Playing with Play

I have to spend some time on a project that will provide and use REST APIs. After a rapid comparison between Play and Spring (see below), I start with Play and Scala. I'm a beginner in Play and in Scala, so assume that information below can be naive or incorrect.

Play vs Spring

• Which is better, Play Framework or Spring MVC? How should I decide what to use? - Quora - 29-Jan-2016

Installation

On a fresh Linux Mint 17.3 64-bit machine, following Play installation documentation:

• download Oracle Java 8 SDK (the x64 tar.gz version)
• unpack the tarball
• move its contents to /usr/jdk/:

sudo mkdir /usr/jdk
sudo mv jdk1.8.0_102 /usr/jdk/

• make it visible:

sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/java" "java" "/usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/java" 1
sudo update-alternatives --set java /usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/java
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javac" "javac" "/usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/javac" 1
sudo update-alternatives --set javac /usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/javac
sudo update-alternatives --install "/usr/bin/javaws" "javaws" "/usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/javaws" 1
sudo update-alternatives --set javaws /usr/jdk/jdk1.8.0_102/bin/javaws

• download Activator offline distribution
• unzip the archive
• move its contents to ~/DevTools/
• add its bin folder to PATH, for instance by adding following line to .bashrc:

export PATH="$HOME/DevTools/activator-dist-1.3.10/bin":$PATH

• download IntelliJ Community Edition
• unpack the tarball
• move its contents to ~/DevTools/
• add an entry to Mint menu (the command has to run idea.sh in the bin subdirectory) - Note: first start allows to add an IntelliJ entry to the menu. Didn't test this.
• at first start, request Scala plugin installation

Proxy configuration

If you are behind a proxy, configure IntelliJ settings:

• once a project is opened: File / Settings... / Appearance & Behaviour / System Settings / HTTP Proxy
• File / Settings... / Build, Execution, Deployment / Build Tools / SBT: add following parameters to JVM options:

-Dhttp.proxyHost=<proxyHost> -Dhttp.proxyPort=<proxyPort> -Dhttps.proxyHost=<proxyHost> -Dhttps.proxyPort=<proxyPort>

Configure Activator as well:

• create (or update) ~/.activator/activatorconfig.txt file:

# Proxy settings
-Dhttp.proxyHost=proxy
-Dhttp.proxyPort=8080
-Dhttps.proxyHost=proxy
-Dhttps.proxyPort=8080
# Here we configure the hosts which should not go through the proxy.  You should include your private network, if applicable.
-Dhttp.nonProxyHosts="localhost|127.0.0.1"
# These are commented out, but if you need to use authentication for your proxy, please fill these out.
#-Dhttp.proxyUser=PUT YOUR PROXY USER HERE
#-Dhttp.proxyPassword=PUT YOUR PROXY PASSWORD HERE 

• copy ~/.activator/activatorconfig.txt to ~/.sbt/jvmargs
• add following code to line 147 of <activatorFolder>/bin/activator file (if your Activator version is 1.3.10, or if line 394: addConfigOpts: command not found error message is displayed when you start Activator):

addConfigOpts () {
  dlog "[addConfigOpts] arg = '$*'"
  for item in $*
  do
    addJava "$item"
  done
}

(references:  https://www.lightbend.com/activator/docs and https://github.com/steveswing/activator/commit/3dd59494d01d4f75a3340e5007f12daf302da051)

Hello world

• run Activator web interface:

activator ui

• visit localhost:8888 URL
• for Java, select Tutorials / Play Java Intro
• create app, play with it. This video explains what's going on under the hood.
• for Scala, the tutorial is Play Scala Intro. Associated video.

Reference material

Play documentation

• main entry point

Activator and sbt

• main entry point

Play with Java

• main concepts for Java

Play with Scala

• main concepts for Scala
• Play 2.5 APIs

Examples, tutorials

• Template for Scala Play + Bootstrap + AngularJS

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