Grails 3 upgrade - unable to resolve class grails.plugin.rendering.pdf.PdfRenderingService

Question

I inherited a multi-module grails application based on Grails 2.5.4.

I installed groovy 3.0.4 and grails 3.3.11, and I completed the grails upgrade tasks base on the tutorial provided on the official website ( https://docs.grails.org/3.0.x/guide/upgrading.html ).

I'm dealing with tons of code adaptation but I'm bumping on a particular issue as I try to build the project, I'm facing the following issue:

C:\repo\upgraded-app\myapp-web\grails-app\services\bitt\PdfRenderingService.groovy: 9: unable to resolve class grails.plugin.rendering.pdf.PdfRenderingService
 @ line 9, column 1.
   @Transactional
   ^

The code involved is the following:

import com.lowagie.text.pdf.BaseFont
import grails.transaction.Transactional
import grails.util.Environment
import org.w3c.dom.Document
import org.xhtmlrenderer.pdf.ITextRenderer

@Transactional
class PdfRenderingService extends grails.plugin.rendering.pdf.PdfRenderingService {
...

and my build.gradle file is the following:

buildscript {
    repositories {
        mavenLocal()
        maven { url "https://repo.grails.org/grails/core" }
    }
    dependencies {
        classpath "org.grails:grails-gradle-plugin:$grailsVersion"
        classpath "org.grails.plugins:hibernate5:${gormVersion-".RELEASE"}"
        classpath "com.bertramlabs.plugins:asset-pipeline-gradle:2.15.1"
    }
}

version "0.1"
group "bitt.web"

apply plugin:"eclipse"
apply plugin:"idea"
apply plugin:"war"
apply plugin:"org.grails.grails-web"
apply plugin:"asset-pipeline"
apply plugin:"org.grails.grails-gsp"

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

dependencies {  
    compile project(':../bitt-core')
    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-web-boot"
    compile "org.grails:grails-logging"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-rest"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-databinding"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-i18n"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-services"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-url-mappings"
    compile "org.grails:grails-plugin-interceptors"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:cache"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:async"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:scaffolding"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:events"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:hibernate5"
    compile "org.hibernate:hibernate-core:5.1.16.Final"
    compile "org.grails.plugins:gsp"

    compile 'org.grails.plugins:spring-security-core:3.2.3'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:spring-security-acl:3.2.1'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:grails-markdown:3.0.0'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:rendering:2.0.3'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:excel-export:2.1'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:grails-cookie:2.0.3'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:spring-security-ui:3.0.2'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:http-builder-helper:1.1.0'
    compile 'org.grails.plugins:audit-logging:3.0.6'

    console "org.grails:grails-console"
    profile "org.grails.profiles:web"
    runtime "org.glassfish.web:el-impl:2.1.2-b03"
    runtime "com.h2database:h2"
    runtime "org.postgresql:postgresql:9.4-1203-jdbc42"
    runtime "org.apache.tomcat:tomcat-jdbc"
       runtime "com.bertramlabs.plugins:asset-pipeline-grails:2.15.1"
    testCompile "org.grails:grails-gorm-testing-support"
    testCompile "org.grails.plugins:geb"
    testCompile "org.grails:grails-web-testing-support"
    testCompile "org.grails.plugins:geb:1.1.2"
    testRuntime "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-htmlunit-driver:2.47.1"
    testRuntime "net.sourceforge.htmlunit:htmlunit:2.18"
    testRuntime "org.seleniumhq.selenium:selenium-chrome-driver:2.47.1"
}

bootRun {
    jvmArgs('-Dspring.output.ansi.enabled=always')
    addResources = true
    String springProfilesActive = 'spring.profiles.active'
    systemProperty springProfilesActive, System.getProperty(springProfilesActive)
}

tasks.withType(Test) {
    systemProperty "geb.env", System.getProperty('geb.env')
    systemProperty "geb.build.reportsDir", reporting.file("geb/integrationTest")
    systemProperty "webdriver.chrome.driver", System.getProperty('webdriver.chrome.driver')
    systemProperty "webdriver.gecko.driver", System.getProperty('webdriver.gecko.driver')
}

assets {
    minifyJs = true
    minifyCss = true
    includes = ["fonts/*"]
}

The code above mentioned is working fine in Grails 2... but now provokes a compilation error with Grails 3 ... any idea why ?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Upgrading between major Grails versions is not that easy, as Gradle config has big differences.

I suggest you use Grails Starter to get a sample app, unpack the build.gradle , gradle.properties from there, and merge your old config (mostly dependencies) into it.

Configuration has also changed from .groovy files to .yml, consider migrating them as well.