On top of that, we basically embedded the HTML in our codes, which is one of the most horrendous things any programmer can do. Unless I want to overtake Billo as the worst programmer of all time, we got some serious work to do.
So, meet Groovy Server Pages (gsp) - the grails solution to move the presentation logic out so that some artistic designers can work on them, and I can focus on coding the backend logic. Now, we all know that the infamous Convention over Configuration philosophy behind grails, and if we put the right file in the right place, everything will work out just fine.
And, and, and..... there is no configuration needed!!! Yay!
OK... lets focus on our objective today:
- Passing some values from the Controller to gsp,
We will talk about layout, data model and persisting data in some form of database in the following sessions.
Alright, first thing first, instead of rending HTML codes from the controller, we now do 1 step better; we keep some values here and pass them to the gsp for display. So, lets change our little controller like so:
def catalog = {
def staticBrand = "Nikon"
def staticModel = "D3S"
def staticReview = "D3S is the best pro DSLR ever!"
def staticReviewer = "JC Tai"
def staticRating = 5
[
brand : staticBrand,
model : staticModel,
review : staticReview,
reviewer: staticReviewer,
rating : staticRating
]
}Notice the square bracket? That's how the controller passes information to the gsp. Now, because of the convention over configuration philosophy, we do not need to create any configuration so long as we create the view here:
/grails-app/views/catalog/catalog.gsp
It is time now to write our view. Since my web designer is on leave today, I created the view by myself; and boy! This has already pushed my creativity ability to the limit! Lets see how it looks like:
<HTML>
<HEAD>
<TITLE>Camera Gears Review & Catalog</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY>
Brand: ${brand} <br />
Model: ${model} <br />
Review: ${review} <br />
Reviewer: ${reviewer} <br />
Rating: ${rating} stars <br />
</BODY>
</HTML>Once we do that, grails automatically wires the controller and the view together. Not a line of XML has been written! Amazing! Now lets point our browser to
http://localhost:8080/camgear/catalog/catalog
and voilà!
If we are talking about cleaner codes, can any code be cleaner than this? Haha... joke aside. In just a few lines of code, we have managed to create a web application that is retrieving information from the controller, and yes, we have not done anything on database yet, but the simplicity of grails just blows me away!
OK, lets review what we have done so far:
- We have created a controller.
We rendered HTML from the controller
- We stored some static values in the controller
- We retrieved these values from the controller and passed them to the gsp
- We have a VERY CLEAN web site running in just a few lines of code!
Related articles
- Tutorial 1 - Creating our first controller in grails
- Tutorial 3 - How to create a consistent look and feel with grails layout
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