Re: Digest for bowler-users@googlegroups.com - 5 Messages in 1 Topic

[I D]

Thanks for your contribution to the community! I have worked briefly with bowler and scalatra, and would like to know what would be your reasons for choosing Unfiltered over Scalatra for a personal project?

 

Thanks! 

On Fri, Sep 14, 2012 at 3:10 AM, <bowler...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

  Today's Topic Summary

Group: http://groups.google.com/group/bowler-users/topics

• Call for maintainers [5 Updates]

 Call for maintainers

Wille Faler <wille...@gmail.com> Sep 13 10:28PM +0100  

Hi,
This e-mail has been a long time coming - and apologies for my absence from
this list as of late, I have been swamped with other work.
 
I started Bowler about 2 years ago as a means to delve deeper into Scala by
writing something a little bit more re-usable. My Scala skills have come on
in leaps and bounds since, partly thanks to the problems I had to solve
with Bowler, and partly due to client work I've also done in that time.
 
However, Bowler has unfortunately not kept up - many early design decisions
hold it back, such as the pervasive use of classes instead of traits, call
it naivety and the fact that at the time, I didn't know a fraction of what
I've learned over the last two years about Scala.
There are also quite a few "Java smells" in the code that I am not entirely
happy with.
 
Combined with a lack of time on my behalf means that I am looking to
someone (if anyone is interested) to take over the reigns of Bowler, should
they want to, otherwise I fear that it will go relatively unsupported, as I
have neither the time nor motivation given some of my early naive decisions
that I've later come to regret. Bowler has been a great learning
experience, but unfortunately I have not been able to keep the framework
up-to-date with my learning.
 
That being said, I think Scala has two main styles that can be used:
- a "better Java"
- a "Haskell light for the JVM"
 
For those looking for a Scala web framework that falls into the "Better
Java" camp, I think Bowler is still a valid choice. And I'm still
relatively proud of the opinionated style of Bowler, such as the ideas
around being Resource oriented in rendering rather than trying to fork off
rendering of JSON and HTML views into different versions/branches.
Furthermore, despite its warts and design decisions I'm less happy with
with the benefit of hindsight, new knowledge and experience, Bowler is a
pretty mature framework, it does what it says on the tin and has very few
defects that I'm aware of. If you can navigate around its warts (which you
can quite easily), it still has a lot of miles in it.
 
Personally, I've migrated over the last two years towards the Functional
Programming style of Scala, and Bowler simply doesn't sit very well in it,
and the warts are too many for me. If I were to use a framework personally
today, I'd be inclined to use Unfiltered with Lift JSON and Scalate, or
possibly Play2 (which I'm not too familiar with).
 
I will not be making any further releases of Bowler and I will not make any
major effort to bring it up to Scala 2.10, but if someone would like to
take over the reigns and fork it, nothing would make me happier - after all
I have easily spent several hundred hours of free labour on it, and would
like to see at least the applications out there using it survive for as
long as possible.
 
Kind Regards
Wille Faler


 

Scott Morrison <sc...@tqft.net> Sep 14 08:57AM +1000  

Hi Wille,
 
I'd been suspecting this was on the horizon!
 
Any chance that you could update/correct the build instructions on the main page? If I were actually able to compile from source I'd probably put in the effort to get it running on 2.10, at least.
 
best,
scott
 


 

"Ross A. Baker" <ba...@alumni.indiana.edu> Sep 13 09:35PM -0400  

Bowler is built on an old version of Scalatra. I don't personally use
Bowler, but Scalatra remains under active development. We on the Scalatra
team are happy to help if anyone wants to upgrade the base or discuss any
Bowlerisms that make sense being pushed down.


 

Wille Faler <wille...@gmail.com> Sep 14 08:02AM +0100  

What problems are you having? You need sbt 0.7.x, so the newer sbt versions won't work.
 


 

Wille Faler <wille...@gmail.com> Sep 14 08:03AM +0100  

Second that, Scalatra is probably a fairly pain-free migration path as Bowler is basically Scalatra + Scalate + Lift-JSON with some glue in between.
 
 


 

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[Wille Faler]

To be honest, on technical merit, I don't think there is a lot between them, they are both excellent frameworks.

However, personally I've warmed to Unfiltered's style and being a "toolkit" rather than a framework. Also I get the feel Scalatra has a more OO flavour whereas Unfiltered has a slightly more FP tint (do you want "a better Java" or "Haskell for the JVM"? No right or wrong, though Scalatra likely has a lower barrier of entry for most).

That being said, they're both excellent, pick one you like the look of best.