Using GORM without Grails

Summary

This is a simple example demonstrating the usage of GORM outside Grails.

It’s a continuation of the GORM standalone example (Grails 2.x prior to version 2.3) project adapted for Grails 2.4.x.

Spring Boot is used to handle the configuration and bootstrapping.

References

• https://spring.io/guides/gs/accessing-data-gorm/
• http://mhdevelopment.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/bootstrap-an-application-with-spring-boot-part1-command-line/
• http://www.leveluplunch.com/java/tutorials/003-getting-started-with-spring-boot/
• https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-boot/blob/master/spring-boot/src/main/java/org/springframework/boot/SpringApplication.java
• spring-projects/spring-boot#1372

Notes

• This is a quick experiment and has been tested on JDK7 OSX only.
• Gradle is used as build system.

Configuration and Data

Here are the main resources of the project:

• Gradle build file (build.gradle)
• Resource bundle for validation errors translations (src/main/resources/message.properties)
• Log4j configuration (src/main/resources/log4j.properties)

Gotchas

• Dependency resolution and GORM (methods missing in some Spring Framework releases expected to be found by specific GORM versions)
• Other dependencies issues depending on the versions of Grails (grails-bootstrap), Spring Framework and GORM (grails-gorm)
• For domain operations, either use transactional services or make sure that the Hibernate session is bound:
  • domainClass.withNewSession
  • domainClass.withTransaction

Running the application

Execute the following targets to test and run the application

On Unix/Linux platforms, run the following command:

./gradlew bootRun

For MS Windows please run the following command:

gradlew.bat bootRun

Generating IDE project files

This is for people who would rather not use Gradle.

Unix/Linux platforms

Please run the following command:

./gradlew idea eclipse

Windows

Please run the following command:

gradlew.bat idea eclipse