Grails-Deployment

What is deployment?

Deployment is how developers deploy applications, modules, updates, and patches to users. The methods developers use to create, test, and deploy new code impact how quickly and well a product responds to changes in customer preferences or requirements.

In short, The process of installing, configuring, upgrading, and enabling a single program or group of apps that make a software system usable, such as facilitating a specific URL on a server, is known as application deployment.

Grails-Deployment

Now let's learn how can we deploy our apps on grails.

Standalone

"grails run-app"

You must be familiar with this strategy because of you have ran this command while developing this application. The web application is loaded from the development sources by a Tomcat server. Allowing it to take advantage of any modifications made to the application files.

Running the application using a production environment:

grails prod run-app

Running the application using the bootRun Gradle task:

./gradlew bootRun

Specifying environment supplying grails.env system property.

./gradlew -Dgrails.env=prod bootRun

Runnable WAR or JAR file

Utilizing the new functionality for runnable JAR or WAR files is another deployment method in Grails 3.0 or higher. 

Run the grails package to generate runnable archives.

grails package

Using assemble Gradle task:

./gradlew assemble

Run the WAR file (or the JAR file) using the Java installation:

java -Dgrails.env=prod -jar build/libs/mywar-0.1.war    (or .jar)

Container Deployment

Grails apps can be deployed to an Application Server or Servlet Container.

WAR file

Using a WAR file to deploy Grails applications to an existing Servlet container is a typical practice. Multiple apps can be deployed on the same port using various pathways.

Creating a WAR file:

grails war

This will generate a file in the build/libs directory that can be deployed to a container.

Be aware that Grails will by default include a runnable version of Tomcat inside the WAR file. While deploying, if you deployed it to a different version of Tomcat, this could cause issues. Before sending it to your production container in build, you should either remove the Tomcat dependencies or change the scope to test implementation if you do not wish to use the embedded container in build.gradle:

testImplementation "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat"

Deployment Configuration Tasks

Setting up HTTPS and SSL certificates for standalone deployment

Add these properties to application.yml:

server:
    port: 8443
    ssl:
        enabled: true
        key-store: <the-location-of-your-keystore>
        key-store-password: <your-key-store-password>
        key-alias: <your-key-alias>
        key-password: <usually-the-same-as-your-key-store-password>

These settings control the Tomcat container for production deployment. The properties can be specified on the command line. 

Example: 

Dserver.ssl.enabled=true -Dserver.ssl.key-store=/path/to/keystore.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Grails?

Grails is a free, open-source web application framework using the Apache Groovy programming language adhering to the code-by-convention concept. It is a high-productivity framework.

Is Grails an MVC framework?

MVC apps are created using the Grails MVC platform. The MVC architecture is built-in to Grails. In MVC, model classes should represent the domain objects while the controller represents the application's flow. So, yes Grails is an MVC framework

What is better, grails or spring?

Reviewers found Grails to be generally easier to use, set up, and conduct business with when comparing the two options. Reviewers, however, preferred Spring Framework's simplicity of management. They believed that Spring Framework and Grails better fit their businesses' needs.

What is a grail application?

The Groovy programming language is used by the open-source web application framework known as Grails. By adhering to the "code by convention" philosophy, offering a standalone development environment, and keeping much of the configuration information hidden from the developer, it is meant to be a high-productivity framework..

How does the Grails framework operate?

The Grails framework uses the Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern to divide tasks inside the application and streamline its architecture. In your system, model classes should represent the domain objects. The application's flow should be under the control of controller classes.

Conclusion

In the article, we learned about a deployment in grails. We hope this article will help you understand the concept of deployment. Check out our other blogs on the topic Grails:

• Grails-The Web Layer
• Grails-The Service Layer
• Grails-Scaffolding
• Grails-Plugins
   

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