Using Bootstrap with Play 2

The easiest way to get bootstrap working with Play 2 is not to separate the bootstrap files in the corresponding stylesheets, javascripts and images folders but just drop the sources in like shown below.

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Getting Play2.0.x to work with Git Bash on Windows

I unzipped play2.0.4 and created a PLAY_HOME variable. I also made sure to add PLAY_HOME to my PATH variable.

nxp10009@NXL01366 /c/development/play-2.0.4
$ echo $PLAY_HOME
C:\development\play-2.0.4

When I tried to run play from the Git Bash shell I ran into below exception. In the past I didn't bother that much and just used the DOS shell as a workaround. But I like to work from one shell only so time to look for a solution.

nxp10009@NXL01366 /c/workspaces/scala
$ play
Error during sbt execution: Could not find configuration file 'c:/development/play-2.0.4/framework/sbt/play.boot.properties'.  Searched:
        file:/c:/workspaces/scala/
        file:/C:/Users/nxp10009/
        file:/C:/development/play-2.0.4/framework/sbt/

Luckily someone created a patch to resolve this issue. You can download the gist and unzip it to some folder. It will contain a file named play_cgywin.patch. So it's matter of applying the patch from within Git Bash. It will log an error but play will work nonetheless.

nxp10009@NXL01366 /c/development/play-2.0.4
$ patch -p1 < c:/tmp/play_cygwin.patch
patching file `framework/build'
Hunk #1 FAILED at 8.
1 out of 1 hunk FAILED -- saving rejects to framework/build.rej
patching file `play'

nxp10009@NXL01366 /c/workspaces/scala
$ play
Getting play console_2.9.1 2.0.4 ...
:: retrieving :: org.scala-sbt#boot-app
        confs: [default]
        5 artifacts copied, 0 already retrieved (3667kB/83ms)
       _            _
 _ __ | | __ _ _  _| |
| '_ \| |/ _' | || |_|
|  __/|_|\____|\__ (_)
|_|            |__/

play! 2.0.4, http://www.playframework.org

Using Play JSON library to expose JSON services

Currently I am experimenting with Playframework. Today we will see how easy it is to generate a JSON response. Let us first take a look at our domain model

package models

case class Contact(firstName: String, lastName: String, age: Int)

object Contact {
  val contacts = Set(
      Contact("Robby", "Pelssers", 35),
      Contact("Davy", "Pelssers", 35),
      Contact("Lindsey", "Pelssers", 9)
  )
  
  def findAll = this.contacts.toList.sortBy(_.firstName)

}

Next let us take a look at a simple controller returning contacts in JSON format

package controllers

import play.api.mvc.{ Action, Controller }
import play.api.libs.json.Json._
import models.Contact

object Contacts extends Controller {

  def toJSON = Action { implicit request =>
    val contacts = Contact.findAll   
    val json = 
      toJson(
        contacts.map(
            contact => toJson(
                Map("firstName" -> toJson(contact.firstName), 
                    "lastName" -> toJson(contact.lastName), 
                    "age" -> toJson(contact.age))
            )    
        )
      )
     
    Ok(json)
  }
  
}

Now it's a matter of mapping a URL to our controller method.

GET     /contacts.json              controllers.Contacts.toJSON

Now let's see if our response looks ok by using curl

$ curl --request GET --include http://localhost:9000/contacts.json
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 160

[{"firstName":"Davy","lastName":"Pelssers","age":35},{"firstName":"Lindsey","lastName":"Pelssers","age":9},{"firstName":"Robby","lastName":"Pelssers","age":35}]