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Groovy Training Course UK

Dates and full course list

Groovy Programming Course Overview

Course Code:	GRV0010
Price:	£1995
Duration:	5 Days - custom / on-site options available - please call.
DATE:
Who should attend:	Java Programmers who require the skills to develop commercial Groovy applications.
Prerequisite Skills:	This course can be customised to take into account the depth of Java experience of the audience. People who are heavily proficient with Java could either cover the base material in a shorter time, or go much further into the dynamic and meta-object protocol techniques that Groovy allows which are either very difficult or impossible to implement using Java alone. You may also wish to take a look at our Intro to Java and Advanced Java Programming Techniques courses.

Groovy is a dynamic object-oriented programming language, with similarities to Python, Perl, and Ruby.

Groovy uses a "curly bracket syntax" which is dynamically compiled to Java Virtual Machine bytecodes and should work seamlessly with other Java code and libraries.

The Groovy compiler can be used to generate Java bytecode, and Groovy itself can be used dynamically as a scripting language. Groovy is also undergoing standardisation under JSR 241

Course Content

Our Groovy training course provides an overview of Groovy architecture, and intensive hands-on experience in the development and implementation of Groovy applications.

This course has been developed for real-world, commercial scenarios by our expert instructors. See below for detailed syllabus. If you have a technical question, please email

What you will learn

1. Learn the Groovy basics - language, syntax, potential uses
2. Learn about the standard libraries
3. How Groovy integrates with other languages
4. String and XML processing with Groovy.
5. Threading and Synchronisation with Groovy.
6. GUI development with Groovy
7. Version control

Groovy Programming Training Course Outline

Rationale

Why does Java need a partner?
Who are the players: Jython, JRuby, Groovy.
Sun is directly funding Jython and JRuby to ensure that Django and Ruby on Rails can run on the JVM. Sun is
supporting Groovy by having staff contribute to the project and to the NetBeans plugin.

The Infrastructure

Groovy support in Eclipse, NetBeans and IntelliJ IDEA.

Currently IntelliJ IDEA is by far the best for Groovy programming, the JetGroovy system is excellent.
Groovy support in Eclipse is good but not as good as the Groovy support in IntelliJ IDEA. Groovy support in
NetBeans is coming but is not yet usable for production code.

Dynamic vs. Static Programming languages

Static typing, overloading.
Dynamic typing, polytmorphic programming.
Duck typing.
EAFP easier to ask forgiveness than permission

The core issue here is the different way programmers have to think about type and typing in languages such
as Groovy, Python and Ruby. The knock on consequence is the different way of handling polymorphic
programming in static languages such as C++ and Java, polymorphism is usually handled by overloading.
Dynamic language handle this very differently, duck typing.

Scripts vs Classes

Writing scripts instead of classes.
Writing classes as usual.

Java, indeed the JVM, requires all code to be contained within a class. Java has no facility for having
code outside of a class. Groovy can be used to create classes, but it also has a script capability. Groovy
scripts are still classes but the programmer sees a script and the Groovy system handles all the necessary
infrastructure issues.

Meta-object Protocol Why?

The crucial difference between statically typed and dynamically typed languages is that the latter generally
have a met-object protocol a way of redefining features of the language at program runtime. This
completely changes the way problems are solved. Python, Perl, Ruby and Groovy all share this approach that
was first worked out in Lisp and then Smalltalk.

Builders: The Big Win

Builders and domain specific languages.
Using the meta object protocol to define language at runtime.

SwingBuilder

Constructing Swing/AWT interfaces the easy way.
Relationship to JavaFX.

XML and other markup

Reading, writing and processing XML.
Showing Java makes this hard.
Relationship with JDOM and Dom4J
Dynamic methods and GPath who needs XPath?

Dependency and Build

AntBuilder, Groovy's interface to the Ant tasks.
Gant a lightweight Groovy Ant task scripting framework.
Gradle a Groovy Ivy-based build framework.
GMaven making Maven Groovy.

Concurrency and Parallelism Threads and java.util.concurrent

Groovy doesn't have explicit syntax but it makes using the Java library very easy.

Design strategies Java vs. Groovy

When to use Java, when to use Groovy.
How to make sure the integration is good and the problem few.