Grails domain object modeling with Groovy enums

I had a need to use enumerations within my object model in my Grails app today. I wrote up a Google Sites page about my solution. I am using Grails 1.1 for this solution.

Having another look at Grails

It's been a while since I've really worked with Grails. I used it in 2007 for about 7 months, but we really didn't use it in a typical fashion, as the front end was done in Adobe Flex. 2007 was also fairly early in the life of Grails; I remember using version 0.5.6 when I started at the client.

I'm now building a sample application in Grails 1.0.4 and doing all the AJAX stuff in jQuery. I'm really impressed with Grails now! It's so much more productive than I remember it. Also, I have a couple of books that have been absolutely essential to getting me going with Grails again: The Definitive Guide to Grails, Second Edition and Groovy and Grails Recipes. I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 8.1 for all my development and its Groovy and Grails support is much better than I remember it. JetBrains really makes it easy to give them money every year for a personal license upgrade for IntelliJ.

I haven't been super pleased with the Grails documentation on the Grails site and hopefully SpringSource has a positive effect on this issue in the near future. My development has been plowing ahead very nicely. I really like that I don't have to restart the application server for every little change. That saves a ton of time and has a positive effect on your ability to stay focused on job at hand. Very impressed with Grails this time around.

The amazing effect of Apple's iPhone platform and the App Store

Michael Tyson has a very relevant post about the amazing effect that Apple's App Store has been having on creative individuals who are driven enough to build applications for the iPhone platform. I'm around quite a few people who have iPhones. It's amazing to see and hear their enthusiasm for this great platform. Michael's post is a great testament that software development can be very rewarding. Great encouragement for those interested in looking at Objective-C and Cocoa Touch.

IntelliJ's support for @AspectJ pointcuts in Spring 2.x AOP

I came across a really nice feature in IntelliJ IDEA 8.1 (it may be in earlier versions, but I'm using 8.1). I've been doing some AOP work within Spring Framework 2.5.6, using the excellent @AspectJ pointcut annotations. Once you have everything configured in your Spring application context, IntelliJ will start to annotate where pointcuts are being applied within your code. The annotation/emblem shows up in the left hand gutter of the editor window, right next to the line numbers. Clicking on the emblem will cause a popup listing of all the advices that are applied at that particular join point. You can even navigate directly to the advice from the popup. Very cool. Eclipse has something similar with their AspectJ development tools (AJDT), but this is the first time I've seen something like this in IntelliJ, my preferred Java editor.