Scala Lift or Play?

[ryan]

I am trying to learn Scala.. I am looking for a web framework..
Should I choose Lift or Play?

[Jeb Beich]

Yes

On Aug 16, 2011 11:16 AM, "ryan" <ryan....@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am trying to learn Scala.. I am looking for a web framework..
> Should I choose Lift or Play?
>

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[Jan Goyvaerts]

I'm no expert, but it looks like Lift is more popular and better documented. There are a few books about it too.

But what the most accessible alternative is ... 

[Kevin Wright]

Lift, Play, Blueeyes, Scalatra... We have many frameworks available now.

For the specific goal of *learning Scala* though, I'd advise against Lift.  It may, arguably, be the most comprehensive framework currently available, but it also adds a heft learning curve in its own right and breaks a lot of the Scala idioms * best practices that are currently emerging across the ecosystem.

For a quick start, shallow learning curve, minimum surprise value, and fast turnaround between changing code and seeing the effect - Play is probably your best choice (in absence of other deciding criteria).

Kevin Wright
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[Juan Marín Otero]

I am trying out Lift. It's not easy, has a lot of new concepts, but I'm finding it a refreshing experience. It deviates from the MVC pattern that we are so used to. I chose it for its Comet support, I'm building a real time application that will use it heavily. I've also integrated Akka (remote actors), so far this is a simple app but I can already see the possibilities of the architecture, it seems so advanced and powerful and yet simple and lean at the same time. 

The funny thing is that I would be considered your average corporate senior developer (I'm not a rock star publishing books or keynoting conferences, just doing my job with a passion) and 4 months ago I didn't know how to do a Hello World in Scala. Now I am thinking how to code more and more in this language and leave Java behind, and having a lot of fun in this transition process. So to those that say it's a hard language, it certainly can be, but you can pick the pieces that make sense for you and build from that, at least that has been my experience.  

It's all Dick Wall's fault actually, his passion eventually made me curious to take a look at it. 

Back to Lift, there are a few good online resources (i.e. http://exploring.liftweb.net/) and I ended up buying Lift In Action which is almost final and will be released to print soon as far as I know. I'm finding it OK. I haven't played with Play, but would be curious to hear what others with more experience have to say about it and how it compares to Lift. 

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Juan Marín Otero
GIS Consultant

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On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 8:03 PM, ryan <ryan....@gmail.com> wrote:

I am trying to learn Scala..  I am looking for a web framework..
Should I choose Lift or Play?

[clay]

Lift is the old web model, like JSP/ASP/PHP/Struts/Rails/Django where
web applications used to be structured as server applications that
dynamically built HTML responses to form submits.

I suggest the client side web development model. Build your web GUI as
a JavaScript application with a JavaScript library such as Google
Closure or ExtJS or YUI or the JQuery ecosystem, and implement your
server side processing as a web service.

I've built Scala web service with Jersey (REST + JSON) to support a
client-side JavaScript application and it worked out pretty well.

[Mark Volkmann]

+1 to this approach!

--
R. Mark Volkmann
Object Computing, Inc.

[Walter Chang]

that's the approach i'd like to take as well but how do you make your pages searchable?

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[Mark Volkmann]

I wouldn't use that approach if the pages need to be searchable. I'm
only recommending it for single-page web apps.

--

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

I'd strongly suggest you go the traditional approach ('form submit style'), as it's easy, and it fits the internet. As in, the URLs make sense, your pages are indexable, and it all works (crappily, but it works, and it works with screenreaders for the blind, phone browsers, etc, etc) anywhere, even without javascript. The GWT/GMail model makes sense mostly for GMail-type apps (single URL where you do it all), not for your standard webpage or even webapp.

Then throw in as much jQuery as you can to move the User Interaction parts of your site from 'pure crud, are we in the 90s still?' to shiny, usable, no-frustration goodness.

As a side-benefit to all this the server-side code becomes relatively simple too.

I have no idea which of lift and/or play fit the bill to do this, but gun to my head I vaguely recall Play is much more based around this kind of model than lift is.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

By far. It seems to me Lift has been slowly losing momentum these past few months and I've heard nothing but good things about Play, from Java and Scala programmers alike. It's definitely the web framework I would pick today.

-- 

Cédric

[ngocdaothanh]

> I wouldn't use that approach if the pages need to be searchable. I'm
only recommending it for single-page web apps.

You should try Backbone.js. It's very good.

> I've heard nothing but good things about Play, from Java and
Scala programmers alike. It's definitely the web framework I would
pick
today.

Please try Xitrum, it's more Scala-ish than Play:
http://ngocdaothanh.github.com/xitrum/

I'm developing it. It's not fully completed, but it's usable.

[work only]

Wow  a lot of Scala web frameworks :)

 

[Josh Berry]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 1:49 PM, work only <vorlo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow  a lot of Scala web frameworks :)

I think it is surprising how many web frameworks there are, period.
One of the most fun things I did when looking at lift was to look at
all of the other frameworks he cites as inspiration. Sadly, I didn't
do anything more than a passing look at most of them, but it was
really inspiring to see some of the ideas that are in use out there.
(Seaside, in particular, was an interesting look.)

[phil swenson]

This approach breaks the web as we know it. Search and restful URLs
are mostly out the window. Also, good look working with a web
designer. It's a similar trade-off as building a flash app.

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

There's a sweet spot here. Build your usual page-oriented fill-the-template loads-of-forms model, which you should be using, but then augment that with javascript. Here and there you're doing some double work, but the key is to make the form submit stuff as simple as it could possibly be; it exists as the design basis of your site and to aid screen readers of any and all sorts. JQuery is IMO by far the best at the job of augmenting an already working web page with UI-smoothing bells and whistles such as client-side sorting of columns and the like.