Private assets in Play 2.1 - scala

Question

In a Play 2.1 application, where is the proper place to store private assets?
By "private asset", I mean a data file that is used by the application but not accessible to the user.
For example, if I have a text file (Foo.json) that contains sample data that is parsed every time the application starts, what would be the proper directory in the project to store it?
Foo.json needs to be included in the deployment, and needs to be uniformly accessible from the code in both development and production.

Answer 1

Some options:
Usually the files goes to conf folder. ie: conf/privatefiles/Foo.json
If they are subject of often change you can consider adding to your application.conf path to the external folder somwhere in the filesystem (full path), in such case you'll be able to edit the content easily without redeploying the apps: /home/scrapdog/privatefiles/Foo.json
You can store them in database as well, benefits are the same as in previous option - easy editing.
In all cases consider using memory cache to avoid reading it from filesystem/database every time when required.

Answer 2

I simply use a folder called data at the application root. You can use the name you want or better, store the actual name in the configuration file.
To resolve its path, I use the following snippet:
lazy val rootPath = {
import play.api.Play.current
play.api.Play.application.path.getPath
}
lazy val dataPath = rootPath + "/data/"

Answer 3

You can do what I did, I got the answer from #Marius Soutier here. Please upvote his answer there if you like it:
You can put "internal" documents in the conf folder, it's the equivalent to resources in standard sbt projects.
Basically create a dir under conf called json and to access it, you'd use Play.resourceAsStream(). Note that this gives you a java.io.InputStream because your file will be part of the JAR created by activator dist.
My example is using it in a view but you can modify it as you want.
Play.resourceAsStream("json/Foo.json") map { inputStream =>
Ok(views.html.xxx(XXX.do_something_with_stream(inputStream)))
} getOrElse (InternalServerError)
You can also use Play.resource(), this will give you a java.net.URL, you can use getFile() to get the java.io.File out of it.
Play.resource("json/Foo.json") map { fileURL =>
Ok(views.html.xxx(XXX.do_something_with_file(fileURL.getFile())))
} getOrElse (InternalServerError)