I recently had the chance to sit down with Scott Davis, Editor in Chief of aboutGroovy.com, for an interview about Grails, how I got involved with it, and what lies ahead.  It runs about 23 minutes in length, but we manage to cover quite a bit in that time frame.  We agree that we don't need one programming language/technology "to rule them all."  We discuss the origin of (and the potential future for) Getting Started with Grails, and we set the record straight on whether EJB3 is a legacy technology.  (Spoiler alert: It's not.)

Proper RSS support is coming soon for aboutGroovy.com podcasts.  In the meantime, feel free to download the MP3 directly.  

Many thanks to Scott and aboutGroovy.com for the interview. 

Another cool new feature of the recent Grails 0.4 release is the easy-to-use ExpandoMetaClass.  Groovy meta-programming is darn powerful stuff, and ExpandoMetaClass makes it super-simple to dynamically alter a class at runtime.  You can add instance methods, static methods, constructors, or properties, all in just a few short lines of code.  In fact, it's so cool that it's slated to become a standard part of Groovy in the Groovy 1.1 release slated for later this year.  

Enough chatter.  Let's see it in action. 

Here's some rather simple Groovy code that shows just how easy it is put the ExpandoMetaClass to work.  We simply define a class, instantiate it, add a new method to that class, and then the method is automatically available on the instance.

// A boring old class
class Canine {
}

// A boring old dog with no cool tricks
def oldDog = new Canine()

// If only a dog could speak
def canineMetaClass = new org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.metaclass.ExpandoMetaClass(Canine.class, true)
canineMetaClass.newTricks << { "Woof!" }
canineMetaClass.initialize()

// Who say's you can't teach an old dog new tricks?!
oldDog.newTricks()

And with a little help from the Grails console, we see that we can indeed teach an old dog new tricks (though teaching him to bark probably wouldn't be my first choice).

While I'd known about the ExpandoMetaClass since Graeme Rocher committed it a few weeks back, it was Steven Devijver's post on the Grails mailing list today that inspired me to try it out.  (And though I wish I could take credit for the witty example, in fact, that credit goes to a co-worker of mine, Bill Dupre.  I showed Steven's post to Bill, and he quickly put this clever spin on it.)

What new tricks can your code libraries benefit from? 

In order for any new framework to prove its worth, it first needs a few real-world honest-to-goodness success stories under its belt.  And why not?  After all, who wants to spend all their time chasing the newest fad, only to be disappointed by the hype 95% of the time?  And for web frameworks, we want to see something with a public face, and it means even more when that face also has a reputable brand name attached to it. 

Meet www.copellafruitjuices.co.uk.  Copella, one of PepsiCo UK's well-known juice brands, recently launched a site built from scratch using Grails.  Marc Palmer described the application on the Grails mailing list, and mentions that this is just the first iteration of the site and that we should expect enhancements over the next month.  Still, it looks pretty darn good and is quite functional given the fact that it was developed in a matter of days, not months.  On his blog, Marc also talks more about the timeline for developing the site and where Grails really gave some awesome productivity boosts.  Many thanks to Marc for really putting Grails to the test (as that only serves to make it better in the long run) and for sharing his experience with the Grails community.

Copella's site is a big step for Grails, and the list only continues to grow.  Late last year, we saw the launch of aboutGroovy.com, a cool Groovy and Grails news portal written completely in Grails.  (How's that for eating your own dog food?!) 

And just last week, we saw the launch of another new Grails site; this time with an interesting twist.  tvvoting.com describes itself as "Fantasy Football for Reality TV."  (They describe the concept in more detail on their site.  Be sure to note the cool "Powered by Grails" logo.)  I'm not much of a reality TV fan, but the site certainly looks sharp, and it sounds like it's got a good bit of action going on behind the scenes.  (If you get a chance to try it out, feel free to drop a comment below or on the Grails mailing list and let us know what you think.)

Kudos to all these folks for showing off what Grails has to offer!