Ratpack for Groovy browser apps

[Jim (James Paul) White]

Howdy Ken!

I think the message of your book is spot on. My pitch line for Groovy is I tell folks that it is the most productive language a person who knows Java can use. I also think it has great potential for teaching programming and naturally I used it for the solutions I showed students in the class I just finished teaching on Computational Linguistics Fundamentals (http://courses.washington.edu/ling473/).

A Groovy toolkit I think Java programmers can benefit from is Ratpack (http://www.ratpack-framework.org). I've used it (both the original version and the new rewrite) to do all the quickie UIs I need for exploring the data sets and output from programs I develop. While Grails is great, a lightweight app using MarkupBuilder-based pages and forms is all I usually need (since I rarely work with relational databases). Like using Spock for testing and Gradle for building, using Ratpack is a highly productive fluent(ish) way to make Java code do UI stuff.

Jim

[Kenneth A. Kousen]

Ratpack http://www.ratpack-framework.org/ is definitely a fun project, and now that Luke Daley is managing it the improvements keep coming. I also agree on how easy it is to use MarkupBuilder, as in:

import groovy.xml.MarkupBuilder

def builder = new MarkupBuilder()
builder.superheros {
  hero {
    alias 'Mr. Incredible'
    name 'Robert Parr'
  }
  hero {
    alias 'ElastiGirl'
    name 'Helen Parr'
  }
}

That produces XML, and there's a corresponding JsonBuilder if you need JSON instead. I also like the corresponding parsers and "slurpers".

I'm happy to hear about your Computational Linguistics class and hope you had a lot of fun with it.

[Burk Hufnagel]

Jim (James Paul) White wrote:A Groovy toolkit I think Java programmers can benefit from is Ratpack (http://www.ratpack-framework.org).

Jim,
Ratpack looks very interesting - thanks for posting about it! I like Groovy and want to use it more often, and Ratpack looks like it will fill a hole for me.

Thank you,
Burk