Documentation

You are viewing the documentation for the 3.0.2 release. The latest stable release series is 3.0.x.

§Setting up your preferred IDE

Working with Play is easy. You don’t even need a sophisticated IDE, because Play compiles and refreshes the modifications you make to your source files automatically, so you can easily work using a simple text editor.

However, using a modern Java or Scala IDE provides cool productivity features like auto-completion, on-the-fly compilation, assisted refactoring and debugging.

§Eclipse

§Setup sbt-eclipse

Integration with Eclipse requires sbt-eclipse. Make sure to always use the most recent available version in your project/plugins.sbt file or follow sbt-eclipse docs to install globally.

addSbtPlugin("com.github.sbt" % "sbt-eclipse" % "6.2.0")

You must compile your project before running the eclipse command. You can force compilation to happen when the eclipse command runs by adding the following setting in build.sbt:

// Compile the project before generating Eclipse files, so
// that generated .scala or .class files for views and routes are present

EclipseKeys.preTasks := Seq(Compile / compile, Test / compile)

If you have Scala sources in your project, you will need to install Scala IDE.

If you do not want to install Scala IDE and have only Java sources in your project, then you can set the following build.sbt (assuming you have no Scala sources):

// Java project. Don't expect Scala IDE
EclipseKeys.projectFlavor := EclipseProjectFlavor.Java

// Use .class files instead of generated .scala files for views and routes
EclipseKeys.createSrc := EclipseCreateSrc.ValueSet(EclipseCreateSrc.ManagedClasses, EclipseCreateSrc.ManagedResources)

§Generate configuration

After configuring sbt-eclipse, to transform a Play application into a working Eclipse project, use the eclipse command:

[my-first-app] $ eclipse

If you want to grab the available source jars (this will take longer and it’s possible a few sources might be missing):

[my-first-app] $ eclipse with-source=true

Note: if you are using sub-projects with aggregate, you would need to set skipParents appropriately in build.sbt:

ThisBuild / EclipseKeys.skipParents := false

or from the sbt shell, type:

[my-first-app] $ eclipse skip-parents=false

You then need to import the application into your Workspace with the File/Import/General/Existing project… menu (compile your project first).

To debug, start your application with sbt -jvm-debug 9999 run and in Eclipse right-click on the project and select Debug As, Debug Configurations. In the Debug Configurations dialog, right-click on Remote Java Application and select New. Change Port to 9999 and click Apply. From now on you can click on Debug to connect to the running application. Stopping the debugging session will not stop the server.

Tip: You can run your application using ~run to enable direct compilation on file change. This way scala template files are auto discovered when you create a new template in view and auto compiled when the file changes. If you use normal run then you have to hit Refresh on your browser each time.

If you make any important changes to your application, such as changing the classpath, use eclipse again to regenerate the configuration files.

Tip: Do not commit Eclipse configuration files when you work in a team. To make that easier, add the following lines to your .gitignore file:

/.classpath
/.project
/.settings

The generated configuration files contain absolute references to your framework installation. These are specific to your own installation. When you work in a team, each developer must keep their Eclipse configuration files private.

§IntelliJ IDEA

Intellij IDEA lets you quickly create a Play application without using a command prompt. You don’t need to configure anything outside of the IDE, the sbt build tool takes care of downloading appropriate libraries, resolving dependencies and building the project.

Before you start creating a Play application in IntelliJ IDEA, make sure the latest Scala Plugin is installed and enabled in IntelliJ IDEA. Even if you don’t develop in Scala, it will help with the template engine, resolving the dependencies, and also setting up the project in general.

To create a Play application:

  1. Open New Project wizard, select sbt under Scala section and click Next.
  2. Enter your project’s information and click Finish.

You can also import an existing Play project.

To import a Play project:

  1. Open Project wizard, select Import Project.
  2. In the window that opens, select a project you want to import and click OK.
  3. On the next page of the wizard, select Import project from external model option, choose sbt project and click Next.
  4. On the next page of the wizard, select additional import options and click Finish.

Tip: you can download and import one of our starter projects or either one of the example projects.

Check the project’s structure, make sure all necessary dependencies are downloaded. You can use code assistance, navigation and on-the-fly code analysis features.

You can run the created application and view the result in the default browser http://localhost:9000. To run a Play application:

  1. Create a new Run Configuration – From the main menu, select Run -> Edit Configurations
  2. Click on the + to add a new configuration
  3. From the list of configurations, choose “sbt Task”
  4. In the “tasks” input box, simply put “run”
  5. Apply changes and select OK.
  6. Now you can choose “Run” from the main Run menu and run your application

You can easily start a debugger session for a Play application using default Run/Debug Configuration settings.

For more detailed information, see the Play Framework 2.x tutorial at the following URL:

https://www.jetbrains.com/idea/help/getting-started-with-play-2-x.html

§Navigate from an error page to the source code

Using the play.editor configuration option, you can set up Play to add hyperlinks to an error page. This will link to runtime exceptions thrown when Play is running development mode.

You can easily navigate from error pages to IntelliJ directly into the source code, by using IntelliJ’s “remote file” REST API with the built in IntelliJ web server on port 63342.

Enable the following line in application.conf to provide hyperlinks:

play.editor="http://localhost:63342/api/file/?file=%s&line=%s"

You can also set play.editor from build.sbt:

javaOptions += "-Dplay.editor=http://localhost:63342/api/file/?file=%s&line=%s"

or set the PLAY_EDITOR environment variable:

PLAY_EDITOR="http://localhost:63342/api/file/?file=%s&line=%s"

§NetBeans

§Generate Configuration

Play does not have native NetBeans project generation support at this time, but there is a Scala plugin for NetBeans, which can help with both Scala language and sbt:

https://github.com/dcaoyuan/nbscala

There is also a sbt plugin to create NetBeans project definition:

https://github.com/dcaoyuan/nbsbt

§All Scala Plugins if needed

  1. Eclipse Scala IDE: http://scala-ide.org/
  2. NetBeans Scala Plugin: https://github.com/dcaoyuan/nbscala
  3. IntelliJ IDEA Scala Plugin: https://blog.jetbrains.com/scala/
  4. ENSIME - Scala IDE Mode for Emacs: https://github.com/ensime/ensime-emacs

Next: Hello World Tutorial