Gracelets is a view/controller technology layered on top of Facelets/JSF. It complements the Facelets templating technology by allowing Groovy scripts to replace or be used in connection with normal Facelets source files and views.

The name came from combining the Gr in Groovy and replacing the F in Facelets with Gr, Groovy Facelets, or Gracelets (yeah, a no-brainer).

One of the inspirations behind Gracelets was the desire to use Groovy scripts, which have many practical applications for many java developers these days, and yet have all the power of Facelets and JSF behind the groovy script. Another inspiration was to at least have the option to develop quick solutions in a single file. Of course the Model-View-Controller concept is marvillous and it is important to keep things seperate, which can also be easily done with Gracelets. But sometimes it is nice not to be forced to do so just to prototype or develop some quick solution that one wants or needs, and Gracelets gives you that option. In other words, Gracelets works fine as simply a view technology in the MVC flow, but also allows you to do more in a single script if you so desire.

The main goal of Gracelets is to complement Facelets and provide more options, flexibility and efficiency to Facelets and JSF users and component developers. Since you can still use normal Facelet XHTML views and everything else you already have invested in JSF/Facelets, you are not forced to use Gracelets even though it is installed/configured. Thus you can choose exactly where you want to use Groovy Facelets/Gracelets in your application. Even inside Gracelet scripts, you can still access the full component/tag set already available in JSF/Facelets. Some of the possible practical uses of Gracelets could be (but is not limited to) the following: