Is there a good reference for how Grails was architected with Spring?

Question

I have come to Grails without first being a Spring developer. This is great when things work but leaves me lost when things don't work as I expect, or I wish to extend things in ways unanticipated by the existing Grails documentation and reference books.

I would also like to learn more about Spring best practices and with a reference I wonder if Grails would make a good case study.

Can anyone recommend some good resources for learning how Grails was built (as opposed to how to build something with Grails)?

Answer 1

A simple overview of the controller/helper mechanism can be found here:

http://www.grails.org/Developer+-+Spring+MVC+Integration

Grails just builds on top of a SpringMVC dispatcher servlet for bootstrapping then provides a single controller (SimpleGrailsController) for delegating requests to a helper (SimpleGrailsControllerHelper ). That should get you started, it also makes use of Spring Webflow as well. Download the source code and take a look at that for more info:

http://www.grails.org/Download

or browse their Fisheye repo:

http://svn.grails.codehaus.org/browse/grails/trunk/

You should probably get an understanding for SpringMVC (and later Spring Webflow), try looking for a basic tutorial, e.g.:

http://mhimu.wordpress.com/2007/11/27/spring-mvc-tutorial/

Answer 2

I have the same question, I intend to read Spring Framework Reference then try to figure it out!