The popular open source Groovy-based Grails web application development framework lets you build agile, lightweight, real-world web and even enterprise Java applications. Grails’ current and upcoming evolutions are oriented toward extensibility and plug-ins, so it is critical to understand and leverage the plug-in-based architecture of Grails, as well as its extensible plug-in capability. It is also important for you to learn about the rich set of plug-ins already available for Grails, and how they can be used to provide rich features while speeding up development at the same time. This book covers these aspects, giving developers a guide for productive and rapid Grails development. Learn Grails structure and RAD using Grails. Learn plug-in architecture and development. Leverage existing plug-ins. What you’ll learn All about the internals of the Grails web application development framework All about Grails plug-ins and their architecture, including why they’re needed and how they’re used How to develop a Grails plug-in from scratch How to create, integrate, and use plug-ins in a real web application How to use existing Grails plug-ins for Ajax, RIAs, web services, security, and more Who this book is for This book is for Groovy and Grails developers, Grails plug-in developers, and Spring/Java Web developers.