Groovy for Java Developers

Groovy Training Overview

This course teaches experienced Java developers how to write programs in Groovy that simplify, enhance, and expand their existing systems.

Groovy Training Learning Objectives

• Understand how dynamic languages differ from languages like Java or C#

• Work with Groovy closures

• Use Groovy control structures

• Build object-oriented programs in Groovy

• Use Groovy builders to reduce complexity

• Access databases using Groovy

• Process XML files in Groovy

• Write unit tests in Groovy

• Access Java classes from Groovy, and vice versa

• Build a simple web application using Grails

Groovy Training Prerequisites

All attendees should have a good knowledge of Java techniques, including the Collections framework and JDBC.

Groovy Training Outline

• Groovy Fundamentals

  • Differences between Groovy and Java

  • Compiling and executing Groovy programs

  • The basic Groovy data types and optional typing

  • Writing Groovy scripts

  • Declaring classes

  • Overriding operators and type coercion

  • GDK: the Groovy library

  • Groovy strings

  • Regular expressions in Groovy

• Groovy Collections

  • Ranges

  • Lists

  • Maps

  • Iterators and polymorphic algorithms

• Closures in Groovy

  • Declaring closures

  • Available options for calling closures

• Groovy Control Structures

  • The "Groovy truth"

  • Conditional execution

  • Looping constructs

• Using Classes and Scripts

  • Groovy fields and local variables

  • Methods and operations

  • Safe dereferencing with the ?. operator

  • Organizing classes in packages

  • Using inheritance

  • Working with GroovyBeans

  • Injecting methods with Categories

  • A bit about the Expando metaclass

• Groovy Builders

  • NodeBuilder

  • MarkupBuilder

  • SwingBuilder

• Survey of the GDK

  • Simplified File access

  • Templates

  • Groovlets

• Database Access with Groovy

  • Basic database operations

  • DataSet operations

  • Groovy and ORM solutions

• Working with XML

  • Reading and parsing XML documents

  • Using XPath expressions

  • Distributed processing with XML

• Unit Testing in Groovy

  • GroovyTestCase

  • Unit-testing Groovy code

  • Unit-testing Java code

  • Code coverage and automation

• Web Development with Grails

  • The Grails framework

  • Creating web applications using Grails