We are releasing a 1.0 version of our GroovyLoader plugin for ColdBox Applications today.  This plugin can be found in the extra downloads section of the ColdBox Website as part of the projects pack.  So what did we do, well, based on Barney Boisvert's inspiration on CFGroovy, we decided to create a plugin that would leverage ColdBox users with the Groovy Scripting Language.  We took some different approaches to the integration and we still have many things planned for it.  But as of now, these are the features that our GroovyLoader exhibits

• Drop and Play functionality on ANY ColdBox application running on Railo 3.0 >, Adobe CF 8 >, or Open BD
• Load a groovy environment (1.6.0) into any ColdBox application without modifying the running CF engine.  It uses our integrated JavaLoader to load all necessary libraries without modifying the CF engine.  It can also, load up ANY library you place in the GroovyLoader's lib directory automatically.  So if you kids start fooling around with packaged groovy libraries or java libraries like Hibernate, Spring, Gorm, etc. You can do so, by just dropping the files in that pre-configured folder.
• Setup of a directory that will hold groovy classes/scripts, that the GroovyLoader will try to load at runtime. Uses the configureClassPath() method of the plugin and usually called once.
• Integration with the ColdBox cache to provide resolution of parsed groovy-to-java classes for all parsed groovy source, including custom groovy source compilations
• Ability to clean the parsed class cache from the ColdBox cache
• Ability to clean the groovy classloader cache of parsed bits
• Ability to handle complex groovy/java relationships and hierarchies
• Easily extend/decorate the plugin to meet your needs or enhance it
• Create groovy classes: create(clazz)
• Execute groovy scripts: runScript(scriptName,varCollection)
• Execute groovy source code: runSource(scriptSource,varCollection)
• Execute groovy source code using a custom tag import
• Groovy scripts and source code executions will be binded with the following variables. This means that the groovy scripts that are executed using runScript() and runSource() will have the following variables IMPLICITLY created at runtime. This creates a data bridge between ColdFusion and Groovy.
  • A custom passed structure called varCollection. This can have anything you like.
  • The coldbox request collection: coldbox_rc
  • The following coldfusion variables:
    • cf_pagecontext : The coldfusion pagecontext object
    • cf_application : The coldfusion application scope
    • cf_server : The coldfusion server scope
    • cf_session : The coldfusion session scope (if available)

So how does it work. Well, first of all, the download includes a very simple application that you can replicate and learn from.  As our integration progresses we will be adding more functionality and some extra surprises our very own Sana Ullah has been working on for quite a while now. Step1: Install the custom plugin in your application or as a core plugin, basically drop the GroovyLoader folder in your plugins directory of your app Step 2: Init the plugin on application start, usually the application start handler: Step 3: That's it, you can now use it a la carte to create groovy classes, run scripts, or run on deman source code via the method or the imported tag. You can see some sample handler methods below: var rc = event.getCollection(); rc.oHello = instance.GroovyLoader.create("Hello"); event.setView("home"); var rc = event.getCollection(); instance.GroovyLoader.clearClazzCache(); setNextEvent('groovy'); rc.varCollection = {createdAt=now()}; instance.GroovyLoader.runScript('Test',rc.varCollection); event.setView("runscript"); var rc = event.getCollection(); /* Source */ var source = "varCollection.GroovyArray = [1,2,3,4]"; rc.varCollection = {createdAt=now()}; instance.GroovyLoader.runSource(source,rc.varCollection); event.setView("runSource"); def today = coldbox_rc["today"] def SubjectLine = ["Hello","my","name","is","Luis Majano.","Expressed at",today] //Place in ColdBox event context coldbox_rc["SubjectLine"] = SubjectLine.join("_") I hope you enjoy this plugin and you help make it even better and better.