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I've just started learning Scala, and the first thing I'm going to implement is a tiny web application. I've been using Erlang for the last year to implement server-side software, but I've never wrote web applications before. It will be a great experience.
Are there web-frameworks for Scala except for Lift?
Don't get me wrong, Lift looks awesome. I just want to know how many frameworks there are so that I can then choose between them. It's always a good to have a choice, but I the only thing I found was Lift.
I'm very interested in Scala, but I have not used it yet, so with that caveat, the frameworks I am aware of that are not mentioned in HRJ's answer (Lift, Sweet, Slinky) are:
Scalatra, previously Step (on GitHub)
Play 2 (on GitHub)
Pinky
I wrote a blog post about this.
To summarise, some of the options are:
Lift
Sweet
Slinky
I finally found that none were suitable for me, and developed my own little "framework". (It is not open-source yet).
I like Lift ;-)
Play is my second choice for Scala-friendly web frameworks.
Wicket is my third choice.
Following is a dump of frameworks. It doesn't mean I actually used them:
Coeus. A traditional MVC web framework for Scala.
Unfiltered. A toolkit for servicing HTTP requests in Scala.
Uniscala Granite.
Gardel
Mondo
Amore. A Scala port of the Ruby web framework Sinatra
Scales XML. Flexible approach to XML handling and a simplified way of interacting with XML.
Belt. A Rack-like interface for web applications built on top of Scalaz-HTTP
Frank. Web application DSL built on top of Scalaz/Belt
MixedBits. A framework for the Scala progamming language to help build web sites
Circumflex. Unites several self-contained open source projects for application development using the Scala programming language.
Scala Webmachine. Port of Basho's webmachine in Scala, a REST-based system for building web applications
Bowler. A RESTful, multi-channel ready Scala web framework
Try Play Framework, which also support Scala.
One very interesting web framework with commercial deployment is Scalatra, inspired by Ruby's Sinatra. Here's an InfoQ article about it.
I find Unfiltered very interesting https://github.com/unfiltered/unfiltered.
It's mentioned in IttayD's list.
Here is a presentation about it http://unfiltered.lessis.me/#0
and the video http://code.technically.us/post/942531598/doug-tangren-presents-the-unfiltered-toolkit-for
Also here there is an article with more info http://code.technically.us/post/998251172/holding-the-parameter
It must be noted that there is also a considerable interest in Wicket and Scala. Wicket fits Scala suprisingly well. If you want to take advantage of the very mature Wicket project and its ecosystem (extensions) plus the concise syntax and productivity advantage of Scala, this one may be for you!
See also:
Some prosa
Presentation
Some experience with Wicket and Scala
Announcments with reference to the project for the glue code to bind Scala closures to models
Play is pretty sweet.
It is now production ready. It incorporates: a cool template framework,automatic reloading of source files upon safe, a composable action system, akka awesomeness, etc.
Its part of the Typesafe Stack.
Having used it for two projects, I can say that it works pretty smoothly and it should be something to consider next time you are looking to learn new web frameworks.
I tend to use JAX-RS using Jersey (you can write nice resource beans in Scala, Java or Groovy) to write RESTul web applications. Then I use Scalate for the rendering the views using one of the various template languages (JADE, Scaml, Ssp (Scala Server Pages), Mustache, etc.).
There's a new web framework, called Scala Web Pages. From the site:
Target Audience
The Scala Pages web framework is likely to appeal to web programmers who come from a Java background and want to program web applications in Scala. The emphasis is on OOP rather than functional programming.
Characteristics And Features
Adheres to model-view-controller paradigm
Text-based template engine
Simple syntax: $variable and <?scp-instruction?>
Encoding/content detection, able to handle international text encodings
Snippets instead of custom tags
URL Rewriting
Prikrutil, I think we're on the same boat. I also come to Scala from Erlang. I like Nitrogen a lot so I decided to created a Scala web framework inspired by it.
Take a look at Xitrum. Its doc is quite extensive. From README:
Xitrum is an async and clustered Scala web framework and web server on top of Netty and Hazelcast:
It fills the gap between Scalatra and Lift: more powerful than Scalatra and easier to use than Lift. You can easily create both RESTful APIs and postbacks. Xitrum is controller-first like Scalatra, not view-first like Lift.
