Consuming .groovy files as runtime classes

Groovy has the ability to load .groovy files at runtime as normal class files, without the need to compile them first. This is how you do the same in a Java program. It took a bit of fiddling to get this to work, but this does the trick.

	public class GroovyClassloaderTest {
	@Test
	public void loadGroovyScript() throws Exception {
	CompilerConfiguration compilerConfiguration = new CompilerConfiguration();
	compilerConfiguration.setClasspath("/base/directory/containing/groovy/files");
	GroovyClassLoader gcl = new GroovyClassLoader(getClass().getClassLoader(), compilerConfiguration);
	Class<?> cls = gcl.loadClass("SampleClass", true, true, true);
	}
	}

view raw gistfile1.java hosted with ❤ by GitHub

What this does is to create a Groovy Classloader that is configured to automatically compile all groovy files under "/base/directory/containing/groovy/files". If you then ask this Classloader for a class that exists as a normal class, it will provide it from it's parent. If however the class is actually written in an uncompiled .groovy file in that directory, it will also provide it having compiled the .groovy file automatically.