Setting environment variables for Grails on OSX

The best place to store environment variables on OS X is /etc/launchd.conf. The contents of that file are accessible by console applications, and also (unlike ~/.bashrc and the like) by desktop applications.

Paths should be defined in /etc/paths.

In /etc/launchd.conf:

setenv JAVA_HOME /Library/Java/Home
setenv GRAILS_HOME /Developer/grails-1.2.1

In /etc/paths:

/Developer/grails-1.2.1/bin

Max-width / max-height in IE

IE does not play nice with max-width and max-height. Here's how to handle it...

/* real browsers */
max-width: 500px;
max-height: 500px;

/* IE */
width: expression(this.width > 499 ? "500px" : "auto");
height: expression(this.height > 499 ? "500px" : "auto");

Java VM options for Grails usage

When developing large(ish) Grails applications, you probably will need to adjust your heap and permgen sizes. Here be the Options!

-Xmx512m -Xms512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128M

How to protect everything from XSS

Simply, add .encodeAsHTML() to everything that users have input on and are printed to views.

For example, if the malicious user changes his/her name to <script src="evilscript.js">giveMeAdminRights(); </script> , using user.name.encodeAsHTML() will prevent the script from being run when the admin views the user's profile.

Also the fieldValue tag will do the same, like this: <g:fieldValue bean="${user}" field="name"/ >

The IE 7 z-index problem

Ok, this one is not Grails, but still it took a painful while to get my head around: The IE 7 z-index problem.

ApplicationContext

Accessing application context

import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContextAware
import org.springframework.beans.BeansException
import org.springframework.context.ApplicationContext

class MyServiceOrController 
  implements ApplicationContextAware {
    
  def applicationContext    

    def void setApplicationContext(
      ApplicationContext appctx) throws BeansException {
        applicationContext = appctx
    }
}

Running Grails commands in specific environment

Every now and then there's a need to run Grails commands from command prompt, in a specific environment. For example, to create a WAR in demo environment:

grails -Dgrails.env=demo war

Importing stuff in GSP files

Sometimes (pretty often, actually) there's a need for importing classes inside GSP files. Here's how the syntax goes:

<%@ page import="fi.company.project.enums.ThingType" %>