Annotation is used for URL routes, in the spirit of JAX-RS. You don't have to declare all routes in a single place.
Typesafe, in the spirit of Scala.
Async, in the spirit of Netty.
Sessions can be stored in cookies or clustered Hazelcast.
jQuery Validation is integrated for browser side and server side validation.
i18n using GNU gettext, which means unlike most other solutions, both singular and plural forms are supported.
Conditional GET using ETag.
Hazelcast also gives:
In-process and clustered cache, you don't need separate cache servers.
In-process and clustered Comet, you can scale Comet to multiple web servers.
Follow the tutorial for a quick start.
There's also Pinky, which used to be on bitbucket but got transfered to github.
By the way, github is a great place to search for Scala projects, as there's a lot being put there.
I'd like to add my own efforts to this list. You can find out more information here:
brzy framework
It's in early development and I'm still working on it aggressively. It includes features like:
A focus on simplicity and extensibility.
Integrated build tool.
Modular design; some initial modules includes support for scalate, email, jms, jpa, squeryl, cassandra, cron services and more.
Simple RESTful controllers and actions.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
UPDATE: 2011-09-078, I just posted a major update to version 0.9.1. There's more info at http://brzy.org which includes a screencast.
Both Sweet and Slinky seem to be unmaintanted for about a year. Sweet Maven repo sweetsoftwaredesign.com is dead so there's even no way to download dependencies.
Note: Spiffy is outdated.
<plug>
Spiffy:
is written in Scala
uses the fantastic Akka library and actors to scale
uses servlet API 3.0 for asynchronous request handling
is modular (replacing components is straight forward)
uses DSLs to cut down on code where you don't want it
supports Scalate and Freemarker for templating
Spiffy is a web framework using Scala, Akka (a Scala actor implementation), and the Java Servlet 3.0 API. It makes use of the the async interface and aims to provide a massively parallel and scalable environment for web applications. Spiffy's various components are all based on the idea that they need to be independent minimalistic modules that do small amounts of work very quickly and hand off the request to the next component in the pipeline. After the last component is done processing the request it signals the servlet container by "completing" the request and sending it back to the client.
https://github.com/mardambey/spiffy
</plug>
You could also try Context. It was designed to be a Java-framework but I have successfully used it with Scala also without difficulties. It is a component based framework and has similar properties as Lift or Tapestry.
I have stumbled upon your question a few weeks back, but since then also learned about Circumflex. This is a nice, minimal framework that is therefore easy to learn, and it has pretty good documentation available as well.
Beside it's minimal-ness, it also claims to work well with other libraries and lets you use your own implementation of things when you need it.
For a project I'm using both Scala and Riak (two things I have never worked with before ;) ).
Google searches seem to suggest using Riakki. However, it seems like that particular library hasn't been maintained since 2009 and doesn't even compile on my system. There is a more up-to-date fork on GitHub that does seem to work with more recent Scala versions. But Riakki seems to depend on Jiak, which has been deprecated since february of last year.
Seems like the only reasonable choice would be to use the official Riak Java-library from Scala. That's certainly possible, but I'd like to do things the Scala-way as I'm trying to learn the language. Having to interface with a Java-style API might ruin a bit of the fun. Writing my own wrapper sounds like it will be too much work.
tl;dr: I want to use Riak from Scala. What are other people using?
edit: just found Ryu (can't link to it - annoying limit on amount of hyperlinks per question for new users). Doesn't seem all that mature though.
Stackmob recently opensourced Scalariak.
Scaliak is a scala-ified version of the High-Level Riak Java Client w/
a Functional Twist. It is currently being used in production at
StackMob.
Scaliak is currently feature incomplete vs. the original High-Level
Riak Java Client. What is currently supported are mostly features
being used in production (there have been a few features implemented
and subsequently not used).
There is also Raiku which states that it is async.
I'm in the same bucket - excuse the bad pun - although I have some experience with Scala. I'm thinking of using the official Java client.
When you are toiling up a steep learning curve, you don't need to be dealing with incomplete and potentially wobbly API's. In my experience, using Java API's from Scala is minimally painful.
