Groovy is an agile dynamic language for the Java 2 Platform that has many of the features that people like so much in languages like Python, Ruby and Smalltalk, making them available to Java developers using a Java-like syntax.
Groovy is designed to help you get things done on the Java 2 Platform in a quick, concise and fun way — Groovy brings the power of a scripting language directly into the Java 2 Platform. For example:
- Shell scripting using Groovy allows the full power of the Java Platform to be brought to bear to the task at hand.
- Groovy can be used (and indeed is already being used) as a replacement for Java for small and medium sized applications to execute on the Java 2 Platform.
- Groovy can be used as an embedded language for dynamic business rules or extension points utilizing the agility of Groovy and saving the cost of redeploying applications for each change of rule (especially when the rules are stored in a database).
- Groovy makes writing test cases for unit tests very easy.
As well as being a powerful language for scripting Java objects, Groovy can be used as an alternative compiler to javac to generate standard Java bytecode to be used by any Java project.
Features
- Closure support
- Native syntax for Lists and Maps
- Groovy Markup
- Groovy Path expression language
- Groovlets for implementing Servlets easily in simple Groovy scripts
- Groovy SQL for making SQL more Groovy
- Groovy Beans for simpler syntax for working with beans
- Groovy Template Engines which are pluggable, simple to use, integrate GPath and compile to bytecode
- Groovy Categories allow you to add methods to classes with the "use" keyword
- Ant Scripting
- Regex syntax for neater scripting with regular expressions
- Operator Overloading to simplify working with datatypes Collections and Maps
- Polymorphic iteration and autoboxing
- Compiles straight to Java bytecode
- Works cleanly with all existing Java objects and libraries
News
Dear all,
I'm pleased to announce the release of Groovy 2.1.5.
Groovy 2.1.5 is a bug fix release of the Groovy 2.1 branch. In particular, it fixes a problem we've encountered with Groovy 2.1.4 where the extension module descriptors were not found in the "all" JAR, which meant that the usual nice GDK methods extensions for XML and other modules were not found by Groovy.
You can download Groovy 2.1.5 in the download area and have a look at the JIRA release notes.
Thanks to all who contributed to this release!
Keep on groovy'ing!
The Groovy development team is pleased to announce the release of Groovy 2.1.4.
Groovy 2.1.4 is essentially a bug fix release of our 2.1 branch, and you can dive into the details in our JIRA release notes.
You can get the distribution in our download area.
Thanks a lot to all those who contributed to this release, and we're looking forward to hearing your feedback!
The Groovy development team is happy to announce the joint releases of Groovy 1.8.9, 2.0.7, and 2.1.1!
Read more News on the Groovy Blog
Getting started
Probably the best way to get started on Groovy is to [install a binary distribution|Download} and play with it.
Or try reading the [user guide|Language+Guide} or browsing some of the links on the left of this page.
Current build status
The Groovy project uses DamageControl as a Continuous Integration system to make Groovy build automatically. The little coloured bubble on the left show the status of the last automatic build: if it's green, the build was successful, if it's red, the build failed. And if it is pulsating, it means there's a new build currently in the works.