Michael G. Kimsal said
I'll say up front I expected to 'like' the book. Apress does a decent job as a tech publisher, and the "recipes" format is generic enough that it's hard to screw up. That said, I was expecting to give it 3 stars unless it was *really* bad. It's not. It's much better than I expected.

This is probably my new 'favorite' book right because of its utility. As I said, the 'recipe' approach is hard to screw up, but some authors manage to do so anyway. How? By including too much repetitive information that is in online tutorials or manuals, and ignoring the 'real world' use cases that developers face. Bashar's book seems to avoid those issues pretty well.

I've got two modes I use tech books for: 1) when I'm facing a serious problem which I need an immediate answer to, and 2) when I'm just casually browsing to see what new stuff I can surprise myself with. Bashar's book has proved itself useful to me twice in the first 3 weeks of owning it on point 1 (saving me probably 2-3 hours of research/testing/work) and I've enjoyed going through random sections in it in "point 2" mode.

This book belongs on the shelf of any serious Groovy/Grails developer, along with the new The Definitive Guide to Grails, Second Edition (Expert's Voice in Web Development). The DGGv2 is almost a bit overwhelming, and while it's good, I might actually recommend Beginning Groovy and Grails: From Novice to Professional (Beginning from Novice to Professional) instead, for people just starting out with Groovy and Grails.

Lars Vogel said
Groovy and Grails Recipes is an good introduction into programming with Groovy and Grails.

Personally I find the title misleading; from a "Recipes" book I would general expect typical solutions for complex problems. This book is an introduction into Groovy and Grails and not necessary a recipes book which you uses for specific problems.

Despite this the book can be used to start Groovy and Grails. It is devided into two parts (Groovy Page 3 -203) and Grails (Page 207 - 376). The Groovy part covers the basic concepts of the language, describes builders, connection with databases, testing and some handling of XML.

The Grails part covers the the creation of controllers, GSP, domain models, security and testing.

M. Hirzalla said
I bought this book as a first Groovy and Grails reference since I am already a Java programmer and I was not disappointed. It served exactly what I needed it for through a very easy to follow structure and good organization.

The author does an excellent job in explaining ideas in simple terms and great examples. The passion of the author clearly shows in the text and in the overall style of the book.

I think the book is oriented towards those who understand programming in general and have some Java knowledge in particular. If you are totally new to programming, I would recommend another book in addition to this one where programming principles are explained. This book will always have a place on my desk since I can always refer to short snippets of useful code and solutions. I think the online version of the book is great as well since you can find things faster.

Overall, a great book and fills a gap in the available books about Groovy and Grails.

Ayman said
I picked this book to start learning groovy & grails. It is one of the few books that combine both topics. I did start reading the book and i really do enjoy how simple and easy to follow the book towards learning these subjects.

Sami said
This book is a great book for learning about Groovy and Grails by example. There is more coverage of Groovy than Grails, which I consider is a good thing because the Groovy documentation is not as good as the Grails one. The examples are pretty illustrative and easy to follow. Overall I think the author did a very good job explaining Groovy and Grails using a Q & A approach. I do recommend this book.