Ask HN: Scala web devs, describe your stack

21 points·arkitaip··3 comments

How does web programming in Scala look like? Which stack is used? What kind of issues are you experiencing with frameworks like Play?

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First its recommended to have sbt installed. Also, I love giter8 which lets you setup your project structure layout like a snap.

Play is an awesome MVC framework inspired by Rails, so if your background is Ruby on Rails you'll love Play.

Recently, I developed an API using LiftWeb which is a lightweight full-stack web framework. It has many features that you may not find in other Scala frameworks like Comet and ajax support.

I dont have experience with developing UI with Lift, but the API I designed using Lift's net.liftweb.http._ can handle more than any application I developed using Ruby.

On the other hand, if you want a solid Database library, I used Squeryl and Slick, and for MongoDB: Rogue by Foursquare.

Our stack Play 2.1, MongoDb and we use Lift mongo driver and Rogue DSL. I use incremental run (~run) when developing and can attach Intellij IDEA debugger so it's usually a pleasure to develop. In general IDEA's Play plugin is rather helpful. Sometimes I would like to add more conventions to Play (for routing, data binding) but that's probably because of my previous experience with Rails. Static typing is a good assistance when you develop something with non-trivial logics. Community is not as large as for say Rails, Django and sometimes I missed plugins (say for Hogan.js).

Play 2.1 here. Scala for web dev is awesome. Other than I don't like Anorm, no issues with Play.

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