I feel like Groovy is like a programming language "Eintopf", it aggregates some best characteristics of a variety of programming languages. No matter which programming style you prefer - procedural, functional, object-oriented, meta-programming, static typed, dynamic typed... - Groovy has much to offer. The most beautiful thing is, you can easily combine different programming styles in one language and write most concise and self-explanatory code to solve your problem. With Groovy, you suddenly have so much mind-freedom, you have the choice of expressing your algorithms as close to the nature of the problems as possible.

There are languages having very concise syntax but the code is not easy for human to read. There are languages and APIs require more strikings on keyboard than thinking. Groovy is different. You have all kinds of syntax sugar while the code still tells a literal story in your problem domain.

The only fields I think Groovy might not be suitable are the machine-level infrastructures and image/audio/video processing. C and assembly languages are not replaceable by Groovy. In most other application fields, using Groovy can dramatically boost programmers' productivity and reduce programming errors.

I started off by simply renaming all .java files in my test packages to .groovy files. Worked. Then tried out it's closures and curry calls. For me there are a lot more to explore. Haskel fans will like Groovy. Smalltalk fans will like Groovy. Python fans will like Groovy. Lisp fans maybe too. Java folks? I for one, have already been conquered. If you program at all, by all means do yourself a favour and have a look at Groovy.

Groovy in Action is an excellent book on Groovy and programming. Get this book and get the insight, you'll be glad you do.

For those of you who haven't heard of Groovy, Groovy is a scripting language that is built on top of Java. Since it is written on top of Java, a Java developer can pick up pick Groovy in a snap.

I first heard about Groovy In Action (also known as GINA) during a Groovy presentation almost a year ago, the presenter was referring to Groovy In Action as one of the best references out at the time, After reading GINA, I was not disappointed. The roadmap given at the beginning of the book is a great guide to see how the book is organized out. As an added bonus, the book includes some great reference information at the end of the book. It contains Groovy Language information, a GDK API quick reference, and several great cheat sheets for items such as closures, lists, etc.

The book is full of great examples that you can use (some of the examples illustrate some of the finer points of the language).

In fact someone recently asked about where to find a complete specification of the Groovy Language. Guillaume Laforge, Groovy Program Manager and co-author of Groovy In Action, responded that the most current information can be found in Groovy In Action (source user@groovy.codehaus.org mailing list 3/16/2008).

Groovy in Action is one of the Groovy books that is a must have for anyone looking to get into Groovy Development.

This book is totally awesome. The book makes it very easy to jump around and come back to previous chapters. The book's online forum is great too. The author(s) respond very quickly. It is well worth the money. Order it now and you will be programming in Groovy very quickly.

While getting a little long in the tooth (GINA was released pre-Groovy 1.0, Groovy is now above 1.5), the material presented in the book is still very relevant and helpful. The biggest issue is that some of the newer (and cooler!) features, such as ExpandoMetaClass, of the language are not covered.

That being said, this is still a great introduction to the a language that will likely become an important player in Java shops as developers migrate existing designs to take advantage of the power the dynamic programming provides. The authors do a great job of explaining the concepts and syntax of the language, making it easy to quickly begin writing code of your own.

While books such as Groovy Recipes: Greasing the Wheels of Java are now available that cover the newest features in Groovy, a perusal of GINA can help to flatten the learning curve.

This book is fantastic. Very well done, easy read. It was the first tech book that I read cover-to-cover -without getting bored- in a long time. The author does a good job of explaining how Groovy works under the covers and does a great job of detailing how to make effective use of it.

The language itself is also impressive and I hope Groovy gets the attention it deserves. I hope all Java developers read this to see what they're missing in Java-land. :-)

Hindsight is 20/20, I'm sure the authors are sorry they included the last chapter on Grails as they did. But I don't fault them, as I'm sure the publisher was not uninvolved in that decision... ;-)

I'm giving it 5 stars anyway. Good work!

Learn a new language every year - as someone once said.
I happened across Groovy a couple of months ago and was looking for some printed resource - navigating a website just isn't the same as holding a book in ones hands.
And, yes, this is a book well written and easy to read, providing all you need to gain a good understanding of the Groovy language and libraries. If you are looking for a good way to get aquainted with an excellent complement to the Java platform, go and get this book.

This is just a fun book to read! It gives you a great perspective on what the Groovy language is all about while at the same time giving you all the knowledge you need to get started scripting with Groovy. This book is sure to play a part in the future landscape of agile programming languages because it is on par with Ruby's pickaxe book. Programming Ruby: The Pragmatic Programmers' Guide, Second Edition It is sure to help jumpstart the Groovy language into wider acceptance.

