Best practices for grails index page - grails

Question

What is the right way to populate the model for the index page in a grails app? There is no IndexController by default, is there some other mechanism for getting lists of this and that into the model?

Answer 1

I won't claim that this is the right way, but it is one way to start things off. It doesn't take much to have a controller be the default. Add a mapping to UrlMappings.groovy:
class UrlMappings {
static mappings = {
"/$controller/$action?/$id?"{
constraints {
// apply constraints here
}
}
"500"(view:'/error')
"/"
{
controller = "quote"
}
}
}
Then add an index action to the now default controller:
class QuoteController {
def index = {
...
}
}
If what you want to load is already part of another action simply redirect:
def index = {
redirect(action: random)
}
Or to really get some reuse going, put the logic in a service:
class QuoteController {
def quoteService
def index = {
redirect(action: random)
}
def random = {
def randomQuote = quoteService.getRandomQuote()
[ quote : randomQuote ]
}
}

Answer 2

I couldn't get Ed T's example above to work. Perhaps Grails has changed since then?
After some experimentation and some rummaging on the net, I ended up with this in UrlMappings.groovy:
"/"(controller: 'home', action: 'index')
My HomeController looks like this:
class HomeController {
def index = {
def quotes = = latest(Quote.list(), 5)
["quotes": quotes, "totalQuotes": Quote.count()]
}
}
And in views/home, I have an index.gsp file. That makes the index.gsp file in views unnecessary, so I removed it.

Answer 3

The good answer: If you need to populate a model for the index page, it's time to change from using a straight index.gsp to an index controller.
The evil answer: If you create a filter whose controller is '*', it'll get executed even for static pages.

Answer 4

In grails 1.3.6 for just adding
"/index.gsp"(uri:"/")
to UrlMappings.groovy worked fine for me. It has the same effect as adding a new controller and mappings like described before.
Below is my complete UrlMappings.groovy:
class UrlMappings {
static mappings = {
"/$controller/$action?/$id?"{
constraints {
// apply constraints here
}
}
"/"(view:"/index")
"500"(view:'/error')
"/index.gsp"(uri:"/")
}
}