I think there'll be enough delight in playing with our new Raik toy that we'll forget about whatever un-Scala-ish foibles the Java API inflicts upon us. All the best.
I'm the author of yet another Scala Riak client, simply called riak-scala-client. It is based on Akka and Spray, it is not built on top of the existing Java client, and most importantly it is completely non-blocking.
Check it out at http://riak.scalapenos.com and let me know what you think.
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Questions asking us to recommend or find a book, tool, software library, tutorial or other off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it.
Closed 8 years ago.
Improve this question
I've just started learning Scala, and the first thing I'm going to implement is a tiny web application. I've been using Erlang for the last year to implement server-side software, but I've never wrote web applications before. It will be a great experience.
Are there web-frameworks for Scala except for Lift?
Don't get me wrong, Lift looks awesome. I just want to know how many frameworks there are so that I can then choose between them. It's always a good to have a choice, but I the only thing I found was Lift.
I'm very interested in Scala, but I have not used it yet, so with that caveat, the frameworks I am aware of that are not mentioned in HRJ's answer (Lift, Sweet, Slinky) are:
Scalatra, previously Step (on GitHub)
Play 2 (on GitHub)
Pinky
I wrote a blog post about this.
To summarise, some of the options are:
Lift
Sweet
Slinky
I finally found that none were suitable for me, and developed my own little "framework". (It is not open-source yet).
I like Lift ;-)
Play is my second choice for Scala-friendly web frameworks.
Wicket is my third choice.
Following is a dump of frameworks. It doesn't mean I actually used them:
Coeus. A traditional MVC web framework for Scala.
Unfiltered. A toolkit for servicing HTTP requests in Scala.
Uniscala Granite.
Gardel
Mondo
Amore. A Scala port of the Ruby web framework Sinatra
Scales XML. Flexible approach to XML handling and a simplified way of interacting with XML.
Belt. A Rack-like interface for web applications built on top of Scalaz-HTTP
Frank. Web application DSL built on top of Scalaz/Belt
MixedBits. A framework for the Scala progamming language to help build web sites
Circumflex. Unites several self-contained open source projects for application development using the Scala programming language.
Scala Webmachine. Port of Basho's webmachine in Scala, a REST-based system for building web applications
Bowler. A RESTful, multi-channel ready Scala web framework
Try Play Framework, which also support Scala.
One very interesting web framework with commercial deployment is Scalatra, inspired by Ruby's Sinatra. Here's an InfoQ article about it.
I find Unfiltered very interesting https://github.com/unfiltered/unfiltered.
It's mentioned in IttayD's list.
Here is a presentation about it http://unfiltered.lessis.me/#0
and the video http://code.technically.us/post/942531598/doug-tangren-presents-the-unfiltered-toolkit-for
Also here there is an article with more info http://code.technically.us/post/998251172/holding-the-parameter
It must be noted that there is also a considerable interest in Wicket and Scala. Wicket fits Scala suprisingly well. If you want to take advantage of the very mature Wicket project and its ecosystem (extensions) plus the concise syntax and productivity advantage of Scala, this one may be for you!
See also:
Some prosa
Presentation
Some experience with Wicket and Scala
Announcments with reference to the project for the glue code to bind Scala closures to models
Play is pretty sweet.
It is now production ready. It incorporates: a cool template framework,automatic reloading of source files upon safe, a composable action system, akka awesomeness, etc.
Its part of the Typesafe Stack.
Having used it for two projects, I can say that it works pretty smoothly and it should be something to consider next time you are looking to learn new web frameworks.
I tend to use JAX-RS using Jersey (you can write nice resource beans in Scala, Java or Groovy) to write RESTul web applications. Then I use Scalate for the rendering the views using one of the various template languages (JADE, Scaml, Ssp (Scala Server Pages), Mustache, etc.).
There's a new web framework, called Scala Web Pages. From the site:
Target Audience
The Scala Pages web framework is likely to appeal to web programmers who come from a Java background and want to program web applications in Scala. The emphasis is on OOP rather than functional programming.
