{page.title}

AngularJS Grails Template - Part 2: Advanced Customization

This post is a followup to Part 1 - Getting Started, so if you haven’t already created an application using the Angular Grails Lazybones template, you should probably start there.

Now I’m going talk about the ways you can further customize and tailor the Angular modules that the lazybones template generates.

Project Template

Whenever you run the lazybones generate module command, it references the files found in src/templates/angular/crud in your main project to build out your new module:

The files here mirror your project structure, so you have fine grain control over what files are created and where they ultimately end up.

Any files with a .gtpl extension will be processed by the Groovy’s SimpleTemplateEngine so the rules about escaping characters apply here.

You can use the variables DOLLAR_SIGN, TAB, and NEWLINE within your template files so to add those characters without having to worry about escaping them.

Path Variables

You’ll notice in the screenshot above, that certain folder and file names have values like _resourceName_ or _groupPath_. These refer to values that allow you to have more control over the destination of your template files. Note the use of the underscores surrounding the variable names in the file/folder names.

Here’s a list of the variables that can be used to help build the paths within your project:

Domain properties

In addition to the path variables above, a map of variable for each domain property are add as a variable properties

So given our example domain class Employee:

package com.craigburke

class Employee {
	String firstName
	String lastName
	Date birthDate
	BigDecimal salary

	static constraints = {
		firstName(maxSize: 128)
		lastName(masSize: 256)
		birthDate(required: false, nullable: true)
	}
	
}

The properties variable would have this value within your templates

assert properties == [
	[name: 'firstName', label: 'First Name', type: String, domainClass: false, constraints: [required: true, nullable: false, maxSize: 128] ],
	[name: 'lastName', label: 'Last Name', type: String, domainClass: false, constraints: [required: true, nullable: false, maxSize: 256] ],
	[name: 'birthDate', label: 'Birth Date', type: Date, domainClass: false, constraints: [required: false, nullable: true] ],
	[name: 'salary', label: 'Salary', type: BigDecimal, domainClass: false, constraints: [required: true, nullable: false] ]
]

This takes into account the Grails default of properties being required and non-nullable when determining the constraints.

RenderUtil Class

The RenderUtil class is an easy way to expose new methods or properties to your templates. You can also override any of the variables listed above if you’d like.

Any property or closure assigned to the util map within this file will be available within your templates.

As an example, here’s how I could expose a new method called renderPanel within my templates:

src/templates/angular/RenderUtil.groovy

def util = [:]

util.renderPanel = { text -> 
	"""<div class="panel panel-default">
	  <div class="panel-body">
	    ${text}
	  </div>
	</div>"""
}

return util

These added properties or methods can be used in any of the files found in your template folder (not just HTML files). The HTML files are just where I found these additional methods most useful (using them almost like Grails TagLibs).

Conclusion

I wanted to provide a good starter project for anyone looking to use Grails and AngularJS together but I also wanted to make it easy to configure any aspect of the project.

I’m looking forward to hearing how people are making use of this or if anyone has suggestions. I’m going to use this template extensively in my own work and will continue to work actively on it, so as always feedback is definitely welcome.