Grails: Expose LoginController for programmatic login - web-services

Question

So I am working on a Grails/Flex toy project. I have a controller(LoginController) that I am using to perform backend authentication on my Flex app. However, I have been unable to "find" my controller. What I mean by that is I get a HTTP Status 404 error when trying to access
http://localhost:8080/OrlandoGrails/LoginController/login.json
Here is my sad, sad little controller as it is in its proof-of-concept state.
package orlandograils
class LoginController {
static allowedMethods = [login: "POST", login: "GET"]
def login(String username, String password )
{
return "Hello"
}
}
I've seen the documentation concerning RESTful services, but they always seem to concern a domain object which I don't have. In any case, I have also added this to my UrlMappings.groovy file
"/LoginController/login.json"(resource:"LoginController")
Any help on what I'm doing horribly wrong would be greatly appreciated. Also, is there a way to list Grails routes like one can with RoR or Symfony2?
Also, while the bulk of my services will be over the amf channels, my authentication is occurring over http.

Answer 1

It isn't entirely clear what you are trying to accomplish but one problem with your sample is that in your URL mapping you are specifying the name of a controller as your resource, which doesn't make sense. That could be a domain class, but not a controller.
If all you want to do is map a url to particular action in the controller you can do something like this in UrlMappings.groovy...
"/LoginController/login.json"(controller: 'login', action: 'login')
Normally you wouldn't have "Controller" in the url so something like this would be more common...
"/login/login.json"(controller: 'login', action: 'login')
From the little code snippet it also isn't clear what role you want JSON to play. Maybe you just want something like this...
"/login"(controller: 'login', action: 'login')
If you can further describe what you are trying to accomplish I can clarify.

Answer 2

In regards to getting a listing of routes (e.g. URL Mappings) you can run grails url-mappings-report
Also note to modify url-mapping to look like:
"/LoginController/login.json"(controller: "login", action: "login")
If resource is used then default action methods has to be show, create, update and delete
//Using resource: would look for a show() action method for a GET
//request which you don't have in your case. And, note name of controller used
//is login instead of LoginController
"/LoginController/login.json"(resource: "login")
As far as the 404 is concerned it's looking for a corresponding view called "hello.gsp" If you want to render text then use:
render text: 'hello'

Answer 3

The original post includes this:
package orlandograils
class LoginController {
static allowedMethods = [login: "POST", login: "GET"]
def login(String username, String password )
{
return "Hello"
}
}
The allowedMethods property there is bogus. Keys in a Map have to be unique. That code attempts to put the key login in the Map twice. If the intent is to say that the login method may be accessed via POST or GET then this makes sense...
static allowedMethods = [login: ['POST', 'GET']]
The code as written is valid, but it doesn't do what it was probably intended to do. That Map will evaluate to only have 1 value associated with the login key. That doesn't have anything to do with Grails, that is just standard Map behavior.
$ groovysh
Groovy Shell (2.1.9, JVM: 1.7.0_45)
Type 'help' or '\h' for help.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
groovy:000> [login: 'GET', login: 'POST']
===> {login=POST}
groovy:000>
Notice that the expression evaluates to a Map with the value "POST" associated with the login key.