Monday, October 21, 2013

PLAY framework for J2EE

PLAY framework for J2EE

Play is an open source web application framework, written in Scala and Java, which follows the model–view–controller (MVC) architectural pattern. It aims to optimize developer productivity by using convention over configuration, hot code reloading and display of errors in the browser.[1]
Support for the Scala programming language has been available since version 1.1 of the framework.[2] In version 2.0, the framework core was rewritten in Scala. Build and deployment was migrated to SBT and templates use Scala instead of Groovy.
History
Play was created by software developer Guillaume Bort, while working at Zenexity.[3] Although the early releases are no longer available online, there is evidence of Play existing as far back as May 2007.[4] In 2007 pre-release versions of the project were available to download from Zenexity's website.[5]
In May 2008 the first published code for 1.0 appeared on Launchpad.[6] This was followed by a full 1.0 release in October 2009.[7]
Play 1.1 was released in November 2010 after a move from Launchpad to GitHub. It included a migration from Apache MINA to JBoss Netty, Scala support, native GlassFish container, an asynchronous web services library, OAuth support, HTTPS support and other features.[8]
Play 1.2 was released in April 2011. It included dependency management with Apache Ivy, support for WebSocket, integrated database migration (reversion is not implemented yet[9]), a switch to the H2 database and other features.[10]
Sadek Drobi joined Guillaume Bort late 2011 to create Play 2.0 which was released on March 13, 2012[11] in conjunction with TypesafeStack 2.0.[12]
Play 2.1 was released on February 6, 2013, upgraded to Scala 2.10 and introduced, among other new features, modularisation, a new JSON api, filters and RequireJs support.[13]
Play 2.2 was released on September 20, 2013. Upgraded support for SBT to 0.13, better support for buffering, built in support for gzip and new stage and dist tasks with support for native packaging on several platforms such as OS X (DMG), Linux (RPM, DEB), and Windows (MSI) as well as zipfiles.
Major differences
From other Java frameworks:
·         Stateless: Play 2 is fully RESTful - there is no Java EE session per connection.
·         Integrated unit testing: JUnit and Selenium support is included in the core.
·         API comes with most required elements built-in.
·         Static methods: all controller entry points are declared as static (or equivalently, in Scala, methods on Scala objects). After requests were made for this to be customisable, Play 2.1 now supports other styles of controllers, so controllers need not be static/Scala objects; however, this is still the default.
·         Asynchronous I/O: due to using JBoss Netty as its web server, Play can service long requests asynchronously rather than tying up HTTP threads doing business logic like Java EE frameworks that don't use the asynchronous support offered by Servlet 3.0.[16]
·         Modular architecture: like Rails and Django, Play comes with the concept of modules.
·         Native Scala support: Play 2 uses Scala internally, but also exposes both a Scala API, and a Java API that is deliberately slightly different to fit in with Java conventions, and Play is completely interoperable with Java.
Components
Play 2.0 makes use of several popular Java libraries:
·         JBoss Netty for the web server
·         No required ORM, but Anorm (Scala) and Ebean (Java) are included for database access
·         Scala for the template engine
·         Built in hot-reloading
·         sbt for dependency management
The following functionality is present in the core:
·         a clean, RESTful framework
·         CRUD: a module to simplify editing of model objects
·         Secure: a module to enable simple user authentication
·         a validation framework based on annotations
·         a job scheduler
·         a simple to use SMTP mailer
·         JSON and XML parsers and marshallers
·         a persistence layer based on JPA
·         an embedded database for quick deployment/testing purposes
·         a full embedded testing framework
·         an automatic file uploads functionality
·         multi-environment configuration awareness
·         a modular architecture, which enables bringing new features in the core easily
·         OpenID and web services clients


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