The purpose of this assignment is to introduce you to Grails and includes:

Grails 3 Framework including Domain, Controller and Views
IntelliJ integrated development environment (IDE)
H2 Database and dbconsole

You are to complete this programming assignment individually. In this assignment you will build a simple web app for a book store’s administrative backend, meaning administrators will be able to add books and authors to the book store’s database.

Step 1: Watch Introduction to Grails Videos

Point your web browser to and watch

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXHxo43hn34 – Getting Started with Grails Part 1, MVC including Domain and scaffolding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNFksvLxZNU – Getting Started with Grails Part 2 – Custom UI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL4yVtNU31E – Getting Started with Grails Part 3, Custom G-Tags.

Watch the part 1 and part 2 videos. Later, you can watch the part 3 video. Although the video uses Grails 2 and the GGTS IDE, it is still a good introduction to developing a web app using Grails. All the code introduced in the video will still run with Grails 3.

If you need more resources consult the Grails User Documentation

http://grails.org/doc/latest/

In particular, you will want to study chapter 7 about GORM to learn more about how to make and use Grails models

http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/GORM.html

For more details about Grails views and controllers, you will want to study chapter 8 about the web layer

http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/theWebLayer.html

Also on the right hand side of all the documentation web pages is the Quick Reference, but you need to have a wide browser window to view the links in the quick reference.

The documentation is a good reference but is very technical, so you will probably find it hard to understand when you first begin programming. There are good books that give easy explanation of grails, but all the books are about Grails 2.

https://grails.org/Books

Step 2: Install IntelliJ IDEA and Grails on your home machine

The only Integrated Development Environments (IDE) that runs Grails 3 is IntelliJ IDEA. Although it is possible to develop with Grails 3 without an IDE, I recommend that your team use the IntelliJ IDEA. Then, your team and instructors can help you if there are IDE challenges.

Note that GGTS IDE (Groovy and Grails Tool Suite IDE) does not work with Grails 3, so you cannot use GGTS IDE.

Below is a detail instruction for IntelliJ IDEA installation.The instructions are specific to a Windows machine. If you are using Mac or Linux it might differ some.

1. Download the latest version of Grails 3 to your home machine

You can find the latest version of Grails 3:

https://grails.org/download.html

There are two options for installing Grails. You can download a zip of the latest version of Grails 3 using the red “download” button on the upper right of the page or you can install SDKMAN on your machine and use SDKMAN to install different versions Grails.

SDKMAN is a command line tool for controlling the version of many Grooy and Java development software.

http://sdkman.io/

It is useful if you are developing apps using different versions of Grails, but it is overkill for the purposes of this course. if you do use SDKMAN, note that it will make a “.sdkman” directory in the root of your user directory. In the .sdkman directory, there is a “candidate” directory. The candidate directory will contain the different software and versions of the software.

I assume that you download the latest Grails 3 version using the upper right red “download” button. That will download a zip file to your browser’s default download directory. You should move the zip file to the directory of your choice. I put my Grails download into

C:/grails/GrailsVersions/

After moving the download, you should unzip the Grails download. I use 7-Zip

http://www.7-zip.org/

It will unzip Grails into

C:/grails/GrailsVersions/grails-3.1.5/

Notes:

You need to remember where you put Grails. You will need to specify it when you create your project.
While working with a team, your team will need to use the same version of Grails.

2. Installing IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate

The Grails Developer Team now recommends using IntelliJ for your development environment. IntelliJ comes in two favors: Community and Ultimate. The community version is free for anyone and can run Grails 3, but it does not have many of the convenient features that the ultimate version has. Jet Brains ofters an one year academic licences for the ultimate version, and our IT has installed the ultimate version in the school lab machines. I assume that you want to download and install the ultimate version on your home machine

i. Apply for JetBrains student License

Apply for a student licence at

https://www.jetbrains.com/student/

Clicking the “Apply Now” button in the middle of the page will take you to this form

https://www.jetbrains.com/shop/eform/students

Use the “University email address” tab to apply. Be sure to use your MTU email address. Click the “Apply for Free Products” button at the bottom of the page.

You should get an email from Jet Brains. The email will be from “sales.us@jetbrains.com”, and there should be a link in the email to activate your JetBrains account.

ii. Download and Install IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate

IntelliJ IDEA download website is at

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/

Clicking the “Download” button in the middle of the page, takes you to the “chooseYourEdition” section of the page:

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/#chooseYourEdition

Download the “Ultimate” version. For windows this will download an installer. Run the installer as administrator. Follow the wizard, you can use all the default options.

