Grails on GlassFish v3 - Embedded or Stand-alone

Grails 1.0.3 was released a few weeks ago. This blog uses the instructions originally posted here and shows how to deploy a simple Grails application on GlassFish.

1. Download Grails 1.0.3 and unzip.
2. Download the latest *-overlay.zip from here and unzip on your Grails installation as shown:
   
   

   ~/tools/grails-1.0.3 >unzip ~/Downloads/grails-gfv3-1.1-overlay.zip Archive:  /Users/arungupta/Downloads/grails-gfv3-1.1-overlay.zip    creating: lib/glassfish-v3/   inflating: lib/glassfish-v3/gf-embedded-api-1.0-alpha-4.jar    inflating: lib/glassfish-v3/web-all-10.0-build-20080430.jar    inflating: lib/grails-gfv3-1.1.jar    inflating: scripts/RunAppGf.groovy

3. Create a sample app as explained in Getting Started With Grails on GlassFish.
4. Run the app using embedded GlassFish as:
   
   

   ~/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld >grails run-app-gf Welcome to Grails 1.0.3 - http://grails.org/ Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0 Grails home is set to: /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3 Base Directory: /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld Note: No plugin scripts found Running script /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/scripts/RunAppGf.groovy Environment set to development Starting GlassFish embedded server...     [copy] Copying 1 file to /Users/arungupta/.grails/1.0.3/projects/helloworld Running Grails application.. Application name : helloworld Web App Root :/Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld/web-app web.xml:/Users/arungupta/.grails/1.0.3/projects/helloworld/resources/web.xml Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: HK2 initialized in 620 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.naming.impl.ServicesHookup@2aef3499 Init done in 646 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.Globals@3710f32d Init done in 648 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.SystemTasks@632dc291 Init done in 655 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.HouseKeeper@64c3d9c0 Init done in 658 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:38 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.CmdLineParamProcessor@3a151d3b Init done in 664 ms JMXMP connector server URL = service:jmx:jmxmp://localhost:8888 Jul 28, 2008 2:25:39 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.GrizzlyProxy start INFO: Listening on port 8080 Jul 28, 2008 2:25:39 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.GrizzlyService@2ddd5c89 startup done in 1059 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:39 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.services.impl.ApplicationLoaderService postConstruct INFO: loader service postConstruct started at 1217280339578 Jul 28, 2008 2:25:39 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: Application Loader startup done in 1353 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:39 PM com.sun.enterprise.v3.server.AppServerStartup run INFO: Glassfish v3 started in 1355 ms Jul 28, 2008 2:25:41 PM org.apache.catalina.loader.WebappLoader setClassPath INFO: Unknown loader org.glassfish.grails.MaskingClassLoader@5cbde5b4 class org.glassfish.grails.MaskingClassLoader Jul 28, 2008 2:25:41 PM com.sun.enterprise.web.WebModuleContextConfig authenticatorConfig SEVERE: webModuleContextConfig.missingRealm [0] spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext Refreshing org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext@4c721585: display name [org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext@4c721585]; startup date [Mon Jul 28 14:25:44 PDT 2008]; parent: org.springframework.web.context.support.XmlWebApplicationContext@631a8160 [0] spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext Bean factory for application context [org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsWebApplicationContext@4c721585]: org.springframework.beans.factory.support.DefaultListableBeanFactory@3e11bc1d Server running. Browse to http://localhost:8080/helloworld


Browsing to "http://localhost:8080/helloworld" shows:



5. Create a controller
   
   

   ~/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld >grails create-controller home Welcome to Grails 1.0.3 - http://grails.org/ Licensed under Apache Standard License 2.0 Grails home is set to: /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3 Base Directory: /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld Note: No plugin scripts found Running script /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/scripts/CreateController.groovy Environment set to development      [copy] Copying 1 file to /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld/grails-app/controllers Created Controller for Home     [mkdir] Created dir: /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld/grails-app/views/home      [copy] Copying 1 file to /Users/arungupta/tools/grails-1.0.3/samples/helloworld/test/integration Created ControllerTests for Home

6. Edit the generated controller in "grails-app/controllers/HomeController.groovy" such that it looks like:
   
   

   class HomeController {     def index = {         render "Grails using embedded GlassFish!"     } }

7. Refresh the web page in the browser and it looks like:
   
   
   
   and clicking on "HomeController" shows the output as:
   
   

More details about GlassFish embedding in Grails are available here.

This application can also be deployed on stand-alone GlassFish v3 Technology Preview 2 as explained here. This blog explains how to configure JNDI resources for a Grails application and I plan to explore that in upcoming days.

Once the Servlet engine in Grails is made configurable then GlassFish can be used as the target deployment platform from "run-app" script.

NetBeans 6.5 M1 provide extensive support on Grails application development - details are available here.

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