Grails

Support for Grails on Heroku was recently announced and I’d like to walk you through the steps to create a simple Grails app and then deploy it on the cloud with Heroku. Before you get started install Grails 2.0.0, install the Heroku toolbelt, install git, and signup for a Heroku.com account. Don’t worry, you won’t need to enter a credit card to give this a try because Heroku gives you 750 free dyno hours per application, per month. (Wondering what a “dyno” is? Check out: How Heroku Works) Let’s get started.

At the Rich Web Experience 2009 conference, Matt Raible presented a very insightful comparison of “kick-ass” web frameworks including Flex, Google Web Toolkit (GWT), Ruby on Rails and Grails. I appreciate his “right tool for the job” approach which moves beyond technology dogma towards real solutions. He includes some very revealing charts comparing jobs posts, StackOverflow posts, mailing list traffic and other stats. Check out the slides from his presentation: