Today I received my pre-ordered copy of the Definitive Guide to Grails, Second Edition. This is the first book I’ve ever pre-ordered on from Amazon. The book seems to be a total rewrite of the first edition and is much thicker as well.

Grails has changed significantly since 0.4 (the version the first edition was based); the new book is based on Grails 1.1 that ’s scheduled to be released of beta within a number or weeks. I’m knee deep in a project now that’s using Grails 1.1 beta2 so this book is very timely!

Though I haven’t read much of the book yet the first thing I noticed was testing is address throughout the entire book, generally near the end of each chapter, demonstrating how to test the features covered in each chapter.  This is fantastic!  Also, I read the chapter on URL Mapping (since my new application relies heavily on custom URL Mappings and I’ve battled through several Grails 1.1 beta bugs) and the material was comprehensive.  So my early impression of this book is very good; it appears to be very thorough and a significant contribution to the Grails community that was much needed. Excellent work Graeme and Jeff.