Edit your application in the browser with Bespin

Bespin is a Mozilla Labs experiment on how to build an extensible web code editor using HTML 5 technology. The play bespin module allows you to edit all the application sources directly in the browser using bespin.

For now it’s just a proof of concept. However we think that we could create an excellent — possibly the best — play IDE directly in the browser using bespin as the main component for the source code editor:

• Syntax highlighting for all sources types (Java, Templates, Route files)
• Error reports in the editor. Like in eclipse, it should be possible to display errors at edit time for both Java and template files, since the compilers are directly available in play
• Code snippets, application templates
• Collaboration

Enable Bespin for your application

In any application, just add this line to the conf/application.conf file:

module.bespin=${play.path}/modules/bespin

At application start time, you should see this message:

00:21:45,192 INFO  ~ Module bespin is available (.../play/modules/bespin)

Now open bespin in your browser at http://localhost:9000/bespin