How do I get an instance of a Grails service programmatically

The Grails documentation describes a way to get a service when in a servlet. This might be useful, if you can obtain the same objects in your context:

ApplicationContext ctx = (ApplicationContext)ApplicationHolder.getApplication().getMainContext();
CountryServiceInt service = (CountryServiceInt) ctx.getBean("countryService");
String str = service.sayHello("Some String!");