Hello,
I'm interested in having a Groovy view layer in Grails.
Currently, only JSP is supported as a view technology, hence, you
cannot mix any Groovy code in the view -- though I know there
shouldn't be much code in the view obviously, but that's another
debate.
There are two projects I'd like to point you at:
1) Rialto
A new project for RIA's been released by some friends I know, and I
must admit it's looking particularly good. Rialto is a kind JavaScript
widget library or framework for Rich Internet Applications. You can
create applications for Java, and even potentially for .Net or PHP!
Currently, the Java support is done through the use of JSP tags. So
you just need to put some tags in your JSPs, and tada, you've got some
cute looking UI components.
The project is now officially live and public, but unfortunately, we
can't yet download it or try it, and it certainly lacks some
documentation, and so on. But it's certainly very very promising, and
it could help us for our scaffolding views, or even just our widget
needs.
2) GvTags
Now there's another project I'd like to talk about, that's GvTags. A
Groovy fan is contributing a particular template engine and tag
library which are Groovy-powered. It migh also be interesting as a
potential view technology for Grails, especially if it allows us to
combine both Groovy templates and JSP tag libraries.
We should try to spend some time to investigate those solutions and
see if we could use that in Groovy to speed-up our development and get
more Groovy on the final layer as well. Imagine using GvTags's
template engine with some Groovy code and insert Rialto JSP tags for
our rich components?
Wwooooooooo.... :-)
PS: Though Rialto is not downloadable yet, I can eventually get a beta
if ever we want to test it with Grails, since I know the guys behind
that project -- they are French by the way :-)
--
Guillaume Laforge
http://glaforge.free.fr/blog/groovy