Jet Brain has good documentation for IntelliJ IDEA. You can find installation instructions at:

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/installing-and-launching.html

iii. Read “Getting Started with Grails 3” using IntelliJ IDEA

IntelliJ IDEA is a little different then the Eclipse IDE, so you should read a little about IntelliJ IDEA:

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/getting-started-with-grails-3.html

If you are accustomed to Eclipse or Netbeans IDEs then you should be interested in the link at the bottom of the page:

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/installing-and-launching.html#d1799863e445

In particular for Eclipse users, read

https://www.jetbrains.com/help/idea/2016.1/eclipse.html

Read at least the first couple sections of this page. Note that InelliJ IDEA does not have “workspaces” like Eclipse. This implies that ItelliJ IDEA will work with only one ‘project’ at a time. There are also no “perspectives” in IntelliJ IDEA, implying everything you need is in a single view. The left panel shows the project file directories much like Eclipse. Also the right panel is the editor view just as in Eclipse. Different from Eclipse, IntelliJ has a bottom panel. This may be hidden, but you can open different views using the buttons along the bottom of IntelliJ IDEA. The relavent view at the bottom occurs when you run you Grails app within IntelliJ IDEA. Running the Grails app will open a “Run” view that allows you stop and start your app and also clear and print the terminal output.

iv. Locate Java JDK on your home machine

Grails 3 and IntelliJ IDEA will need JDK 1.7 or higher. You probably already have JDK on your machine, but if you do not you will want to get and install Java JDK on your machine.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html

Download and install the JDK, not the JRE. You also do not need NetBeans bundled with the JDK.

If you already have JDK or after installing a new JDK, you need to locate the JDK on your machine. On my windows machine, the JDK are located in

C:/Program Files/Java/

Remember this location, you will need it when you make your project in IntelliJ IDEA.

Step 3: Make the Grails project using IntelliJ IDEA

1. Make “Workspace” and Project Directories

Although IntelliJ IDEA does not have “workspace,” I like to make a “workspace” directory in order to clearly indicate the location of my code and to keep it separate from other files, such as programming notes.

In a directory of your choosing, make the directories

C: .../cs4760progassign-Workspace/cs4760progassign/

Note that the directory “cs4760progassign” is a sub-directory of the “cs4760progassgin-Workspace” directory. From experience, I have learned that the IntelliJ IDEA will automatically name the project and package of the app by the name of the directory where the project is created. So it is easier to properly name the project directory within the workspace directory.

2. Use the wizard to make the Grails project

Run IntelliJ IDEA and point it to the “cs4760progassign-Workspace/cs4760progassign/” directory. If IntelliJ IDEA opens in the wrong directory do not worry. Within IntelliJ IDEA select “File” from the top menu. Then select “New Project …” and the wizard should open. In the left hand panel of the wizard, select “Grails”.

i. Specify JDK Location in the Wizard

In the right panel, enter the “Project JDK” by clicking the “New…” button. A file browser opens. Navigate to the location of you JDK and click the “OK” button at the bottom. Note that you do not want to use the JRE that ships with IntelliJ IDEA.

ii. Specify Grails SDK Home

Also in the right panel, enter the location of your Grails 3 by clicking the “…” button. Another file browser opens. Navigate to where you unzipped your Grails 3 and click the “OK” button at the bottom of the file browser.

Make sure that in the “Create” field that the “create-app” is clicked. No options are needed. Click the “Next” button at the bottom of the wizard window.

iii. Specify the Project Location

In the next window, you specify the “Project location” by clicking the “…” button. Yet another file browser opens. Navigate to your workspace and project directory, “cs4760progassign-Workspace/cs4760progassign/”. Click the “OK” button at the bottom of the file browser. Note that the “Project name” is automatically filled in the text field.

iv. Create the Project and the Basic App

Click the “Finish” button at the bottom in the Wizard. A notice appears asking if you want to open the new project in “This Window” or in a “New Window.” Click the blue “This Window” button.

