With the release of Grails 3.1 we can use features defined in a profile when we create a new application. Features will add certain dependencies to our Grails project, so that we can start quickly. To see which features are available we use the profile-info command. This command lists available features for an application. We can choose the features we want to be included and pass them via the --features command line option of the create-app command.

When we look at the features available for the rest-api profile we see the following list:

$ grails profile-info rest-api
...
Provided Features:
--------------------
* asset-pipeline - Adds Asset Pipeline to a Grails project
* hibernate - Adds GORM for Hibernate to the project
* json-views - Adds support for JSON Views to the project
* markup-views - Adds support for Markup Views to the project
* mongodb - Adds GORM for MongoDB to the project
* neo4j - Adds GORM for Neo4j to the project
* security - Adds Spring Security REST to the project

$

Let's create a new Grails application with the rest-api profile and use the mongodb, json-views and security features:

$ grails create-app --profile=rest-api --features=mongodb,json-views,security api
| Application created at /Users/mrhaki/Projects/mrhaki.com/blog/posts/samples/grails31/api
$

When we look at the contents of the generated build.gradle, we can see dependencies for the features we have selected:

// File: build.gradle
buildscript {
    ext {
        grailsVersion = project.grailsVersion
    }
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        maven { url "https://repo.grails.org/grails/core" }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath "org.grails:grails-gradle-plugin:$grailsVersion"
        classpath "org.grails.plugins:views-gradle:1.0.0"
    }
}

version "0.1"
group "api"

apply plugin:"eclipse"
apply plugin:"idea"
apply plugin:"org.grails.grails-web"
apply plugin:"org.grails.plugins.views-json"

ext {
    grailsVersion = project.grailsVersion
    gradleWrapperVersion = project.gradleWrapperVersion
}

repositories {
    mavenLocal()
    maven { url "https://repo.grails.org/grails/core" }
}

dependencyManagement {
    imports {
        mavenBom "org.grails:grails-bom:$grailsVersion"
    }
    applyMavenExclusions false
}

dependencies {
    compile "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-logging"
    compile "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-autoconfigure"
    compile "org.grails:grails-core"
    compile "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-actuator"
    compile "org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-tomcat"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-url-mappings"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-rest"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-codecs"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-interceptors"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-services"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-datasource"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-databinding"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-async"
    compile "org.grails:grails-web-boot"
    compile "org.grails:grails-logging"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:cache"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:views-json"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:mongodb"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-gsp"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:spring-security-rest:2.0.0.M1"
    console "org.grails:grails-console"
    profile "org.grails.profiles:rest-api:3.1.0"
    testCompile "org.grails:grails-plugin-testing"
    testCompile "org.grails.plugins:geb"
    testCompile "org.grails:grails-datastore-rest-client"
    testRuntime "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-htmlunit-driver:2.47.1"
    testRuntime "net.sourceforge.htmlunit:htmlunit:2.18"
}

task wrapper(type: Wrapper) {
    gradleVersion = gradleWrapperVersion
}

Written with Grails 3.1.