Grails for (Recovering) Struts Developers: A Groovy Alternative

Struts enjoys an unprecedented marketshare in the Java web development space – 60%-70% according to most surveys. As newer, modern web frameworks come to the scene, very little attention is paid to the real costs of migrating an existing Struts application. This talk shows you ways to mix Groovy into a legacy Struts application, dramatically reducing both the lines of code and the complexity. We'll also introduce you to Grails (a Groovy-based web framework) whose URL-mapping capabilities allow it to replace your Struts application without breaking legacy URLs.

Grails is a modern Web development framework that mixes familiar Java technologies like Spring and Hibernate with contemporary practices like convention over configuration. Written in Groovy, Grails give you seamless integration with your legacy Java code while adding the flexibility and dynamism of a scripting language. After you learn Grails, you'll never look at Web development the same way again.

About Scott Davis

Scott Davis is the founder of ThirstyHead.com, a training company that specializes in Groovy and Grails training.

Scott published one of the first public websites implemented in Grails in 2006 and has been actively working with the technology ever since. Author of the book Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java and two ongoing IBM developerWorks article series (Mastering Grails and in 2009, Practically Groovy), Scott writes extensively about how Groovy and Grails are the future of Java development.

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