---
title: Vaadin On Grails with IntelliJ IDEA
order: 35
layout: page
---

[[vaadin-on-grails-with-intellij-idea]]
= Vaadin on Grails with IntelliJ IDEA

_Versions used in this tutorial: Grails 2.3.x, Vaadin 7.1.x. News and
updates about Vaadin on Grails are available on
https://twitter.com/VaadinOnGrails[VaadinOnGrails]_

In this tutorial we will show how to create and setup
http://grails.org/doc/latest/guide/single.html[Grails] project together
with https://vaadin.com/learn[Vaadin], in IntelliJ IDEA. These two
frameworks Grails and Vaadin are integrated together with this
http://grails.org/plugin/vaadin[plugin].

First we need to setup Grails with IDE,
http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/[IntelliJ IDEA 13] in this tutorial. Or we
could get https://spring.io/tools/ggts[Groovy/Grails Tool Suite]
which is without any fees.

[[setup-ide]]
Setup IDE
+++++++++

1.  Go to http://grails.org/download and get the latest version of
Grails
2.  Unpack it on your local computer and start up IntelliJ IDEA
3.  Open the *New Project* window and select Grails from the list. Click
on *Create...* button and then select the root of your unpacked Grails
archive. 

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/setup-idea.png[Setup IDEA]

[[create-new-project]]
Create New Project
++++++++++++++++++

Fill in the name of the project and choose the latest version of Grails.

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/new-project.png[Create new project]

Click on *Finish* and on the next dialog, choose **Run 'create
app'**

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/create-app-idea.png[Create app IDEA]

Open file `BuildConfig.groovy` and add new plugin as follows:
`compile ":vaadin:7.1.11"`. The latest version of the plugin is always
available on http://grails.org/plugin/vaadin

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/build-config-idea.png[Build config IDEA]

We have to disable Grails to take control over the URLs, so Vaadin can
do it. Open `UrlMappings.groovy` file and remove the mapping, so the
content of the file is the following:

....
class UrlMappings {
  static mappings = {}
}
....

If you see this error, run grails again and compile it again. There an
issue with grails and it is not possible to compile the project in the
first run.

....
target/work/plugins/vaadin-7.1.11/scripts/_Events.groovy: 1: unable to resolve class com.vaadin.grails.VaadinConfiguration @ line 1, column 1.   import com.vaadin.grails.VaadinConfiguration
....

Now we want Vaadin plugin to generate the mandatory files in order to be
able to run Vaadin application. On the right side in the menu, there is
a launch button, click on that one.

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/run-app-idea.png[Run app IDEA]

You can also press `Alt+Cmd+G` on Mac OS or `Ctrl+Alt+G` on Windows and
type `run-app` command there.

Mark `grails-app/vaadin` folder as a source folder in IDE.

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/source-folder-idea.png[Source folder IDEA]

Run the application again and a Vaadin application with a single *Home*
label will be available on http://localhost:8080/ria-app in your
browser.

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/first-run.png[First run]

[[developing]]
Developing
++++++++++

All the Vaadin code should be placed in `grails-app/vaadin` folder. All
the other classes that are not UI related can be put to `src/groovy` or
`src/java`.

Open the generated `MyUI.groovy` file, edit the content a bit and save
the file. See that the class has been recompiled and when you refresh
the page, it gets automatically updated. You don't have to restart the
application or use JRebel for small changes. But if we change the
application context, add a new bean, change method signature and other
'big' changes, we have to restart the application.

image:http://vaadinongrails.com/img/recompile-idea.png[Recompile IDEA]

Now you can continue with
<<VaadinOnGrailsDatabaseAccess#, Vaadin
on Grails - Database access>>