Using IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate IDE

Currently only a few IDE support Grails 3, and they are Netbeans https://netbeans.org/, and Intellij IDEA Ultimate Edition https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/. Note that the Intellij IDEA Community Edition would still able to build and run Grails 3 code, but the syntax highlight would be missing! For this page, we will focus on IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate.

The reason of using an IDE is that, it has the code syntax highlight, auto complete, easy to search, and it has a good graphic user interface (GUI) for us to run, compile the project. Intellij is pricey, but it worths every penny.

1. This path could be skipped if network traffic is not passing through a proxy server.
2. Go to File → Settings….
3. In Settings, go to Appearance & Behavior → System Settings → HTTP Proxy.
4. Setup the Host Name, Port number
5. If authentication is needed for your proxy, put a tick in Proxy authentication, and type in the Login, and Password. It would be nice to have the Intellij to remember this authentication so that you do not need to type it again each time.
6. Click the Check connection button to check if the setting is correct.
7. If everything is OK, you will get a connection successful message.

1. Select File → New → Project….
2. Click Grails in the side bar.
3. Set the Project SDK and Grails SDK Home, and then click Next.
4. Setup the project name, and its path.
5. It might take some time for Intellij / Gradle to download the libraries needed for your project.
6. The project is ready to be coded!

1. Select File → New → Project from Existing Sources….
2. Select the build.gradle file from your existing Grails project source.
3. It might take some time for Intellij / Gradle to download the libraries needed for your project.
4. The project is ready to be coded!

Since Grails project come with it own embedded Apache Tomcat, it is self-contained. You can run it as a server without installing any java container.

To run it click Run → Run or Run → Debug from the menu bar. You can also run it by clicking the run, debug button on the top right corner. If everything is correct, you will see the following output from the Run windows.

"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_131\bin\java.exe" -XX:+TieredCompilation -XX:TieredStopAtLevel=1 -XX:CICompilerCount=3 -Djline.WindowsTerminal.directConsole=false -Dfile.encoding=UTF-8 -classpath C:\Users\xxxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\classpath1472089875.jar org.grails.cli.GrailsCli run-app --plain-output
|Resolving Dependencies. Please wait...

CONFIGURE SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 8.602 secs
|Running application...
Grails application running at http://localhost:8080 in environment: development

To test if the server is run correctly, go to http://localhost:8080 with your web browser. You should see a welcome Grails page.

To Export a war file for your web server, click Build → Make Grails Web Archive from the menu bar.

It will take some time to generate a war file. You can see the following output in the Grails Console. The output war file is a production one, and it is located at YOUR_PROJECT_LOCATION\build\libs\YOUR_PROJECT_NAME_VERSION.war.

...
:compileJava NO-SOURCE
:compileGroovy
:findMainClass
:assetCompile
Processing File 4 of 26 - grails-cupsonly-logo-white.svg
Processing File 2 of 26 - apple-touch-icon.png
Processing File 1 of 26 - apple-touch-icon-retina.png
Processing File 3 of 26 - favicon.ico
Processing File 5 of 26 - grails.svg
Processing File 6 of 26 - skin/database_add.png
Processing File 7 of 26 - skin/database_delete.png
Processing File 8 of 26 - skin/database_edit.png
Processing File 9 of 26 - skin/database_save.png
Processing File 10 of 26 - skin/database_table.png
Processing File 11 of 26 - skin/exclamation.png
Processing File 12 of 26 - skin/house.png
Processing File 13 of 26 - skin/information.png
Processing File 14 of 26 - skin/shadow.jpg
Processing File 15 of 26 - skin/sorted_asc.gif
Processing File 16 of 26 - skin/sorted_desc.gif
Processing File 17 of 26 - spinner.gif
Processing File 18 of 26 - application.js
Processing File 19 of 26 - bootstrap.js
Processing File 20 of 26 - jquery-2.2.0.min.js
Processing File 21 of 26 - application.css
Processing File 22 of 26 - bootstrap.css
Processing File 23 of 26 - errors.css
Processing File 24 of 26 - grails.css
Processing File 25 of 26 - main.css
Processing File 26 of 26 - mobile.css
Finished Precompiling Assets
:buildProperties
:processResources
:classes
:compileWebappGroovyPages NO-SOURCE
:compileGroovyPages
:war
:bootRepackage
:assemble

BUILD SUCCESSFUL

Total time: 18.912 secs
|Built application to build\libs using environment: production