Awesome news: Spray becomes Akka HTTP

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Roland Kuhn

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Oct 16, 2013, 12:59:07 PM10/16/13
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Dear hAkkers,

it is with great pleasure that we announce the acquisition of the Spray web framework by Typesafe. The old-timers among you might remember that there once was a module called akka-http (later akka-mist), which we dropped during the transition to 2.0 because we realized that others (including Spray) were doing a much better job of solving that particular problem. But the times they are a’changin’, and nowadays any serious actor implementation needs native HTTP support to offer and consume RESTful APIs. This is precisely what akka-http will be, an implementation of this ubiquitous protocol based on actors and to be used by actors.

For all the details see the press release, the blog article or the FAQ (PDF).

Happy hAkking,


Dr. Roland Kuhn
Akka Tech Lead
Typesafe – Reactive apps on the JVM.
twitter: @rolandkuhn


Nicholas Sterling

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Oct 16, 2013, 1:33:19 PM10/16/13
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Awesome!!!  Spray rocks -- a worthy component of the stack.

Nicholas

Nicholas Sterling

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Oct 16, 2013, 1:47:38 PM10/16/13
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Will Mathias still be involved in the project?

Nicholas Sterling

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Oct 16, 2013, 2:07:55 PM10/16/13
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Ah, just saw this in the blog post:

"The integration will be performed by the Spray team (consisting of Mathias Doenitz and Johannes Rudolph) and the Akka team."

Evan Chan

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Oct 16, 2013, 4:53:19 PM10/16/13
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So I assume all of the current spray modules, including spray-routing, spray-caching, spray-json, etc. will all be integrated into Akka?

thanks,
Evan

Jonas Bonér

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:04:25 PM10/16/13
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This is the initial plan (might change):

  - Restructure all spray modules into three new Akka modules
    - akka-http-core
      - spray-http
      - spray-can
      - spray-servlet
    - akka-http (the "main" module for building HTTP integration layers) — depends on akka-http-core 
      - spray-routing
      - spray-client
      - spray-httpx
      - spray-caching
      - Java API (to be written from scratch)
    - akka-http-testkit
      - spray-testkit
  - merge spray docs into akka docs
  - move mailing list traffic to akka-user



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Evan Chan

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:09:01 PM10/16/13
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great thanks.

I wonder if this means there will be no more "Play Mini". As this
gives you two frameworks: akka-http for lightweight / REST stuff, and
Play for full framework apps.
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√iktor Ҡlang

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:16:04 PM10/16/13
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Cheers,

Viktor Klang

Director of Engineering

Twitter: @viktorklang

Ivan Topolnjak

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:13:57 PM10/16/13
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Jonas,

have you discussed how to proceed regarding further contributions to spray?, should people hold back a little while something is defined or just continue as usual contributing to spray/spray until any other directive is given?

Luis Ángel Vicente Sánchez

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:19:24 PM10/16/13
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Awesome... all my concerns about the akka and spray integration are now dissipated :)

Jonas Bonér

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:32:51 PM10/16/13
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On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 11:09 PM, Evan Chan <e...@ooyala.com> wrote:
great thanks.

I wonder if this means there will be no more "Play Mini".  

Yes. Play Mini is no longer supported.
​​
As this
gives you two frameworks: akka-http for lightweight / REST stuff, and
Play for full framework apps.

In the sort term yes. In the long term Play will be running on top of akka-http. Which mean that you will have the option of choosing which level of abstraction you want. The embeddable REST layer of akka-http or the rich Web dev experience of Play.

Roland Kuhn

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Oct 16, 2013, 5:49:10 PM10/16/13
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Hi Ivan,

we have not hashed out all those little details yet, but I think there is no need to refrain from contributing just because the code will move. What will happen is that Spray will be transported piece by piece into the akka/akka repository, building up akka-http incrementally and using the normal review process to make sure that the result is the best possible solution we can come up with. If the Spray code is improved between now and when that happens then I would think that the resulting akka-http will benefit accordingly.

In that sense: happy hAkking!

Roland

Haoyi Li

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Oct 16, 2013, 6:18:41 PM10/16/13
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we have not hashed out all those little details yet, but I think there is no need to refrain from contributing just because the code will move

Good to know. I've a nice, 100% compliant websocket server I was hoping to contribute to spray, but with all the stuff happening the spray team hasn't had a chance to give it a look yet. Hopefully it can get into akka =)

Roland Kuhn

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Oct 17, 2013, 12:47:53 AM10/17/13
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17 okt 2013 kl. 00:18 skrev Haoyi Li:

we have not hashed out all those little details yet, but I think there is no need to refrain from contributing just because the code will move

Good to know. I've a nice, 100% compliant websocket server I was hoping to contribute to spray, but with all the stuff happening the spray team hasn't had a chance to give it a look yet.

Hey, now you at least know the reason :-) (that and the scala.io conference/deadline)

Hopefully it can get into akka =)

We’ll definitely need WebSocket support in akka-http (-core, to be precise).

Regards,

Roland

Antony Stubbs

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Oct 17, 2013, 11:12:31 AM10/17/13
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looking forward to the java api! that was the only thing that stopped me being able to use it, so had to use camel-http instead :/

Marek Żebrowski

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Oct 17, 2013, 3:02:39 PM10/17/13
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What will happen with spray-json and parboiled?

spray-json can probably be dropped, but parboiled seems crucial to spray.

Martijn Hoekstra

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Oct 18, 2013, 3:00:08 AM10/18/13
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On Oct 18, 2013 2:16 AM, "Marek Żebrowski" <marek.z...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> What will happen with spray-json and parboiled?
>
> spray-json can probably be dropped, but parboiled seems crucial to spray.

I was having high expectations for parsing speed under parboiled 2, and I hope these projects won't die, even if spray json would live on as parboiled json or something.

Evan Chan

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Oct 18, 2013, 3:23:59 AM10/18/13
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If spray-json is dropped, then Spray needs to integrate with another json framework natively.


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Evan Chan
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Jonas Bonér

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Oct 18, 2013, 6:19:20 AM10/18/13
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On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 9:23 AM, Evan Chan <e...@ooyala.com> wrote:
If spray-json is dropped, then Spray needs to integrate with another json framework natively.


We are discussing this right now. Whatever happens, akka-http will have the best possible JSON support. 



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Haoyi Li

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Oct 18, 2013, 4:38:17 PM10/18/13
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Something to do with scala-pickling would be very nice; I feel that using macros, it can provide a more performant and  boilerplate-free user experience than any non-macro library for the default case of "turn this object graph to/from JSON".

Of course, the rest of the JSON libs functionality (the AST, lenses, zippers, blah) still need to come from somewhere

Evan chan

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Oct 19, 2013, 10:32:40 AM10/19/13
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+1 for pickling.  Isn't it going to be part of 2.11?

-Evan
To be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects & enhances the freedom of others. (#NelsonMandela)

Jonas Bonér

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Oct 19, 2013, 5:06:00 PM10/19/13
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On Fri, Oct 18, 2013 at 10:38 PM, Haoyi Li <haoy...@gmail.com> wrote:
Something to do with scala-pickling would be very nice; I feel that using macros, it can provide a more performant and  boilerplate-free user experience than any non-macro library for the default case of "turn this object graph to/from JSON".


play-json has optional macro support–which indeed gives you a very slick API, we are leaning towards that. 
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