§Writing Plugins

Play comes with a few plugins predefined for all applications, these plugins are the following:

• DBPlugin -> providing a JDBC datasource
• EvolutionPlugin -> provides migration (only available if db was configured)
• EbeanPlugin -> provides Ebean support (only available if db was configured)
• MessagesPlugin - > provides i18n support
• BasicCachePlugin -> provides in-memory caching
• GlobalPlugin -> executes application’s settings

However, one can easily add a new plugin to an application by following these steps:

• Implement play.Plugin (see this for an example).
• This plugin should be available in the application either through pulling in it from a maven repository and referencing it
  as an app dependency or the plugin code can be part of a play application.
• You can access it like:

import static play.api.Play.*;
import static play.libs.Scala.*;

public Myplugin plugin() {
   return orNull(unsafeApplication().plugin(MyPlugin.class)).api();
}

which will return an instance or subclass of MyPlugin fully initialized or null.

• In your app create a file: conf/play.plugins and add a reference to your plugin:

5000:com.example.MyPlugin

The number represents the plugin loading order. By setting it to > 10000 we can make sure it’s loaded after the global plugins.

Found an error in this documentation? The source code for this page can be found here. After reading the documentation guidelines, please feel free to contribute a pull request. Have questions or advice to share? Go to our community forums to start a conversation with the community.