Book Image

Learning Play! Framework 2

By : Andy Petrella
Book Image

Learning Play! Framework 2

By: Andy Petrella

Overview of this book

<p>The Learning Play! Framework 2 has been created for web developers that are building web applications. The core idea is to focus on the HTTP features and to enable them through a simplification lens. Building a web application no longer requires a configuration phase, an environment setup, or a long development lifecycle - it's integrated!<br /><br />Learning Play! Framework 2 will enable any web developers to create amazing web applications taking advantage of the coolest features. It's the fastest way to dive into Play!, focusing on the capabilities by using them in a sample application. Although essentially Java based code, a Scala version is presented as well – giving an opportunity to see some Scala in action.<br /><br />After setting up the machine and learning some Scala, you will construct an application which builds from static to dynamic, before introducing a database. <br /><br />Then we'll focus on how data can be consumed and rendered in several ways. This will enable some real time communication through WebSocket and Server-Sent Event – on both server and client sides.</p> <p>The book will end with testing and deployment, which completes any web development project.</p>
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
Learning Play! Framework 2
Credits
About the Author
Acknowledgement
About the Reviewers
www.packtpub.com
Preface
Materials
Index

Feeding some data


In this section, we'll cover the basis of dealing with data, both on the client side within HTML views and the server side by manipulating a domain model.

Actually, Play! 2 provides helpers and commodities for these two sides and eases their integration, even if a wire transfer occurs in between them.

We'll start by allowing the user of our application to provide some data, and the most common way to do that is by using HTML forms. Hence Play! 2 brings a shared concept for forms on the client and server sides.

Forming a (server) form

The Play! 2 data API is based on the notion of a form to declare a structure. For that, the framework contains a fully-fledged API that resides under the package play.api.libs.data, wherein we'll find the Form class. In order to learn how to use it, we'll see how to create a user of our application.

We'll start with the simplest User structure ever:

Ok, for now our User class is just a wrapper around a name; of course, it will be enhanced further...