This book also has a whole chapter devoted to Grails which the other main Groovy book Groovy Programming: An Introduction for Java Developers doesn't seem to have and that is why I bought it.

I am going to make this short, because I want to get ONE message across to you, loud and clear. If you are working with Java, you MUST take a look at Groovy.

I cannot overemphasize the coming importance of Groovy on the Java platform, not just in web development, but everywhere. Just try it already. You'll "get it." Just trust me and do it!

Groovy in Action is a first rate introduction and reference, and you really do need a book for this language. I don't recommend trying to go it alone with online reference material, though there is plenty there to give you a taste of why Groovy is about to become your new favorite language.

Read the other reviews. I'm not going to repeat a bunch of stuff here. But whatever you do, TRY GROOVY. You will quickly come to wonder how you ever got along without it.

Whatever you think about the merits of Groovy as a language, a serious contender on the JVM, or a complete mess, you couldn't hope to find a better advocate for Groovy than this book.

One of the secrets of GinA's success is that it assumes the reader is already proficient with Java development, including Swing, Ant and JUnit. It would also help to know about XML, SQL, HTML, JSP and a vague idea of how MVC applies to web apps. You don't need to be an expert in these areas, though. If you've sufficient knowledge to decode the preceeding alphabet soup of initialisations, you'll be ok.

The reward for possessing this background knowledge is that GinA doesn't waste time with trivial examples, and barrels through Groovy the language in the first part, leveraging your existing knowledge of Java to highlight the important differences in Groovy. In particular, the advantages of interpolating strings, simple hash and array construction syntax, optional typing and metaprogramming are stressed. The big win in Groovy over Java is the use of closures and their used in a block-based approach to iteration, which is as well motivated here as the material in, say, The Pickaxe is for Ruby.

The second part of the book provides examples of the Groovy library. It begins with an excellent chapter on Groovy's Builders, which provide a very neat, uncluttered syntax for putting together hierarchical structures. An obvious application is XML, and by extension Ant scripts, which appears to have some major advantages compared to the challenging readability of vanilla Ant. Even more impressive is the SwingBuilder example, which builds a GUI with the minimum of fuss and a complete lack of anonymous inner classes.

Beyond the Builders, there are also compelling chapters on templating HTML and server side Groovy (Groovlets), writing DAOs and DTOs in Groovy to simplify database programming, and a chapter on XML, which even manages to find the space to introduce Groovy for SOAP, XML-RPC and REST web services.

The final part of the book describes some non-core libraries and other applications of Groovy. The chapter on Groovy extensions to JUnit is interesting, although perhaps this is one place where it assumes too little on behalf of the reader. I would have assumed that the average developer sufficiently motivated to pick up a book on Groovy knows enough about unit testing and JUnit that more space could have been given to the advanced topics. Particularly appealing is the idea of testing Java code with dynamically typed Groovy unit tests, which would make mocking and stubbing more palatable; I would have liked more on that subject.

Another noteworthy chapter is the last one, which introduces the web app framework Grails. This has a different style to the other chapters, being a dialogue between two of the authors as they build a simple app. This reader admits to finding it a little bit naff, but it does usefully demonstrate the grails way (which is a lot like Rails).

If you have the slightest interest in Groovy, alternatives to Java on the JVM, or dynamic languages, GinA makes the perfect case for Groovy as a first class integration language for all the bits of Java where you really wish you were working with something like Perl, Ruby or Python. It's well-written, with good examples, clear explanations, and it's relentlessly practical, never forgetting its target audience. It's all the more impressive given lead author Dierk Konig's comment in the preface that English is not his first language. Kudos to him and his co-authors for what they've delivered.

One can only wish that every language had its GinA. Outstanding.

What more can be said of a book extolled by dozens of reviewers, a book that seems to have matched its subject in ubiquity, a book that will likely become to Groovy what the "pickaxe book" is to Ruby? As much as I would love to be a lone voice (or rather a lone whisper) of dissent, the clarity, simplicity, and accuracy of most of Groovy in Action cannot be overlooked. Let no one be fooled by the size of the book - to learn the gist of Groovy, all you really need is a leisurely stroll through chapters 2 through 7 (chapter 1 is the mandatory introduction/history chapter which, in the frustrating tech book tradition, doubles as the "free sample" chapter). Of course, most of its clarity and concision GIA inherits from the language it describes. Still, it is encouraging to have a book that is as valuable a reference as it is a tutorial, and GIA shines in both capacities.

