My attempts to make my experience developing Play 2 web-applications (in Scala) more Rails-like. I show 3 frameworks employed that draw nearer to the Ruby/Rails spirit than Play's default offerings.

1. à la
Sebastian Nozzi

2. Background
• Working with Java since 2001
• Flirting with Smalltalk all these years
• Involved with Rails since September 2012
• Hooked with Scala since January 2013
• Developing with Play since June 2013

3. Ruby
Let’s talk about

5. “A dynamic, open source
programming language with
a focus on simplicity and
productivity.
It has an elegant syntax
that is natural to read and
easy to write.”

6. Let’s talk about

8. “Ruby on Rails is an open-
source web framework that’s
optimized for programmer
happiness and sustainable
productivity.
It lets you write beautiful
code by favoring convention
over configuration.”

9. How Ruby is (self) perceived

10. • Heavily inspired from Rails
• Fun. Productive. Save + Reload.
• Convention over Configuration.
• Routing. REST. MVC...
• ... but I missed some things ...

11. ActiveRecord
db:migrate
Cucumber + Capybara
Anorm? Slick?
Evolutions?
Specs?
Rails’ vs. Play’s default offerings

12. not “railsy” enough

13. ActiveRecord
db:migrate
Cucumber + Capybara
ActiveRecord (for Scala)
Flyway
Cucumber-JVM +
Fluentlenium
More “Rails-like” alternatives

15. case class User(var username: String) extends ActiveRecord {
lazy val posts = hasMany[Post]
}
case class Post(var text: String) extends ActiveRecord with
Timestamps {
var userId: Long = _
lazy val user = belongsTo[User]
}
Declaring Entities

16. object Tables extends ActiveRecordTables {
val users = table[User]("users")
val posts = table[Post]("posts")
}
object User extends ActiveRecordCompanion[User]
object Post extends ActiveRecordCompanion[Post]
Declaring the Schema

17. val newUser = User(username=“Homer”).create()
val users: List[User] = User.toList
User.findBy(“username”, “Homer”).foreach { user =>
val posts = user.posts.orderBy(_.createdAt desc).toList
...
...
user.posts << Post(“Ohhh donuts!”)
}
Basic Operations

19. Play Integration

20. object Global extends GlobalSettings {
override def onStart(app: Application) {
if(!Play.isTest) {
val flyway = new Flyway()
// .. get values from Play’s config ...
flyway.setDataSource(url, user, password)
flyway.setInitOnMigrate(true)
flyway.migrate()
}
Tables.initialize(...) // ActiveRecord
}
}
Triggering the Migrations

21. object Global extends GlobalSettings {
override def onStart(app: Application) {
if(!Play.isTest) {
val flyway = new Flyway()
// .. get values from Play’s config ...
flyway.setDataSource(url, user, password)
flyway.setInitOnMigrate(true)
flyway.migrate()
}
Tables.initialize(...) // ActiveRecord
}
}
Initializing ActiveRecord

22. SQL-based Migrations

23. package db.migration
class V1_03__CreateSomePosts extends JdbcMigration {
override def migrate(ignoredConnection: Connection) {
...
...
...
...
...
}
}
Code-based Migrations

24. package db.migration
class V1_03__CreateSomePosts extends JdbcMigration {
override def migrate(ignoredConnection: Connection) {
User.findBy("username", "Homer").foreach { homer =>
homer.posts << Post("I'm hungry")
homer.posts << Post("I should go to Moe's")
homer.posts << Post("Or order some Pizza")
}
}
}
Code-based Migrations

25. + Fluentlenium

26. • Write in plain English
• Separation of specification / implementation

27. Feature: Posting status updates
The goal of the system is keep co-workers
informed by posting status updates.
Background:
Given that user "manager" exists
And that user "manager" posted
| first day at work |
| meeting people |
| working like crazy |
Scenario: Posts are ordered chronologically (newest on top)
When I go to the posts page of user "manager"
Then the post nr. 1 should contain "working"
And the post nr. 2 should contain "meeting"
And the post nr. 3 should contain "first"

28. When("""^I type "([^"]*)" in the "([^"]*)" field$""") {
(text: String, fieldName: String) =>
...
}
And("""^press "([^"]*)"$""") { (buttonLabel: String) =>
...
...
}
Then("""^I should be on the posts page of "([^"]*)"$""") { (username: String) =>
...
...
...
}
Step Declarations

29. • Part of Play2
• DSL wrapping Selenium
• PhantomJS for headless testing
Fluentlenium

30. When("""^I type "([^"]*)" in the "([^"]*)" field$""") {
(text: String, fieldName: String) =>
...
}
And("""^press "([^"]*)"$""") { (buttonLabel: String) =>
...
...
}
Then("""^I should be on the posts page of "([^"]*)"$""") { (username: String) =>
...
...
...
}

31. When("""^I type "([^"]*)" in the "([^"]*)" field$""") {
(text: String, fieldName: String) =>
browser.fill("*", withName(fieldName)).`with`(text)
}
And("""^press "([^"]*)"$""") { (buttonLabel: String) =>
val button = browser.find("button", withText(buttonLabel))
button.click()
}
Then("""^I should be on the posts page of "([^"]*)"$""") { (username: String) =>
val user = User.findBy("username", username).get
val expectedUrl = controllers.routes.UserActions.posts(user.id).url
driver.getCurrentUrl() should endWith(expectedUrl)
}
Step Implementations

32. Conclusions

33. Conclusions
• Satisfied with my choices (so far)
• Integration was doable
• Play flexible enough
• to replace some parts
• to let different libraries co-exist
• Reached a more Rails-like experience

34. Some Thoughts

35. Some Thoughts
• Programming can (and should!) be fun
• Scala embraces some of that “fun”
• ... but we can do more
• Go check Ruby / Rails
• Let’s steal get inspired from them ;-)

36. Thank you