Using Golang and Graphviz to Visualize Complex Grails Applications

Sat, 03 May 2014 13:59:40 -0400

At work we are maintaining several large and complex grails applications. In order to improve stability and reliability, we’re trying to increase test coverage. But as with all projects, time and resources are limited. In order to get a better understanding of what parts of the application are more important than others, I decided to use Graphviz to help me get a better overview of our applications.

Meet Graphviz

I discovered my love for the dot language when I used it years ago to analyze template hierarchies in a proprietary CMS system I worked on. In a nutshell, it lets you specify a graph with nodes and edges plus some extra attributes for labels, shapes etc. It’s really a concise little language:

Grails 2 Testing Guide

Thu, 06 Feb 2014 13:59:40 -0400

Note: I’m still working on this post, but I already use it as a reference so there’ll be more content over time.

I’ve been quite busy at work with updating a Grails 1.3 application to 2.3.4. While writing a test harness it became apparent that lots of things have changed since I’ve last worked with Grails. Many changes are for the better, especially the integration of Spock framework. However, there were some issues that took me a while to figure out. The Grails docs on testing are comprehensive, but long. Here’s my cheat sheet.

Grails on ilikeorangutans

Using Golang and Graphviz to Visualize Complex Grails Applications

Meet Graphviz

Grails 2 Testing Guide