Question

Im building a Grails app that will have multiple similar websites (each it’s own domain name) with the same code but different design and configuration. (think of blogger)

What is the best method for using different view and even some different logic on a single app without too much hacking?

I’m new to Grails and the method I have in mind is to check all the time to see what the domain name is and to serve the right controller/view. Is there a better way?

Answer 1

I would have a go with the MultiTenant plugin. You mention that views and logic differ, but I’m guessing what will differ most is the data? Use MultiTenant to cleanly separate the data for each site without too much hazzle, and if you store the configuration of views and logic in the DB you get that unique per site as well.

I think MultiTenant is being updated to the latest Grails release, at least I’ve seen that mentioned in the Grails mail list. I think you need to use an 1.2 release until then.

I’m doing something similar to separate data using the Hibernate Filter plugin. My views are the same but I have per-site texts and messages by looking up message “SITE-A.hello.world” first and if not found the default message “hello.world” is retrieved. Just to give you an idea how views may be customized, though you probably need to take it further than that for your system…