IntelliJ IDEA will move to the new project directory, and IntelliJ IDEA begins building the basic Grail app directory structure and files within the project directory. This will take some time. Be sure that you let IntelliJ build the complete directory and files. You can watch the build in the “Grails Console” at the bottom of IntelliJ IDEA. In Windows, a “Windows Security Alert” window will pop up asking if you should allow Java access. Grant Java access by clicking the “Allow access” button.

v. Study the Project Directories

After Grails has finished creating the new app, the “Project” view shows the project directories files:

.idea/
build/
gradle/
grails-app/ <- This is the main directory that you will be coding
- assets/ <- asset-pipeline plugin uses this directory. You will add css and JS files.
  - images/
  - javascript
  - stylesheet/
- conf/
  - spring/
  - application.yml <- Configuration file for the running app
  - logback.groovy
- controllers/ <- Controllers talk to domains and views
  - cs4760progassign/
    - UrlMappings.groovy <- configure the url mapping for the app
- domain/ <- domain models for interfacing with the data store
- i18n/
  - Resource Bundle ‘messages”
    - messages.property <- English language files
    - other language files
- init/
  - cs4760progassign/
    - Bootstrap.groovy <- groovy code for initializing the app
- services/ <- for groovy and Java code that run outside the controllers
- taglib/ <- for app specific “g-tags”
- views/ <- for gsp files, like html files.
  - Layouts/ <- gsp files for structuring views
    - main.gsp
  - error.gsp
  - index.gsp <- default home view
  - notFound.gsp
out/ <- war files will be made here
src/
build.gradle <- configuration file for building the app
cs4760progassign.ipr <- can click this file in file explorer to open IntelliJ IDEA in the project
cs4760progassign.iws
gradle.properties
gradlew
gradlew.bat
settings.gradle

I have marked a few important directories and files. For the most part you will do most of your coding in the grails-app/ directory. You will make domain model in the domain/ directory to interface with the data store (database). You will generate controller files to act as the intermediary between the domain classes and the views. Also you will make views, gsp (like html) files in the views/ directory. You will want to know the directory structure below well:

grails-app/
- assets/
- conf/
  - application.yml
- controllers/
  - UrlMappings.groovy
- domain/
- i18n/
- intit/
  - Bootstrap.groovy
- views/
  - layout/
    - main.gsp
  - index.gsp

There are a few configuration files you will use:

application.yml in grails-app/conf/ – for configuring the running app including the data source
Bootstrap.groovy in grails-app/init/ – for setting initial values for the running app
UrlMapping.groovy in grails-app/controller – for configuring the URL
build.gradle in the project root directory – for specifying plugins and building the app

vi. Run the app

The code generated by IntelliJ IDEA will run. To run the basic app, you only need to click the right pointing green arrow at the top of IntelliJ IDEA. Make sure that the adjacent text field says “Grails: cs4760progassign”. This will open a terminal view at the bottom of IntelliJ IDEA. You can watch the build. When the build is done you should see this message:

|Running application...
Grails application running at http://localhost:8080 in environment: development

Also your default browser window should open to http://localhost:8080. If it does not, just open a browser window and paste the URL into address bar. You should see the default index page for a Grails basic app. Congratulations you made your first basic app.

A lot of useful information will appear on this page, including

Application Status
Artefacts
Installed Plugins
Available Controllers

Currently, there are no controllers. The app is showing the index.gsp. You can see the code by clicking on grails-app/views/index.gsp in the Project panel of IntelliJ IDEA. The code will appear in the edit window. For the most part the code is html, but it is accessing some app variables. They are written using ${…} syntax. More about that in other assignments and lectures.

vii. Modify the Basic App: set the context path

Although the index view looks good, I’m not happy with the URL of the index or home view. The URL should be

http://localhost:8080/cs4760progassign/

not

http://localhost:8080

The default context of the app is set to the root of the server. It is important that the context be set under the app name. This becomes important when you deploy your app to the public because all the apps will have the same root domain.

We need to edit grails-app/conf/application.yml by adding to the bottom of the file

server:
    contextPath: '/@info.app.name@'

Note that there is a space between the colon and the quote. Without the space the YML parser will silently fail. An hint that the formatting is correct, the ‘@info.app.name@’ should be green in IntelliJ IDEA.

The file application.yml is written in YML which is a markup language:

https://fdik.org/yml/

It is not a particularly complex markup language and more readable than XML. Gradle uses YML. You’ll not need to learn to much of the language. The above line just sets the server context path to the app name. For reference see:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32976039/how-do-you-change-the-application-name-in-grails-3

Now stop and rerun Grails. You can do this with the command icons at the bottom of IntelliJ IDEA in the Grails console.

