Zk | 2010-07-25 20:09:29

blog fossil diary

Working on a rather large project in grails, I’ve come to realize two things: there is some absolutely amazing software frameworks out there, and some people who write documentation appear to be 3-year-old kids who speak English as a second language.  The embarrassing part about that is that, since the project is open-source, I could contribute to the documentation very easily, fixing problems that I see and adding where I see fit.  However, the problem is so large and daunting (and the project I’m working on way more interesting), so instead, I wind up just living with it and searching El Goog over and over again for the same things.

I’m going to try to change this as best I can, and I’m going to start by collecting a few nifty tips and tricks I’ve pulled out of thin air here, and hopefully pull them all together into one place soon enough.

Permissions

The current project is using the grails Acegi plugin to manage users and security.  The plugin was recently deprecated, but it appears to have been done so before the replacement was completed, so I’m using it for the time being.  The idea of roles is pretty standard, but I wanted some finer-grained control over permissions to specific views, especially pertaining to objects that have lists of users associated with them.  After fiddling around with specifics in the controllers, I abstracted it into a service that I can use everywhere:

grails-app/services/package/PermissionsService.groovy
class PermissionsService {
    static transactional = true

def authenticateService

def groups = [
    userCanRead: { group ->
        if (group.exclusive) {
            if (authenticateService.principal().domainClass in group.members
                || authenticateService.principal().domainClass.id == group.admin.id
                || authenticateService.ifAnyGranted("ROLE_ADMIN")) {
                return true
            }
        } else {
            return true
        }
    },
    // ...
]



}

grails-app/taglib/package/PermissionsTagLib.groovy
class PermissionsTagLib {
    static namespace = “my”
    def permissionsService
    def withPermission = { attrs, body ->
        if (permissionsService.”${attrs[‘class’]}”.”${attrs[‘permission’]}”(attrs[‘arg’])) {
            out << body()
        }
    }
}

In a view…
<my:withPermission class=”groups” permission=”userCanPost” arg=”${group}”>
    Post new topic
</my:withPermission>

Comma-separated tags

grails-app/services/package/TagService.groovy
tags.split(/(?!(?<=\)),/)
     .collect { it.trim().replaceAll(/\,/, “,”) }
     .each {
         if (it.size() > 0) {
            obj.tags.each { otag ->
                if (it.tag == it) {
                    // skip if we already have it tagged
                    return
                }
            }
            def t
            if (Tag.countByTag(it) > 0) {
                t = Tag.findByTag(it)
            } else {
                t = new Tag(tag: it).save()
            }
            obj.addToTags(t).save(flush: true)
        }
    }
// …

Tips

• Codecs are static (I forgot.  You ever forget?  Happened to me).  I wasted a crapload of time on a problem in there before I switched to a tag-lib, et voila, everything’s fixed
• Constraints are also static, so if you want to constrain yourself to a list of strings, but want to be able to change the strings, store an integer and use that as an index to an array of strings stored in Config.  For bonus points, store a portion of a property key so you can internationalize, and use the portion of the key as the default value.
• If you want to always ensure that a condition is met when querying, stick the query in a service and pass the service a closure of your criteria:

In your service…
// …
def ListWithRating (Closure c) {
    Obj.withCriteria {
        and {
            c.delegate = delegate
            c()
            le(‘rating’, maxRating)
        }
    }
}

In your controller…
// …
def criteria = {
    eq(‘type’, params.type)
}
listService.listWithRating(criteria)

• If you want to associate something with anything (i.e.: a comment with any other domain), store the domain’s class name (with obj.class.toString().split(/\./)[-1]) with the comment, along with the object’s id, then get it back the same way.  You can check that the object exists with dynamic class-loading:

def object = Class.forName(“package.${objectType}”, true, Thread.currentThread().getContextClassLoader())
    .get(objectId)