Characteristics And Features
Adheres to model-view-controller paradigm
Text-based template engine
Simple syntax: $variable and <?scp-instruction?>
Encoding/content detection, able to handle international text encodings
Snippets instead of custom tags
URL Rewriting
Prikrutil, I think we're on the same boat. I also come to Scala from Erlang. I like Nitrogen a lot so I decided to created a Scala web framework inspired by it.
Take a look at Xitrum. Its doc is quite extensive. From README:
Xitrum is an async and clustered Scala web framework and web server on top of Netty and Hazelcast:
It fills the gap between Scalatra and Lift: more powerful than Scalatra and easier to use than Lift. You can easily create both RESTful APIs and postbacks. Xitrum is controller-first like Scalatra, not view-first like Lift.
Annotation is used for URL routes, in the spirit of JAX-RS. You don't have to declare all routes in a single place.
Typesafe, in the spirit of Scala.
Async, in the spirit of Netty.
Sessions can be stored in cookies or clustered Hazelcast.
jQuery Validation is integrated for browser side and server side validation.
i18n using GNU gettext, which means unlike most other solutions, both singular and plural forms are supported.
Conditional GET using ETag.
Hazelcast also gives:
In-process and clustered cache, you don't need separate cache servers.
In-process and clustered Comet, you can scale Comet to multiple web servers.
Follow the tutorial for a quick start.
There's also Pinky, which used to be on bitbucket but got transfered to github.
By the way, github is a great place to search for Scala projects, as there's a lot being put there.
I'd like to add my own efforts to this list. You can find out more information here:
brzy framework
It's in early development and I'm still working on it aggressively. It includes features like:
A focus on simplicity and extensibility.
Integrated build tool.
Modular design; some initial modules includes support for scalate, email, jms, jpa, squeryl, cassandra, cron services and more.
Simple RESTful controllers and actions.
Any and all feedback is much appreciated.
UPDATE: 2011-09-078, I just posted a major update to version 0.9.1. There's more info at http://brzy.org which includes a screencast.
Both Sweet and Slinky seem to be unmaintanted for about a year. Sweet Maven repo sweetsoftwaredesign.com is dead so there's even no way to download dependencies.
Note: Spiffy is outdated.
<plug>
Spiffy:
is written in Scala
uses the fantastic Akka library and actors to scale
uses servlet API 3.0 for asynchronous request handling
is modular (replacing components is straight forward)
uses DSLs to cut down on code where you don't want it
supports Scalate and Freemarker for templating
Spiffy is a web framework using Scala, Akka (a Scala actor implementation), and the Java Servlet 3.0 API. It makes use of the the async interface and aims to provide a massively parallel and scalable environment for web applications. Spiffy's various components are all based on the idea that they need to be independent minimalistic modules that do small amounts of work very quickly and hand off the request to the next component in the pipeline. After the last component is done processing the request it signals the servlet container by "completing" the request and sending it back to the client.
https://github.com/mardambey/spiffy
</plug>
You could also try Context. It was designed to be a Java-framework but I have successfully used it with Scala also without difficulties. It is a component based framework and has similar properties as Lift or Tapestry.
I have stumbled upon your question a few weeks back, but since then also learned about Circumflex. This is a nice, minimal framework that is therefore easy to learn, and it has pretty good documentation available as well.
Beside it's minimal-ness, it also claims to work well with other libraries and lets you use your own implementation of things when you need it.
So, there are several languages which will allow you to create a website, as long as you configure the server(s) well enough.
To my knowledge, there is:
PHP
ASP.NET
Ruby(on rails, what is
that all about?)
And thusly, my knowledge is limited. Ruby and ASP, I've only heard of, never worked with. If there are other languages, I suppose they have some way to make files containing the needed html. It would then suffice to add a line to the Apache config to associate the file-extension.
And if other languages: are there any notable characteristics about the one(s) you mention?
ANY language can be use to make a dynamic website - you could do it in COBOL or FORTRAN if you were twisted enough. Back in the olden days (about 10 years ago) most dynamic websites were done with CGI scripts - all you needed was a program that could read data from standard input and write data (usually HTML) to standard output.
