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To create a web application on Google's AppEngine I was looking for a framework. During my research I came across Groovy and Grails. I'm a Java kind of guy so I prefer something Java-like above Python frameworks (like Django). So I scraped together some information and decided that Groovy and Grails are both to my liking.

While trying to dig deeper into Grails in combination with AppEngine I found that the Grails GAE Plugin hasn't been updaten in two years and on the website it says it "works with the latest Grails 1.3 RC2 release and above"[3]. The newest version of Grails (as of today) is 2.1.1[4]. So I'm wondering if the plugin is still maintained. Of course, the plugin could be so good, that it doesn't need maintenance - but in my experience this really looks like the plugin is dead.

So what I would like to know if there are people out there currently working with (or have recently worked with) a recent version of Grails on AppEngine and whether it is a pain in the... fingertip or a solid framework.

If you believe that Grails on App-Engine is dead I would really like to hear about alternatives, so please let me know if you used a framework on AppEngine, what you used and how the experience was.

To be a bit more precise on my requirements; a framework I would want to use should

  • be Java-like or Java
  • run on Google AppEngine
  • have some degree of scaffolding mechanism (I'm really lazy when it comes to writing code that could easily be able to generate)
  • take away the pain of database handling with SQL by providing a solid NoSQL persistence layer

Before you link any other Stackoverflow posts in your answers, please be aware that I have done my research on stackoverflow before asking this, sadly I found no up-to-date information - of course I could have overlooked something, but please don't link articles older than a year, it doesn't help here.

Sorry for the long text, shorten if you like and deem it necessary.

Thank you in advance for your helpful answers.

konqi
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5 Answers5

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I tried out Grails on App Engine using the plugin mentioned above. I wrote a series of blog postings about it. I don't think the Grails App Engine plugin is actively maintained anymore.

I personally switched to Gaelyk which is a lightweight web toolkit for App Engine written in Groovy. It should fulfill all your requirements.

Benjamin Muschko
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    I will definetly take a look at Gaelyk... I recall that the springsource guy on Google I/O in 2009 also said something about it. – konqi Sep 14 '12 at 21:48
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    Okay so i took a look at Gaelyk and although that looks more alive han the GAE Plugin for Grails it doesn't seem to get as much attention as Grails (without AppEngine). – konqi Sep 16 '12 at 21:45
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    Grails is not a good choice for GAE. AppEngine does not like slow startup times, that's why Gaelyk is a better choice. – Rick Mangi Sep 17 '12 at 01:39
  • You can optimize this behavior by specifying the [number of idle instances (paid feature)](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/adminconsole/performancesettings#Setting_the_Number_of_Idle_Instances) and the [warmup requests](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/config/appconfig#Warmup_Requests). – Benjamin Muschko Sep 19 '12 at 00:01
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    I'm accepting your answer as the best answer. I will however award Matt with the bountry as he made the effort to post links to prove that the GAE Grails Plugin is dead. Thank you for your help! – konqi Sep 24 '12 at 06:44
  • So i did take a closer look at Gaelyk. But it looks like it's as dead as the Grails Plugin. There are 7 Gaelyk Plugins since 2009, none of which is out of beta and looks like it's still maintained. – konqi Sep 26 '12 at 08:26
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The App Engine plugin for Grails has not been updated for 2.X. The announcement from Graem Rocher can be found here

Grails currently throws a error when you attempt to run-app against 2.1.1. An issue concerning this has been raised here

ronalchn
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Matt Brinkman
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    Thank you for clarifying this. So Grails GAE plugin is officially dead or at least no more supported by the Grails team. – konqi Sep 17 '12 at 07:04
  • Sounds like they want someone to help update it for Grails 2.x and would be happy to have it though... – kenyee May 21 '13 at 16:23
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I tried Grails with Google App Engine long time ago. As in previous answers was stated - there is no current version of the plugin. However if this is an option for you to consider, try CloudFoundry service. It's fully compatible with Grails.

topr
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    Indeed it is, however CloudFoundry.com is in beta-state and whilst it is free for now, it will become a paid service and no information about the pricing model is given. Both of these arguments are inacceptable for a production environment. It may or may not become an alternative. Anyways: Thank you for contributing. I did take a look at CloudFoundry after reading your answer. Sadly I cannot consider it as an alternative. – konqi Sep 17 '12 at 12:21
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    You have pointed correct things. But take gmail as an example. It had been at beta stage for ages and even then was beating most of other www mail boxes. I'm not trying to convince you as I'm not heavy user of CloudFoundry myself, but even with Grails 1.3.x I had to leave behind lot of Grails goodies to make application compatible with Google App Engine. Lack of pricing plan is for sure a downside, but I believe that CF will leave some 'starter' free service and will charge with scaling up. However, as always, any uncertainty isn't welcome for a project. – topr Sep 17 '12 at 15:47
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    Thank you very much for your additional input. I aggree with all of the above. CF is probably a good service and will continue to be so after it's out of the beta. However, i'm unwilling to take the risks of these uncertainties. Also the project will rely on some Google Services, so i think it's a good idea to use AppEngine... or let's say i still think it is, i'm beginning to doubt it... – konqi Sep 18 '12 at 06:43
  • Which of the Google services are planning to use? Are they specific to App Engine? – Benjamin Muschko Sep 19 '12 at 12:40
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    Docs / Spreadsheets, Some data storage, Possibly Drive and Gmail and Calendars. All of which i can probably access from outside AppEngine (as i have done before). I want the app to be deeply integrated into Google Apps so i guess it makes sense to use AppEngine. – konqi Sep 20 '12 at 06:50
  • you can also use cloudbees insted of couldfoundry. They already have a pricing model and dev@cloud is free for small projects... – rdmueller Sep 21 '12 at 15:18
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Update 2017 : There is a new tutorial for Grails 3.2.9

http://guides.grails.org/grails-google-cloud/guide/index.html

Arunabh Das
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  • The tutorial explains how to set up grails up on appengine flexible environment. Flexible environment didn't exist at the time of my original question. If it had I would've excluded flexible environment from the question. Putting grails in a docker container doesn't sound like a big challenge. – konqi May 27 '17 at 12:32
  • Fair enough. Did you have any success with running grails in standard environment on GAE? I didn't but would love to exchange notes if you did. – Arunabh Das May 27 '17 at 20:58
  • Sadly no, but since then my understanding of Grails and spring boot has grown a bit. I wouldn't attempt this in the standard environment today since Grails has a few dependencies that make make the spin up of instances take a lot of time. I have used Grails in non-gae projects but i don't believe it's the right tool on gae. In the flexible environment however it should be fine. – konqi May 28 '17 at 08:37
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Consider the Play Framework a light weight framework for Web Applications.

Martin Spamer
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  • Play Framework doesn't play nice with (or support) Google App Engine either. One of the requirement of GAE Java Runtime is it has to be a servlet. Play is not for Java Servlet. – Handol Park Jul 26 '15 at 05:19