Some of you may know already that a book on Griffon is in the works, written by a creative team whose members are: Danno Ferrin, Geertjan Wielenga and yours truly. This will be my first time writing a book so naturally I'm very excited about it. The title? Griffon in Action, published by Manning Publications Co.



The existence of the book was announced a few months ago (GroovyMag #4, Grailspodcast #77) but it wasn't until today (March 31st) that the book's page went up, and with it comes the MEAP (Manning Early Access Program) that will let you peek inside the book as it is being written.

So what is inside? Section 1 will give you the quick scoop on Griffon, all you need to get started right away, as a matter of fact chapter 02 will demonstrate how a simple multi-tabbed editor can be created in mere minutes, no kidding!

Section 2 dives deep into the core concepts of the framework: the MVC pattern, models & binding (including detailed descriptions of all types of binding available in Griffon), SwingBuilder DSL, controllers and more.

Section 3 aims to help you build rock solid applications with intuitive and sound threading facilities, publishing and consuming all kind of events during both buildtime and runtime, demonstrating the various testing alternatives (like additional plugins [FEST, Easyb], not just what it is already included at the core), finally the different deployment targets and installer options will be explored, everything you need to smooth an application's delivery to the end user.

The last section, Section 4, will explore all options Griffon offers to extend itself, whether it is at the view level with additional builders, or at buildtime/runtime via plugins. It will also show how plugins work, how you can create, install and publish your own plugins too. Interaction with popular Swing libraries and frameworks (like Grails!) is included in this section as well. Closing is a case study on the first Griffon application, the one that started the ball (egg?) rolling: Greet.

We're planning on building quite a number of applications during the course of the book, going back to the multi-tabbed file editor application from time to time, so expect a lot of snippets, tips & tricks and plenty of Groovy goodness

When is it coming out then? the target release date is set to the end of the current year but you never know, one thing is certain though, we'll make our best to have it on schedule. Right now we're very close to the first milestone (1/3 of the book), with smooth sailing we'll have 2/3 before JavaOne 09 rolls out.

Griffon is still evolving, we just recently released version 0.1 a few weeks ago, rest assured that the book will be kept up to date with the latest developments.

Phew! now going back to writing those chapters, stay tuned for more info...