Book Review: Learning Play Framework!

This is the book review of learning play framework2 by Andy Petrella.
The book focuses on scala based development on play framework. While the
book focuses on existing users of play, it gives a fast paced
introduction to scala and the level of complexity of the book is
slightly above the developer documentation, but not all the way high up
for serious deployment. There is a chapter for the uninitiated in scala,
which I feel is redundant as a section alone will do, given the
proliferation scala has made in java community. Also, it is easy to get
lost while following the samples, so I'd recommend that you keep the
sample questions handy while using this book.

The book starts with setup of play and a bit about its ecosystem, which is redundant. Next, it gives a fast-paced review of scala(it is not complete and I'd recommend the freely available 'scala for the impatient' book as a learning point). The book then demonstrates scala based templating mechanism in play and also plays with css configuration using LESS. It then delves into data management where data related views and routes are explained. This chapter also provides with the changes made in scala 2.1.1 and provides information about ebeans. The next couple of chapters  cover some of the exciting new features that were not present earlier and it deals with multipart content types as well as realtime client interactions through websocket.
A chat application is demonstrated and usage of Akka is shown to create non blocking multi-threaded access for clients, which is quite neat.

Interacting with web services is dealt next with a twitter integration into an existing web application is displayed. and the book caps off with chapters on testing and deployment. While testing is a chapter that I feel should have come before to further bring the TDD into development, the deployment chapter is totally updated. I was expecting to see the likes of jenkins and metrics tool in CI deployment, but there was various cloud vendors and their offerings that were waiting to be demonstrated.
Overall, this book is a great book to start with Play Framework2 and also does not disappoints with the ecosystem surrounding play.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book through Packt Publishing.
You can check out more about the book via http://www.packtpub.com/learning-play-framework-2/book

Play Framework Cookbook :book review

Play Framework Cookbook

Author : Alexander Reelsen

Play framework is an upcoming framework that comes in the growing breed of rapid application development, using convention over configuration based web application development.

The thing that sets apart this framework apart from others is the customizability of the framework in the jvm, while taking advantage of either java or scala as desired. However, owing to the late arrival of play, there has been a lack of tutorials and documentation in order to solve real world problems with this framework.

This book, being a cookbook covers the topics, head-on and gives practical insight into building web application while covering loads of practical topics, from installation to deployment.

The book has been divided into 7 chapters and a small appendix. The first chapter covers the basics and is good for those coming without rails experience. However, the chapter also presents recepies for customizing all parts of the framework- pretty much everything that other technology cookbooks pack into themselves from cover to cover. The middle chapters dig deeper into the framework and integration with external services. One thing that is special in this cookbook is it devotes 3 chapters to modules as extensibility via modules is one of the main differentiating factor that play framework offers.  In line with practicality, the book devotes its last chapter totally on deployment and release functions. This does omits the cloud vendors that provide paas for play framework directly, but as a lot of cloud offerings for play are unfinalized, they do not find any mention. The appendix is a disappointment as there are no pointers for carrying out further. As with any upcoming technology, it is imperative to look out for more resources in order to update and correct ourselves with its ecosystem. This is especially important as play 2.0 would be out on beta by the end of this year and a reader always expects pragmatism from a hands-on cookbook. Also, due to the flexibility of this framework, various PAAS vendors are providing, or planning to provide play support, which deserves at least a listing of these services. The author clearly states his intention behind leaving scala based applications in play, and this hopefully might make its way in future editions.

Overall, this is a book that lives well up to its expectations on providing us with something apart from the documented portions and the stock examples supplied with the play distribution while providing insights into the activities covered and making them flexible enough to be used practically.

For anyone learning play framework and looking to go beyond the examples for making interesting and practical applications, I’d heartily recommend this book.

Book page : http://www.packtpub.com/play-framework-cookbook/book

Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/Play-framework-Cookbook-ebook/dp/B005HIK8BG

Up Next : Book review on Play framework

Today I received a copy of the book, 'Play Framework Cookbook' by Alexander Reelsen, courtesy its publisher, Packt Publications.

As the name suggests, it covers various recipes regarding the play framework, which is a promising rapid application development framework in java/scala platform.

This is the first instance of any good documentation of this upcoming framework for professionals and looks promising. I will be going over this book for the next few days and would be posting my views about it, stay tuned!