Groovy Projects

The NetBeans IDE directly supports Groovy, a dynamic scripting language for the Java Platform, and Grails, a web application framework that leverages the Groovy language. Use it to develop 100% pure Groovy applications, or mix Groovy with Java and take advantage of Groovy's dynamic nature in your Java projects.

Groovy Source Code Editor

The Groovy editor supports syntax highlighting and code folding. The code completion can handle method reference and safe dereference operators, and it provides names of dynamic methods for Grails domain and controller classes. It highlights occurrences and is integrated with the IDE's navigator.

Groovy and Java SE Project Integration

Groovy integrates nicely with Java in any Java SE project: You can call Groovy classes from Java code, and Java classes from Groovy code. To set up a pure Groovy project, create new Java SE project, add your Groovy class or script, and press Run.

Grails Web Applications

For the web tier, the NetBeans IDE fully supports the Grails 1.3 framework. Multiple Grails actions are integrated into the IDE's workflow: You control the status of your Grails application from the Services window, you can run Grails generators, run Grails commands on projects, and build Groovy Server Pages (GSP). The NetBeans IDE also opens existing Grails projects without adding any metadata.

 Introduction to Groovy in the NetBeans IDE