It has been said that Grails is the addiction and Groovy is the drug. If you want to start building slick web applications rapidly with Grails it helps to start with a solid understanding of the Groovy language itself.

It has been said that Grails is the addiction and Groovy is the drug. If you want to start building slick web applications rapidly with Grails it helps to start with a solid understanding of the Groovy language itself. In this session, we'll go over the basics of the language by focusing on the core of Groovy. We'll look at Groovy collections, Groovy's interaction with Java, creating Classes in Groovy, Groovy's MOP and much much more. By the end, you'll be a Groovy expert ready to embrace all the language has to offer.

What makes Groovy particularly appealing with respect to other scripting platforms is its seamless integration with the Java platform. Because it's based on the Java language (unlike other alternate languages for the JRE, which tend to be based on earlier predecessors), Groovy presents an incredibly short learning curve for the Java developer. And once that learning curve has straightened out, Groovy can offer an unparalleled rapid development platform.

What makes Groovy particularly appealing with respect to other scripting platforms is its seamless integration with the Java platform. Because it's based on the Java language (unlike other alternate languages for the JRE, which tend to be based on earlier predecessors), Groovy presents an incredibly short learning curve for the Java developer. And once that learning curve has straightened out, Groovy can offer an unparalleled rapid development platform.

The secret to Groovy's success, in this regard, is its syntax, which is Java syntax, but with far fewer rules. For example, Groovy doesn't require semicolons, and it makes variable types and access modifiers optional. Moreover, Groovy makes use of the standard Java libraries you're already familiar with, including Collections and File/IO. And, finally, you can utilize any Java library from within Groovy, including JUnit.

The fact is, Groovy's relaxed Java-like syntax, its reuse of standard Java libraries, and its rapid build-and-run cycle make it an ideal candidate for rapidly developing unit tests. But don't just take my word for it; let's see it in code!

In the years since JUnit’s introduction, a number of frameworks have been built to enhance its utility for testing and validating XML, controlling the state of a database, testing legacy code, performance testing, and functional web testing.

Developer testing has arguably become an industry expectation due to the immediate positive affects testing code early has on software quality. It’s no surprise that Java’s JUnit framework has become the de facto standard for developer testing. In the years since JUnit’s introduction, a number of frameworks have been built to enhance its utility for testing and validating XML, controlling the state of a database, testing legacy code, performance testing, and functional web testing. In this session we’ll take a look at XMLUnit for testing XML related code, DbUnit for testing code which depends on a database, JUnit-addons for testing private methods, JUnitPerf for load and performance testing, and JWebUnit for functional web and user acceptance testing. We’ll also examine the extensibility of these frameworks in an effort to combine them into handy aggregate frameworks for performance testing of database code, scenario testing of web sites, and any other combinations we can cook up.

No one will argue that JUnit has positively affected the quality of thousands of Java applications around the world. JUnit’s simplicity and ease of use ushered in a whole new era of code quality; however, as many developers have found, its simplicity has also limited its use. TestNG was designed from the ground up to overcome some of JUnit’s limitations; moreover, TestNG’s features make it a great tool to complement your JUnit tests.

In this session we’ll learn about TestNG’s flexible fixture model, its test categorization capability, dependent methods, and TestNG’s powerful parametric testing facility. We’ll also see how both TestNG and JUnit can play together in a build process.