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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.
I'm curious what's the "best" way to program RIAs with Scala.
I'm new to Scala and would simply like to know where to start learning. It seems obvious that for web-apps Lift is the perfect choice to be combined with Scala. However from what I've seen so far Lift is not really providing the key to great visuals. Certainly there are hundreds of possible frameworks due to the compability with Java but that's not very helpful.
What would you recommend ?
What is a common set-up ?
Among others I found cappuccino, a very impressive framework.
http://www.scala-lang.org/node/7281
It just seems like Cappuccino is designed for a language named Objective-J. That doesn't sound like great compability to me. Yet somehow they can work together.
http://frothy.liftweb.net/
Well, if you are new to Scala you should probably try Play, because learning a web framework and a new programming language is hard.
Play has a big community and seems to be quite user-friendly (pressing F5 in your browser reloads your code and displays any errors which have occured).
Normally any Java web framework can also be used in Scala, but Play seems to be pretty Scala-friendly.
There are quite a few Scala-specific web frameworks too, but I don't know enough to tell you more about them.
Lift is an powerful and impressive framework, but certainly nothing for beginners.
(I assume "new to Scala" doesn't mean "I programmed in Haskell, ML and Scheme for decades").
Of course it all depends. Personally, I have had no problem starting with Lift even though I’d only used Scala in the REPL before and just for some toying around to get to know the syntax.
It certainly helps a lot if you already know how to use collections in a functional way without explicit loops, so you can read and understand other people’s code more easily. But basically, I’d say it is doable learning both Lift and Scala at the same time even without a background in functional languages. It’s just the collections thing you’ll have to get used to and if you happen to know Ruby (or a language with list comprehensions) you’ll easily understand it.
The Frothy integration has not yet been updated to the newest version of Lift and I don’t know of any site which actually uses it but maybe this is a thing to ask on the Lift mailing list. In any case, I think Frothy only helps you connecting a Lift setup with some Cappuccino frontend but does not provide many wrappers to the Objective-J code, so you’ll still have to write code in Objective-J.
At that point you can ask yourself: Why not write the whole thing with Cappuccino and decide afterwards if Lift integration is actually needed.
Considering Lift alone: You certainly can use Lift with some UI Kit like JQuery UI for the visuals. Lift has many advanced possibilities which make it possible to build complicated web applications but you’ll have to care about the wiring for the visuals yourself.
(And arguably, a stateful, non-MVC (‘view first’) framework like Lift might be better suited for a rich internet application than a pure MVC framework…)
I keep reading the developments being done on frameworks like Grails and other Java frameworks but not much of a buzz in the Lift camp. And also Lift 1.0 was announced long back. Is the community working on Lift framework? What are the future prospects of the framework? Is it better than Grails and other Java frameworks? (Groovy being less performing than Scala).
I'm on the lift list, and get quite a few emails per day. Quite a lot of interesting discussions, and M8 just rolled out.
So, in addition to the mailing list, looking at the wiki, and the github repository you'll find all kinds of stuff.
From the little I read recently, Lift 1.1 should probably be out before Scala 2.8. As in, real soon now. There is a lot of activity on the Lift front, but they really do seem to be a bit more insular than other projects. I hear way more about Akka than about Lift, which I find really surprising. In fact, I hear way more about the general support of the Lift community for non-Lift Scala projects than I hear about Lift itself.
It's not that they aren't receptive and newbie-friendly or anything like that. I think it is just a matter of not having many personalities that are talkative about what they do, or, perhaps, those personalities are just in completely different circles than the ones I follow on the Internet.
It does bother me a bit that they don't have anyone strong here on Stack Overflow. If you compare the answers from Scala related question to those of Scala & Lift related questions, the difference is striking.
Update Nov 16, 2010
Just to update, Lift 2.0 was released and only works with Scala 2.7.7. Lift 2.1 followed it, though, and is available for both 2.7.7 and 2.8.0 (I suppose it works with 2.8.1 as well, but I haven't tested that). Beyond that, there's already a milestone available for Lift 2.2, so everything is going just fine.
There's a very active mailing list for lift. Perhaps you could peruse its archives and send an inquiry there if you're not satisfied with what you find.
I've some experience with Grails and looked at Lift recently, but I find the programming model of lift somewhat strange and unintuitive. I'd prefer Scala over Groovy, but I'd choose Grails though (which has a Scala plug-in). Grails offers much more than Lift does. Grails is developed by SpringSource whereas no big company is behind Lift.
If you simply want to develop web applications choose Grails. If you're a Scala enthusiast go with Lift.
Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
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.