Step 4: Move the Controller List view

1. Generate the New Controller

The default home page, the controller list view, is useful but not appropriate for a home page, so we should move it. We would like the URL for the control list view to be:

http://localhost:8080/cs4760progassign/controllerList

The part of the URL after the app-name is the controller name. We need to make a new controller. You can do this by right clicking on the controller directory in the project panel and select “New” and then select “Grails Controller.” Enter the name of the controller, “ControllerList”, in the text box. After clicking “OK”, Grails will generate files and directories. When it is done, it should show the “ControllerListController.groovy” file in the editor:

package cs4760progassign

class ControllerListController {

    def index() { }
}

The generated controller has only one method, “index” and the method is blank. This is all we need.

2. Move index.gsp

Also notice that Grails also made a new directory, /views/controllerList/, in the views directory. All the views for the ControllerListController should go into this directory. The names of the views should correspond to the method names in the controller. In this case, we want a view file called, “index.gsp.” To make this view all we have to do is move “views/index.gsp” to “views/controllerList/index.gsp. You can do this by dragginng “views/index.gsp” to the “views/controllerList/” directory. After dragging IntelliJ IDEA ask if you want to perform any checks and change references. In this case, you don’t. Click “OK.”

Rerun the app.

Note that when the browser opens, you get a “Error 500: Internal Server Error” saying “Could not resolve view with name ‘/index’ in servlet with name ‘grailsDispatcherServlet'”. We should not be surprised, currently there is no root “index.gsp”. In the browsers address bar, add “/controllerList” and you will get to the controller list view. Now the list of available controllers has one item in it:

cs4760progassign.ControllerListController

You can click on the link to go to the controller’s index view or action. In this case, clicking on the link will take you to this same view. You can notice that the URL has changed to

localhost:8080/cs4760progassign/controllerList/index

The part of the URL after the controller name is the controller action, in this case the “index” action. With an empty action all that the Grails app will do is display the index view, “index.gsp”.

3. Make Temporary Root Index View

We would like to eliminate the 500 error when the browser is pointed to the root of the app. We only need to make a new “index.gsp” file in the views root directory. Right click on the “views/” directory in the project panel, select “New” and then “File”. Now when the window pops up asking for the name of the file, enter “index.gsp”. Be sure to include the file suffix, “gsp”, because IntelliJ IDEA does not automatically associate “gsp” files in the view folder. After clicking the “OK” button, the editor window should show a blank file for “views\index.gsp.” Cut and paste the html code below into the editor window

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head></head>
<body>

 <h1>Base index.gsp</h1>
 <p>Under contruction</p>
 <p><g:link controller="controllerList">Go to ControllerList</g:link> </p>

</body>
</html>

The html code should look very familiar to you, if not study, html at w3schools

http://www.w3schools.com/html/default.asp

There is only one tag that should be unfamiliar to you, the g-tag, or more specifically the g:link tag. The g:link tag is a Grails tag that is similar to the html anchor tag. It will make portable links using controller names and actions. Whenever possible you should use g:link tags in your code rather then html anchor tags. This will make it safer to deploy your app. You can read more about the g:link tag at

http://docs.grails.org/latest/ref/Tags/link.html

Rerun the Grails app. Now there is no longer a 500 error, and you can click the link that will take you to the controller list view.

Step 5: Make Domain Classes

You will implement a simple database scheme. You need two tables in the database, an Author table and a Book table:

Database Scheme:

Author:

String name
has many books (list of entries in the Book table)

Book:

String title
Integer publishYear
belongs to author (entry in the Author table)

Read the chapter about GROM in the Grails and GORM documentation to learn how to specify the Domain classes, Author and Book.

http://docs.grails.org/latest/guide/GORM.html

http://gorm.grails.org/6.0.x/hibernate/manual/

Specifically, you’ll want to read carefully the section about GROM association:

http://gorm.grails.org/6.0.x/hibernate/manual/#gormAssociation

You do not need to understand the entire GORM Manual to complete this assignment. The assignment can be completed without deep understanding GORM.

You should notice that the Author class references the Book class and the Book class references the Author class. This is cyclic references and can confuse the auto compiler in the IDE, if you just write the code for the classes sequentially. If you type up the Author class before there is a Book class then your code will have an error at the line referencing the Book class. Instead of writing the classes sequentially I suggest first making both empty Author and Book domain classes by right clicking on the project, select “New” and then “Grails Domain Class”. Fill in the name of the domain class: Author or Book, and finally “Finish.” After creating both the Author and Book domain classes, you can type the references to other class without error.

Step 6: Inspect the Database

You will want to inspect the database to verify that it has really made the tables. When you code more complex projects, you can inspect the database directly to see if the SQL actions are preformed as you expect.

