Grace Plugin Core

The grace-plugin-core module is a foundational Grace Framework plugin that provides core Spring bean configuration, custom property editors, development shutdown hooks, and Groovy AOP integration. It has the highest priority (order 0) among plugins to ensure it loads first.

Module Overview

The grace-plugin-core module is defined as a plugin in the Grace Framework settings and depends on core modules including grace-api, grace-core, grace-plugin-api, and grace-spring.

It has API dependencies on Spring AOP, beans, context, core, and Spring Boot autoconfigure, with optional compile-only dependencies on AspectJ runtime and Spring TX.

Important APIs

CoreGrailsPlugin

The main plugin class CoreGrailsPlugin extends Plugin and implements PriorityOrdered with order 0, ensuring it loads before all other plugins.

Key Features:

• Watched Resources: Monitors configuration files in app/conf/spring/resources.xml, app/conf/spring/resources.groovy, app/conf/application.groovy, app/conf/application.yml
• doWithSpring(): Registers custom property editors and development shutdown hooks
• onChange(): Handles hot reloading of XML and Groovy bean definitions

Registered Beans:

• shutdownHook - Development shutdown hook for graceful shutdown in dev mode
• customEditors - Custom property editors for Class and Properties types

Auto-Configuration Classes

CoreConfiguration: Defines essential Spring beans including ClassLoader, ConfigProperties, and ResourceLocator.

GroovyAopAutoConfiguration: Patches Spring's AopConfigUtils via reflection to inject Groovy-aware proxy creators (GroovyAwareAspectJAwareAdvisorAutoProxyCreator), ensuring AOP works correctly with Groovy's dynamic dispatch.