What is the reason to use g:textField in Grails if you're already familiar with standard HTML form tags?
If I understand correctly the following two markup alternatives are equivalent:
<input type="text" name="name" value="${params.name}" id="name" />
<g:textField name="name" value="${params.name}" />
Are there any circumstances under which using g:textField would add value? Am I missing something?
The textField tag is provided as a convenience (slightly shorter than writing the HTML input) and is there to provide a full set of form tags. Personally I prefer to write as much plain HTML as possible in my Grails views and only tend to use the tags that really offer a benefit such as the form tag. I have not found an instance where using textField would have added any value outside of requiring a few less characters to type.
<g:textField /> is not shorter as plain text field tag, except id attribute will be attached automatically.
However, I recommend you to use customized tags associating the bean values with input fields. That shortens the code a lot. For more information you can read http://www.jtict.com/blog/shorter-grails-textfield/ Also you can find useful stuff in Form Helper Plugin