Documentation

You are viewing the documentation for the 2.0.6 release in the 2.0.x series of releases. The latest stable release series is 3.0.x.

§The Play WS API

Sometimes we would like to call other HTTP services from within a Play application. Play supports this via its play.api.libs.ws.WS library, which provides a way to make asynchronous HTTP calls.

Any calls made by play.api.libs.ws.WS should return a Promise[play.api.libs.ws.Response] which we can later handle with Play’s asynchronous mechanisms.

§Making an HTTP call

To send an HTTP request you start with WS.url() to specify the URL. Then you get a builder that you can use to specify various HTTP options, such as setting headers. You end by calling a final method corresponding to the HTTP method you want to use. For example:

val homePage: Promise[ws.Response] = WS.url("http://mysite.com").get()

Or:

val result: Promise[ws.Response] = {
  WS.url("http://localhost:9001/post").post("content")
}

§Retrieving the HTTP response result

The call is asynchronous and you need to manipulate it as a Promise[ws.Response] to get the actual content. You can compose several promises and end with a Promise[Result] that can be handled directly by the Play server:

def feedTitle(feedUrl: String) = Action {
  Async {
    WS.url(feedUrl).get().map { response =>
      Ok("Feed title: " + (response.json \ "title").as[String])
    }
  }  
}

§Post url-form-encoded data

To post url-form-encoded data a Map[String, Seq[String]] needs to be passed into post()

WS.url(url).post(Map("key" -> Seq("value")))

Next: OpenID Support in Play