's cool features: using Groovy with Java, Grails programming, metaprogramming, working with XML, File manipulation, and web services).
Much akin to the fun and energetic manner that Davis speaks in his presentations he writes Groovy Recipes.
If you haven't heard him speak(and even if you have), do a quick Google Video search for Scott Davis Groovy and you'll find a presentation or two of his. I recommend them.
One technique that I found especially useful is how Davis compared performing a simple task in the Java world, and then showed how it could be done in the Groovy world. Of course, it's easier in the groovy world for all the examples. It's nice to see areas where we can take advantage of Groovy's strengths.
Groovy Recipes has enough content to sit on an experienced Groovy developer's book shelf, but the more novice Groovy people will find more value in Groovy Recipes.
4/28/2008
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
5.0
Great reference book
By Anonymous
from Undisclosed
Comments about oreilly Groovy Recipes:
For me, the best part of the whole book was Chapter 3: "New to Groovy". The "New to Groovy" chapter essential lists out all the Groovy answers to "why Java can be painful and how Groovy soothes". I liked the very short "here's how you do X in Groovy" format - and any Java developer immediately can see the benefits to adding Groovy to their development arsenal.
However, the part of the book that helped (more accurately, is helping) me get Groovy integrated into my projects at work is the information about "Java and Groovy Integration". The projects build on existing internal and external Java APIs; so the information here was very helpful in proving Groovy will not interfere with the current investment in Java.
This is definately put together as a reference book; flipping through the chapters and reading what looks interesting hasn't disappointed me yet.
