Grails is an Open Source, full stack, web application framework that uses the Groovy programming language (which is in turn based on the Java virtual machine (JVM) and Java). The framework is oriented around high-productivity application development by following the "coding by convention", and uses common Java technologies such as Hibernate and Spring.
Grails is a coding-by-convention framework that leverages well-established java frameworks (spring, hibernate, sitemesh) to allow programmers to quickly develop web applications.
It touts features such as a zero-XML configuration and a typical web-application mvc architecture.
Grails applications are mainly written in groovy, a dynamic language with strong interoperability with Java and features similar to other languages ruby, python, and smalltalk
Along with its core, Grails has a plugin architecture and library that can provide developers with common web application features like security and dynamic UI tools.
Version History:
- Grails 0.3 - November 2006
- Grails 0.4 - January 2007
- Grails 0.5 - May 2007
- Grails 0.6 - August 2007
- Grails 1.0 - February 2008
- SpringSource acquires G2One, the inventors of Grails in November 2008
- Grails 1.1 - March 2009
- VMWare acquires SpringSource in August 2009
- Grails 1.2 - December 2009
- Grails 1.3 - May 2010
- Grails 2.0 - December 2011
- Grails 2.1 - July 2012
- Grails 2.2 - December 2012
- Grails 2.3 - September 2013 (released in SpringOne2GX 2013)
- Grails 2.4 - May 2014 (ships with Groovy 2.3.0 and Spring 4)
- Grails 2.5 - March 2015 (ships with Groovy 2.4.3 and Spring 4.1.*)
- Grails 3.0 - March 2015
- Grails 3.1 - January 2016
- Grails 3.2 - September 2016
- Grails 3.3 - July 2017
- Grails 4.0 - July 2019
Latest stable version
- Grails 4.0.0 - 11 July 2019
Related tags:
- gorm - Grails object relational mapping implementation, backed by hibernate
- gsp - Groovy Server Pages, the Grails template mechanism
- groovy - The programming language Grails uses
Online resources:
- Grails Home
- Grails 2.x Plugin Library
- Grails 3.x Plugin Library
- Grails Reference Documentation
- Wikipedia on Grails
- Groovy Home
- Groovy - Getting Started Guide
- Getting Started with Grails - free ebook
- Sample Applications - some simple examples
- Grails Dev Discussion - Grails developers discussions
#grailson chat.freenode.org - Active & helpful Grails IRC channel.- Grails Slack Channel
- Groovy blogs - collection of Groovy and Grails related blogs.
- Source Code: GitHub (Issue Tracker)
