Glen Smith (from groovyblogs, Gravl & Grails podcast fame) has announced he is working on a Grails book along with Peter Ledbrook (G2One engineer and Grails core developer). It will be published by Manning in the popular "in Action" series. Here is the book’s outline in Glen’s words:

Quite a lot. Section One gives you the standard tour: a quickstart primer on Grails, a brushup on Groovy, and we throw together a quick and dirty sample so that Java programmers new to Grails can get a taste of some of the joys that await them.

Section Two we develop some rock solid basics on all the core sections of the technology (but even seasoned guys will probably want to dip into this section from time to time - for example to get up to speed on content negotiation practicalities, the legacy mapping DSL stuff, controller scoping and some other corner cases that you need to know when you need to know). Of course there is complete covering of testing and mocking and all that other agile-y stuff you’ll want to know about.

Section Three we roll into Web2.0 goodness. All the standards are in there: full text search, feeds, charting, reporting, and javascript hocus pocus. We also get into a good coverage of plugin development from the trenches with all the common scenarios you’re likely to run into. You’ll also learn the ins and outs of the Security plugins (Peter wrote the JSecurity plugin!), and get ideas on doing a Web2.0 makeover on your current apps. And you want your app to be a platform, right? So we’ll be giving first class coverage to REST architectures, and you’ll learn enough JSON to get yourself into trouble.

Section Four we get down and dirty with enterprise concerns. In here we fine a complete practitioners guide to deployment lifecycle issues (including per-environment strategies, monitoring and profiling), and probably the most complete coverage of enterprise stuff with Grails that you’re likely to come across (JMX, EJB3, JMS, JNDI and probably a little portlets by then). First class treatment of re-using Spring and Hibernate legacy mappings (along with re-using your current Java code) also should get a Guernsey.

Glen & Peter don’t have a definitive date for shipping yet but it is likely to happen in the first months of 2009.

Graeme Rocher also started a revised edition of The Definitive Guide to Grails from Apress, but this time he is not alone, Scott Davis (Groovy Recipes) has joined to bring you more content and tons of useful bits. This book is scheduled also for late 2008.

What I find really interesting about these two books is that both have a core developer and an avid user/evangelizer of the framework as authors. Given the current track of topics Scott and Glen have been presenting on their blogs and conference talks I trust we will see plenty of end user experience enhancements (AJAX, RIA, Flex), not just a thorough introduction to the framework.

Christopher M. Judd, Joseph Faisal Nusairat and Jim Shingler are also working on a Groovy/Grails book titled Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional , to be published by Apress. It should be available by the end of June.

Tags: Book, Grails