First experiences with IntelliJ… and its stunning Groovy/Grails support

An article by Glen    4 Comments

After GrailsExchange, I put it on my TODO list to checkout IntelliJ. Some of the guys were demoing certain features of the JetGroovy plugin and some of the Grails support looked just stunning. So I downloaded the trial, installed the JetGroovy plugin, and created a new Grails app.

I’m a hardcore Eclipse user, and have never used Idea before, but the learning curve is pretty nice. So what about the Groovy/Grails stuff? I’m only a week in, but the things I use *all the time* are the quick switch options between Domain/Controller/View/Test for a given object. That saves *so* much time..(in screengrab below I have everything related to the Entry domain class instantly onscreen)

The other massive timesaver is the great work they have put into getting Groovy completion happening. The support is still not complete, but it is a long way there. Being able to control-click on a class to jump there is sensational.. and I haven’t even started playing with the Groovy Refactor support! Autocomplete also works great on Grails custom taglbs in the gsp view (which is a huge timesaver for me since I have the memory of a goldfish…)

They’ve done some cute stuff with the domain modelling gear too. You can get a nice pick of where your dependencies are setup (which is super helpful in getting a “lay of the land” for the project).

So first impressions are excellent. The IntelliJ guys have done a really nice What’s new page where you can see all the integration points with a ton of screengrabs.

I’ll be giving it a solid workout over the next month…