With all its accolades, GIA does have two caveats. First, it is getting closer and closer to being out of date. Groovy 1.1 is already in Beta, and it has an impressive list of features not covered in this Groovy 1.0 book: EJB3 support, JUnit4 and TestNG integration and annotations, just to name a few. I am reminded of Pragmatic Programmers' Agile Web Development with Rails, whose second edition shipped a year after its first. I sincerely hope GIA 1.0 buyers will not be similarly cheated.

The second caveat is the coverage of Grails. Grails may be the single most attractive Groovy application to date yet its coverage in GIA is flaky at best. The authors decide to abandon their polished, clear, and concise writing style and instead author the entire chapter as a bland conversation amongst themselves. In addition to failing to grasp the humor in such presentation, I find that this style hinders me from following along with the tutorial. It makes scanning back for missed steps or clarifications extremely difficult. Furthermore, vapid attempts at humor occupy space that could be otherwise devoted to some omitted topics, such as mapping domain objects to specific tables or using data sources. Coverage of these topics would have been far more valuable than the authors' purported beer garden conversations with a DBA named Martin.

Despite the pour Grails coverage and the looming Groovy 1.1, Groovy in Action is a must-have for anyone who is even mildly interested in Groovy or dynamic languages in Java in general. Coupled with the ease, clarity, and downright beauty of the Groovy language, GIA can turn even a passing interest in Groovy into a burning passion.

It is a Gordian challenge to write an interesting and readable book about nothing but a programming language. Dierk König and his co-authors actually did succeed in cutting the knot. They even accomplished much more: they added lots of insight about object orientation, programming language design and good software development. As long as I only had the PDF availabe, it served me as THE reference for all my questions about Groovy. Now the printed copy makes my commuting time worthwhile. Cover to cover. 700 pages of computer LITERATURE.

The book contains a lot of Groovy interesting features, with samples tested to work,asides the writting style exciting to you to discover the new programming world open in front of your eyes thanks to the exceptional Groovy features.

I consider it as much as a Groovy bible.

All you need is an imagination and probably an IQ >= 130 (shouldn't be a problem for your average software engineer). If you can satisfy these requirements, then read this book and imagine the future. I am by no means a "scripter", but I am certainly a seasoned java programmer. If you ever thought you needed some glue to automate your already harmonious existence with the computer, just get this book and dream. When you read the pages of this book, you can't help but to wish you worked in a consulting company with its brilliant authors. These fellas have come up with the most interesting thing since ... well ... JAVA!

Scripting languages, although initially derided as "toy languages", have continued to evolve and mature over time. Now, no serious programmer (in my opinion) would deny that a scripting language can save a ton of time and effort for many programming problems. Groovy In Action by Dierk Konig with Andrew Glover, Paul King, Guillaume Laforge, and Jon Skeet covers the Java scripting language known as Groovy, and does an excellent job in doing so.

Contents:
Your Way to Groovy
Part 1 - The Groovy Language: Overture - The Groovy Basics; The Simple Groovy Datatypes; The Collective Groovy Datatypes; Working With Closures; Groovy Control Structures; Dynamic Object Orientation - Groovy Style
Part 2 - Around The Groovy Library: Working With Builders; Working With The GDK; Database Programming With Groovy; Integrating Groovy; Working With XML
Part 3 - Everyday Groovy: Tips And Tricks; Unit Testing With Groovy; Groovy On Windows; Seeing The Grails Light
Appendix A - Installation And Documentation; Appendix B - Groovy Language Info; Appendix C - GDK API Quick Reference; Appendix D - Cheat Sheets; Index

If you're familiar with the Java language and syntax, then you've already conquered a great deal of what you need to know about Groovy. The authors show how simple a Groovy script can be, and how much can be accomplished in many fewer lines than an equivalent Java program. In part 1, you get the mental framework for how Groovy works, the model for scripts, and many examples of code that cover a broad spectrum of what's possible. Part 2 goes a bit more into the guts of the language, giving you a reference guide to the different language features. This is where you'll spend a lot of time as you start to work with the language and explore the various methods and properties that are available. And finally, the last part shows real-life solutions and scenarios that you can use to either learn how to solve your particular problem or get ideas on solutions you may not have thought about before. When you look at this as a combination tutorial/reference/cookbook title all in a single volume, you start to grasp what a great job they did...

I was especially intrigued with the integration material. Compiled Groovy scripts are actually turned into Java bytecode the same as a compiled Java program would be. With the addition of the Groovy jar files into your project, you can use the scripts in your own programs with no additional effort. I'm really wondering if adding the Groovy jar files to a Domino application would allow you to use Groovy scripts for agents. If so, that gives me a powerful new addition to the Domino development toolbox. Now if I can only find some time to give it a try...

