Comments on: Evaluating code dynamically in Groovy (differences with Ruby)

By: Nicholas Sterling

Nicholas Sterling — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 05:38:52 +0000

Jorge, this is exactly what I needed. Thanks for taking the time to write this up!

I'm curious about what Angsuman had to say; too bad he didn't give more details.

Have you noticed that things work inside the interactive groovysh? The following line fails just as you describe as a hey.groovy script executed with "groovy hey.groovy" but works perfectly when typed into groovysh.

def hey() { println "Hey!" }; evaluate("hey()")

Perhaps groovysh is using something akin to the closure technique you describe?

By: vitalii

vitalii — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 14:51:46 +0000

THANK YOU !!!!!! Thank you Jorge !!! Thank you Internet!

By: Angsuman Chakraborty, Editor Gaea Times

Angsuman Chakraborty, Editor Gaea Times — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 09:54:57 +0000

In Groovy you can directly call evaluate() within the script to evaluate a file in current context. Any variables and closures in the file are available to the calling script.

However there is a simpler way. You can static import (like java) to make all the static methods available within the calling script.

Note: You can also do a regular import.

You know an even simpler way to call static methods in a script within the same directory? abc.methodName() where abc is the name of script and methodName is the static method defined within the script. I will have to say that these are even simpler options than Ruby.

By: Jorge Manrubia

Jorge Manrubia — Thu, 20 May 2010 10:43:05 +0000

Thank you for the tip Josef

By: Josef

Josef — Thu, 20 May 2010 02:39:01 +0000

Jorge: The following script, without using the external code file, shows the ‘problem’ more succinctly:

//file: SayExperiment.groovy
def say(message){
println message
}

def shell = new GroovyShell()
def code = "say hello"
shell.evaluate(code)

Anyway, I used your technique in a recent post “Groovy Object Notation (GrON) for Data Interchange” at http://wp.me/psHIY-6g

— Josef