Spring + Groovy + Services

A simple "Shell" class reads a spring configuration file, and binds all the beans into a Groovy context, then executes the script.

XmlBeanFactory factory = new XmlBeanFactory(new FileInputStream(new File(springFile)));

Binding binding = new Binding();
String[] beans = factory.getBeanDefinitionNames();
for (int i = 0; i < beans.length; i++) {
  String beanName = beans[i];
  binding.setVariable(beanName, factory.getBean(beanName));
}

GroovyShell shell = new GroovyShell(binding);
shell.evaluate(script.toString());

Now, I have a spring XML file lying around for an EJB based application which includes two beans (amongst others): userSearch and sendSMS, these two session beans simply expose the services of the application, given the following wee script:

println "There are ${userSearch.totalUserCount} users in the current system."
println "Sending an SMS message to all admin users..."

userSearch.userAccountSearch(1, 100, "").each {
  if (it.userRole == 1) {
    println "${it.userName} has a phone number of ${it.mobileNo}"
    sendSMS.sendMessage(it.userId,
      "${it.mobileNumber}",
      "Hello ${it.firstName} ${it.lastName} :)",
      "0" )
  }
}

It's a simple script, taking advantage of Groovy's dynamic nature and blocks, Spring's injection of fully configured beans, and the services provided by those beans.

All this is run from a small shell script, which sets up the required classpath, and kicks in the Shell class.

The next step is to get the shell loading the script from STDIN so I can then start writing scripts like:

#!/bin/bmshell

Several benefits I can already see with this is that it highlights areas of the exposed API that somewhat suck and could be improved, and also allows you to easily run adhoc code against a managed system. It's no where near the same as opening a new workspace in Smalltalk and running adhoc code against the live system, but it's getting pretty close.

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