REST - Taking a Closer Look (Part 1)

One of the challenges that I have found in regards to REST is really understanding how it used in practice.  Looking across the internet, there appears to be a vast amount of documentation that talks about the basics.  I have two goals for gathering a better understanding of REST.  First, understand the request model which is well documented all over the internet.  The best way learn something is by doing.  Secondly, look at how more complex operations are constructed and how they impact the design of application.

To frame this out, I am working with Grails and building on top of the implementation discussed in the screencast, Jump Into Grails 2.0.  My experience with Groovy is limited, but I have a good background in Java which I am hoping to leverage in learning/understanding Groovy.  The screencast takes an approach of building a basic application in Grails encompassing the following,

• Setting up application configuration and plugins
• Building basic model, view and controller implementations of 
• User
• Role
• User Role mapping
• Discuss Unit testing - in my opinion very handy and largely automated
• Building a new model, view and controller of a Book.

I don't intend to reproduce the screencast here.  However, as part of this first part I would like to make sure there is enough understanding about the Grails project and how it is built for those looking to understand and answer the same questions I am setting out to answer.

For complete source, access the git repository through git : git://github.com/mhorner/research-grails-rest.git or view it at https://github.com/mhorner/research-grails-rest.