What does this gradle/groovy structure mean?

Question

I'm reading an android gradle build file and I don't understand how some of it works from a syntax perspective and could do with some guidance. I've looked at the gradle and the groovy docs and can't find what I need. To be honest, I don't even know what to search for.

The structure in question is this:

name {
  ...
}

I suspect that it's something to do with closures, but I really don't know what's going on here. This structure is embedded in another identical structure. What are these things, and how are they invoked/read/used by the interpreter?

Answer 1

You are on the right track. This is a closure, that gets called as parameter to the method name .

Like

 name({ /*...*/ })

See the docs for when to leave out parentheses .

The method name must not really exist in that context as this is a widely used pattern in groovy DSLs. methodMissing will be called instead.