Chapter 1, Getting Started with Groovy, covers the installation process on different operating systems and the basic tools that come with the language distribution.

Chapter 2, Using Groovy Ecosystem, introduces the Groovy ecosystem—a set of tools for compiling, embedding, building, documenting and running code analysis with Groovy.

Chapter 3, Using Groovy Language Features, shows the different facets of the Groovy language that allows you to write a terser, readable and less ceremonious code in comparison to Java.

Chapter 4, Working with Files in Groovy, covers I/O with Groovy, from simple cases such as reading a file to more complex endeavors mining data from a PDF file or an Excel spreadsheet.

Chapter 5, Working with XML in Groovy, introduces you to recipes that discuss how to consume and produce XML, as well as more advanced topics such serialization.

Chapter 6, Working with JSON in Groovy, covers Groovy's native support for reading and producing JSON documents.

Chapter 7, Working with Databases in Groovy, presents recipes related to data persistence, either through a relational SQL database or a NoSQL data store.

Chapter 8, Working with Web Services in Groovy, explains how to use Groovy to interact with SOAP and REST-based web services.

Chapter 9, Metaprogramming and DSLs in Groovy, covers advanced metaprogramming concepts such as dynamically extending classes with new methods, creating DSLs, and using AST transformation to modify the code at compilation time.

Chapter 10, Concurrent Programming in Groovy, introduces you to the GPars framework and several approaches to execute tasks concurrently.

Chapter 11, Testing with Groovy, covers how to use Groovy for testing not only code using unit tests, but also databases, web services and the performance of your application. This chapter is available online at: http://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/Testingwithgroovy.pdf.