Most modern languages have libraries and frameworks to make it easier. As well as the languages you have already mentioned, Java, C# and Python are probably the most common in use today.
Typically a web framework will have:
a way of mapping URLs to a class or function to handle the request
a mechanism for extracting data from a request and converting it into an easy to use form
a template system to easily create HTML by filling in the blanks
an easy way to access a database, such as an ORM
mechanisms to handle caching, redirections, errors etc
You can find a comparison of popular web frameworks on wikipedia.
How can you forget Java ? :)
Python
It runs on Windows, Linux/Unix, Mac OS X, and has been ported to the Java and .NET virtual machines.
Python is a perfect scripting language for web applications, e.g. via mod_python for the Apache web server. With Web Server Gateway Interface a standard API has been developed to facilitate these applications. Web application frameworks or application servers like Django, Pylons, TurboGears, web2py and Zope support developers in the design and maintenance of complex applications. Around libraries like NumPy, Scipy and Matplotlib, Python is a standard in scientific computing.
Among the users of Python are YouTube and the original BitTorrent client. Large organizations that make use of Python include Google, Yahoo!, CERN, NASA,and ITA.
This could be for your interest.
Virtually thru CGI all programming languages that produce output may use for web page generation.
Basically, you can use any language (if you are hosting your own server)
Very closely related and very interesting is this article where LISP has been used to build a very succesfull website.
Python has a 3rd party module CherryPy which can be used with or without a http server.
Amongst others: Erlang (YAWS, Mochiweb), Python
JSP has the advantage that it automatically wraps your code in a servlet, compiles that to bytecodes, then uses the just-in-time Java compiler to recompile critical sections into native object code. Not aware of any alternative which allows optimizes your work automatically in this way.
Also allows you to develop and deploy on any combination of Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux.
If you'd like to choose one for the beginning, you should check out PHP first. It gives you the basic clues about how dynamic sites work in general.
After you've become familiar with the basics, I recommend ASP.NET.
Fist off, you should know that ASP.NET is a technology and not a language. (It actually supports any language that can be used on the .NET platform.) Also it is not to be confused with classic ASP. (The old ASP was much more like PHP.)
ASP.NET is very easy to begin with, and after you have some clues about its concepts, you can always dig deeper and customize everything in it. The http://asp.net site is a very good starting point, if you are to learn it. I think it is really worth the effort, because even if you choose not to stick to it, it will give you some interesting ideas and concepts.
I tell you its most important advantages:
The code is compiled (and NOT interpreted like PHP), and it has a very good performance. (In a performace comparsion, it is 10-15 times faster. http://www.misfitgeek.com/pages/Perf_Stat_0809.htm)
It can be run on Windows without effort, and on Linux / Mac / etc using the Mono project.
It implements the Separation of Concerns principle very well.
It has most of the general functionality you'll need built-in. (Such as membership, roles, database management, and so on.)
What semantic web frameworks are there, and what are the advantages / disadvantages of each? I've made extensive use of Jena, and I have looked at Sesame briefly. Are there others I should consider as well?
Redland is a good RDF framework (just like Andreas said). I am mainly using its Python bindings and am installing it on Mac OS X via MacPorts (e.g., port install redland-bindings +python).
You could use it with other languages too (see its bindings for Perl, Ruby, ...).
For pointers to some larger lists of RDF frameworks see Semantic Web FAQ: Tools.
a more low-level appproach is redland, which provides bindings to a lot of languages like Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby. redland itself is written in C. i have scripted with it in ruby to provide a simple webservice with a rdf backend instead of a classic database.
http://www.cubicweb.org is a semantic web framework written in Python. It can be used to develop applications that serve content both to humans and computers, providing each with the format it asks for.
This question may be related to what-are-some-good-java-rdf-libraries
I would definitely take a look at Intellidimensions offerings if you are working on the Microsoft stack of technologies.
They have a mature SQL Server based framework for storing and processing (with rules) semantic web data. They also have a great .NET SDK that I have used extensively.
If you are using Java, and are interested in OWL inferencing, you should look at Pellet. It has bindings to Jena and the OWL-API, which itself, is a useful semweb framework.
The most web-centric I've seen so far is RAP (RDF API for PHP).