It goes without saying that if you're interested in Groovy, you'll want this book. And if you're interested in leveraging your Java knowledge into a whole new area, I'd completely recommend checking this out. It's very good...

Your passion is programming? You're fluent in Java? Then you'll love GINA - akronym for "Groovy in Action". And you'll put the Ruby-Pickaxe aside....

Dierk and his co-authors did a truly marvelous job: clear structure, highly (and I really mean HIGHLY) motivating language plus the best language-intro I read for a very long time... (and I've read quite a few during the last 20 years, believe me...)

GINA is made up from three parts: language intro, library intro and practical tipps, each part approx. 5 chapters.

Lets start with the language intro: After reading a few pages I could not stop - a real page-turner. Brilliant examples - they use java's assert-statement to make the intention of every example crystal-clear, a pattern which I have never encountered before - congratulations to this idea and its perfect realization throughout the book!

In the library part you'll find intro to groovy builders, database and XML development and the integration of Groovy in "conventional" java programms. Imho the authors again did a great job in choosing proper samples and making them transparent to us readers.

Finally, more than 100 pages on everyday solutions - a nice selection.

My personal summary: Go, get it! I liked it better than Pick-Axe (which I really adore!). The only other in quality is "Practical Common Lisp" by Peter Seibel (too sad that nobody uses Lisp these days...) - all other
programming books I know really fall behind.

When I picked up this book for the first time, I had no clue what Groovy was, what the background of Groovy was or whether it was actually useful and good. The name of the book sounded good though!

After reading this book, I know. Groovy is a new programming language that is based on Java. It's more like a scripting language than Java, but then not exactly that :) It's a dynamic language. It can be described as Java with all the missing Java features. Groovy is a serious challenger to Ruby in the race to becoming the latest modern popular programming language.

The book starts with explaining the differences between Groovy and Java. From there it goes over explaining all the basic Groovy concepts, in a way that a good programming language book should do it. It introduces exciting things like Closures and Builders. Closures in particular is something really missing from Java at the moment and it's nice to have it in Groovy.
The book continuous and talks about Groovy and XML, Databases, Web and unit testing. The book covers all major topics that it needs after finishing the book you'll know about Groovy and probably want to start developing Groovy code (if you haven't already started!)

The book is written extremly readable and it's been a very pleasent read. The autors done a great job. Thanks!

I have read a lot of books that claim to drive you through all aspects of a new programming language. Most don't. "Groovy in Action" does this outstandingly.
Navigating in the 16 chapters is a pleasure regardless of your knowledge of the subject.

If you are a Java newbie, you will painlessly be initiated to the syntax of the language through numerous simple but useful samples. Should you already be a Java addict, you will learn the interesting subtle differences between the two languages - but be careful as this is a one way ticket :-)
You will also find Closures and the special syntax for collections missing from the JDK.
Finally, if you are already familiar with dynamic languages and Groovy itself, you will probably find it very interesting to learn how Groovy works behind the scenes with its Meta Object Protocol.

If you've been curious about dynamic languages and want to learn Groovy, this is the book that is missing on your desk. I'm pleased with the quality of the writing, the examples, and the quick pace of the book.

I am very impressed.
Thanks guys for this really enjoyable piece of work.

Guillaume Alléon

I fear that many experienced Java programmers will have difficulties to continue programming in Java after having read this book! ;-)

Groovy in Action presents the Groovy language in a very clear and well structured form. This allows to rapidly enjoy the excellent expressivity and conciseness of this language. This has a major drawback: when you come back to Java you will often ask yourself why you have to write so much cumbersome code in many circumstances and will often think "in Groovy this would be a one-liner". There is an outlook: the book presents how easy it is to combine the best of both languages!

Well done Dierk & Co!

I ordered this on January 11th, it's claimed to be "in-stock", yet it has an estimated delivery of March 21-23. A-zon won't let me cancel because it's "Shipping Soon" (WTF!?). When I sent an inquiry, here's the response I got:
[[
Unfortunately, I can't cancel your order for the item "Groovy in Action" because it's already in the shipping process.

I have researched your order and see that it has entered the shipping process . We were able to ship your package in advance of the date estimated on our web site. Your actual ship date is March 18, 2007. We have prepared in advance to ship your order, so we expect your order will arrive within March 21, 2007 - March 23, 2007 or you will get before.

I have researched your order and note that it has been shipped via USPS. There is no tracking number available for this service.
]]

I'm not sure, but I think the Uniform Commercial Code requires that you be able to cancel something that's delayed 6 weeks or more. So unless you accept A-zon's definition of "Shipping Soon", this may not even be legal.

I ordered this book by itself, shipped Super Saver.