Griffon is dekstop application development platform for the JVM. Inspired by Grails, Griffon leverages the use of of the Groovy3 language and concepts like Convention over Configuration. The Swing toolkit is the default UI toolkit of choice however others may be used, principaly SWT and JavaFX.
Griffon also allows developers to use a combination of the Groovy and Java languages to write their applications. If this were not enough, Griffon allows the usage of other JVM languages such as Scala, Clojure, Mirah and Jython too.
The capabilities of the platform can be extended by installing plugins; there are many options to choose from as appreciated at the Griffon Central Repository
Griffon encourages the use of the MVC pattern. Griffon also follows in the spirit of the Swing Application Framework (JSR 296), it defines a simple yet powerful application life cycle and event publishing mechanism. Another interesting feature comes from the Groovy language itself: automatic property support and property binding (inspired by BeansBinding (JSR 295)), which makes creating observable beans and binding to their properties a snap! As if property binding was not enough Groovy's SwingBuilder also simplifies building multi-threaded applications, say goodbye to the ugly gray rectangle (the bane of Swing apps)!
Grails developers should feel right at home when trying out Griffon. Many of Grails' conventions and commands are shared with Griffon. Granted, Swing is not the same as HTML/GSP but Builders simplify the task of creating the UI.
Seasoned Java developers will also be able to pick up the pace quickly, as the framework relieves you of the burden of maintaining an application structure, allowing you to concentrate on getting the code right.
The Griffon installation structure is defined as follows
- INSTALL - install instructions
- LICENSE - project license (Apache Software License 2.0)
- README.md - this file
- bash - griffon command autocompletion script
- bin - griffon launchers
- conf - griffon command classloading configuration
- dist - current griffon buildtime and runtime distribution
- doc - miscellaneous documentation
- guide - the Griffon Guide
- api - framework javadocs
- lib - buildtime dependencies
- media - griffon images and icons
- samples
- FileViewer - simple file contents visualizer
- FontPicker - displays available system fonts and preview
- Greet - the 1st Griffon application ever: a Twitter client
- GroovyEdit - simple multi-tabbed file editor
- SwingPad - visual editor for View scripts
- Weatherwidget - showcases animations and network calls
- scripts - minimal set of griffon commands