1 Introduction
Version: 8.0.0-SNAPSHOT
1 Introduction
Many modern web frameworks in the Java space are more complicated than needed and don’t embrace the Don’t Repeat Yourself (DRY) principles.
Dynamic frameworks like Rails and Django helped pave the way to a more modern way of thinking about web applications. Grails builds on these concepts and dramatically reduces the complexity of building web applications on the Java platform. What makes it different, however, is that it does so by building on already established Java technologies like Spring and Hibernate.
Grails is a full stack framework and attempts to solve as many pieces of the web development puzzle through the core technology and its associated plugins. Included out the box are things like:
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GORM - An easy-to-use Object Mapping library with support for SQL, MongoDB, Neo4j and more.
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View technologies for rendering HTML as well as JSON
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A controller layer built on Spring Boot
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A plugin system featuring hundreds of plugins.
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Flexible profiles to create Web applications, Rest applications, plugins and more.
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An interactive command line environment and build system based on Gradle
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An embedded Tomcat container which is configured for on the fly reloading
All of these are made easy to use through the power of the Groovy language and the extensive use of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs)
This documentation will take you through getting started with Grails and building web applications with the Grails framework.
In addition to this documentation, there are comprehensive guides that walk you through various aspects of the technology.
Finally, Grails is far more than just a web framework and is made up of various sub-projects. The following table summarizes some other key projects in the eco-system with links to documentation.
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
An Object Mapping implementation for SQL databases |
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An Object Mapping implementation for the MongoDB Document Database |
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An Object Mapping implementation for Neo4j Graph Database |
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A View technology for rendering HTML and other markup on the server |
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A View technology for rendering JSON on the server side |
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Asynchronous programming abstraction with support for RxJava, GPars and more |
1.1 What's new in Grails 7?
This section covers all the new features introduced in Grails 8
Overview
Grails 8 is a major release that includes new features, improvements, and dependency upgrades. This release focuses on enhancing the developer experience, improving performance, and ensuring compatibility with the latest technologies.
For detailed information on how to upgrade to Grails 8, including major dependency changes, please see the Upgrading from Grails 7 to Grails 8 section. Notable new features are included below.
GSP Tag Library Improvements
Grails 8 continues the move toward method-based TagLib handlers while preserving compatibility with existing closure-based tags.
Method-defined tags now bind named attributes more predictably, exclude inherited framework and Object methods from tag dispatch, and preserve real namespace property getters.
The Grails Gradle extension now defaults preserveParameterNames to true, so application Groovy compilation preserves method parameter names for features such as typed method TagLib arguments.
Tag library unit tests also clean up and rebuild TagLib metadata automatically between features.
Tests that use TagLibUnitTest no longer need to manage purgeTagLibMetaClass, and specs that mock additional tag libraries continue to work across feature methods.
1.1.1 Updated Dependencies
Grails 8.0.0-SNAPSHOT ships with the following foundational dependency versions:
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Groovy 4.0.32
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Spring Framework 7.0.8
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Spring Boot 4.1.0
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Gradle 9.5.1
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Spock 2.4-groovy-4.0