Rerun the Grails app and point your browser to

http://localhost:8080/cs4760progassign/dbconsole

This will bring up the database login. Note that in the login screen the JDBC URL should match what is specified in the “grails-app/conf/application.yml” configuration file for the development data soruce entry. So if you running in a “development” environment the JDBC URL should be

jdbc:h2:mem:devDb;MVCC=TRUE

Note the login in screen has a link for “JDBC URL”, click on it and more explanation for the entry is given.

The user name should be “sa” and password should be blank. Click “Connect” button and data source browser will appear. You should see the Author and Book tables listed on the left panel. Expanding them you’ll see the fields for each table. Clicking the Author table will enter the SQL command:

SELECT * FROM AUTHOR

You can click the “Run” button to execute the command. Do so, and you’ll see that the table is empty because you have not add entries to the table.

Step 7: Add Entries to the Tables.

You can use the Bootstrap.groovy file to add entries to the table when the web app is installed on the server. Open “init/Bootstrap.groovy” in the editor, by double clicking the file in the project panel. Add the code to the init closure, by replacing the file content with below.

import cs4760progassign.Author
import cs4760progassign.Book

class BootStrap {

    def init = { servletContext ->
        new Author(name:"Stephen King")
             .addToBooks(new Book(title:"The Stand", publishYear:1978))
             .addToBooks(new Book(title:"The Shining", publishYear:1977))
             .save()

        new Author(name:"Mark Twain")
            .addToBooks(new Book(title:"Tom Sawyer", publishYear:1876))
            .addToBooks(new Book(title:"Huckelberry Finn", publishYear:1884))
            .save()

    }
    def destroy = {
    }
}

Now stop the app and run it again. Use dbconsole to inspect the tables. You should see the entries in both the Author and Book tables.

Step 8: Generate the Controller and Views

Grails will generate the basic controllers and all the views for the domain classes. To make the controller and views from the Author domain class, right click the project or select “tools” in the menu bar then select “Grails” and then “RunGrails Command”. In the pop up window, type the command below in the command text field

generate-all cs4760progassign.Author

Make sure the correct project is specified in the “Application” text field. You do not need any “VM options.”

This will make several files for you:

controller/AuthorController.groovy
views/author/create.gsp
views/author/edit.gsp
views/author/edit.gsp
views/author/index.gsp
views/author/show.gsp
src/test/groovy/AuthorControllerSpec.groovy

You should inspect these files and learn from them.

Generate the Book controller and all the views. Inspect the generated files

Step 9: Use the Web App

You can run the web app. Stop and start the app again. The controller list page should show the Author and Book controllers. Click on these controller links. Inspect the index views for the Author and Book controllers. You should navigate and play with the interface.

Use the app to create a new author and add a book to the author. View the Author and Book list to see that it is in database. Also go to dbconsole to inspect the tables directly.

Delete the author “Stephen King” and then view the book list. The books “The Stand” and “The Shining” should be gone from the list because of the static property “belognsTo” in the Book domain class.

Step 10: Change Cross Referencing List Displays

Using the web app, you should have noticed that when you show an author the list of books are referenced by the table (cs4760progassign.Book) and the id. Also showing a book references the authors by the table and the id. This is not an error, but it might not be what you want. You probably expect that the book reference ought to be the book title and the author reference should be the author’s name. We can change the behavior by adding a toString method to the domain model.

In the Author domain class, add the lines below:

String toString(){
 "${name}"
}

In the Book domain class, add the lines

String toString(){
 "${title}"
}

You’ll need to stop and run the web app again for the changes to the domain to take place. Now try the web app, you notice that Author is referenced by name and Book by the title. The code in the toString method tells the view how to render the view. The dollar sign, $, are grails tag that alert the view that within the curly bracket is groovy code, in this case a parameter of the method.

In general, you should be careful making these changes. The problem with our change is that the name of the author may not be unique, meaning two authors may have the same name. So, this will cause ambiguity when associating a book with an author. In the next assignment you’ll see that my general strategy is to use the generated views only for the administrated backend of the website and that we’ll make public views by hand coding. The admin should understand the references to book and author are table and id, and consequently the admin would not be confused.

Step 11: Make the Screen Shot and Email Me

After creating a new author, adding a book and deleting the author “Stephen King”, make a screen shot of the book list. The URL is

http://localhost:8080/cs4760progassign/book/index

Email me (pastel@mtu.edu) the screen shot. The subject of the email should be

“cs4760 Programming Assignment 1 Proof”

CS4760 & CS5760: Human-Computer Interactions & Usability

Programing Assignment 1 – Building Your First Grails Apps