Make your Spring project Groovy

I know there's already an example in the Spring documentation (http://static.springsource.org/spring/docs/2.0.8/reference/dynamic-language.html) of using dynamic languages and having the Spring container instantiate, configure and dependency inject the resulting objects but after trying the example using Maven and STS there's a couple of extra points worth writing down.

So, the first thing I did was to create a new Maven project just using the quickstart archetype. At this point I added the Groovy nature to the newly created project (right click > Groovy > Add Grovy Nature) and added Groovy as a dependency in the POM

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
    <artifactId>groovy</artifactId>
    <version>${groovy.version}</version>
</dependency>

Next I created the Java interface, Groovy script that implements it and a Spring application context to configure my bean. Now at this point you have 2 options:

Option 1
Add the GMaven plugin to your POM to compile your Groovy scripts and configure them as just plain beans in the Spring context

<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>gmaven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>1.0-rc-5</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>generateStubs</goal>
                <goal>compile</goal>
                <goal>generateTestStubs</goal>
                <goal>testCompile</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <sources>
                    <fileset>
                        <directory>${project.build.sourceDirectory}</directory>
                        <includes>
                            <include>**/*.groovy</include>
                        </includes>
                        <directory>${project.build.testDirectory}</directory>
                        <includes>
                            <include>**/*.groovy</include>
                        </includes>
                    </fileset>
                </sources>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

<bean id="messenger" class="org.rhart.GroovyMessenger">
    <property name="message" value="Groovy In Spring Works!" />
</bean>

Option 2
Include *.groovy files as resources to be exported as part of the build and use the lang namespace within the Spring context

<resources>
    <resource>
        <directory>src/main/java</directory>
        <includes>
            <include>**/*.xml</include>
            <include>**/*.xsl</include>
            <include>**/*.groovy</include>
        </includes>
    </resource>
</resources>

<lang:groovy id="messenger" script-source="classpath:org/rhar/GroovyMessenger.groovy">
    <lang:property name="message" value="Groovy In Spring Works!"></lang:property>
</lang:groovy>

You can find the complete Maven based eclipse project here