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| Play Framework | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Developer | Community |
| Initial release | 2007 (2007) |
| Stable release | |
| Written in | Scala |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Web application framework |
| License | Apache License 2.0 |
| Website | playframework |
| Repository | Play Repository |
Play Framework is anopen-sourceweb application framework which follows themodel–view–controller (MVC)architectural pattern. It is written inScala and usable from other programming languages that are compiled toJVMbytecode, e.g.Java. It aims to optimize developer productivity by usingconvention over configuration, hot code reloading and display of errors in the browser.[2]
Support for theScala programming language has been available since version 1.1 of the framework.[3] In version 2.0, the framework core was rewritten in Scala. Build and deployment was migrated toSBT, andtemplates use Scala[4] instead ofApache Groovy.
Play was created by software developer Guillaume Bort, while working at Zengularity SA (formerly Zenexity).[5] Although the early releases are no longer available online, there is evidence of Play existing as far back as May 2007.[6] In 2007, pre-release versions of the project were available to download from Zenexity's website.[7]
| Version | Date | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Unsupported: 1.0 | May 2008 | The first published code for 1.0 appeared onLaunchpad.[8] This was followed by a full 1.0 release in October 2009.[9] |
| Unsupported: 1.1 | November 2010 | Released after a move from Launchpad toGitHub. It included a migration fromApache MINA toJBoss Netty, Scala support, nativeGlassFish container, an asynchronousweb services library,OAuth support,HTTPS support and other features.[10] |
| Unsupported: 1.2 | April 2011 | It included dependency management withApache Ivy, support forWebSocket, integrated database migration (reversion was not implemented[11]), a switch to theH2 database as the default development database and other features.[12] |
| Unsupported: 1.3 | January 15, 2015 | libraries upgraded (a.o. netty, hibernate, etc.), added multiple databases support and included customisable template name resolving. |
| Unsupported: 1.4 | October 30, 2015 | Compatible to Java 7 and removed support for Java 6. Added ability to define enabled ssl protocols. |
| Unsupported: 1.5 | September 29, 2017 | Upgraded to Hibernate 5.x. Dropped support for java version prior to 1.8. |
| Unsupported: 1.6 | March 15, 2021 | Compatible to Java 14, libraries upgraded |
| Unsupported: 1.7 | April 3, 2022 | Compatible to Java 17, libraries upgraded, dropped support for java version prior to 11, Play scripts upgrade to Python 3 |
| Unsupported: 2.0 | March 13, 2012 | Sadek Drobi joined Guillaume Bort late 2011 to create Play 2.0[13] in conjunction withTypesafe Stack 2.0.[14] |
| Unsupported: 2.1 | February 6, 2013 | Upgraded to Scala 2.10 and introduced, among other new features, modularization, a new JSON API, filters and RequireJS support.[15] |
| Unsupported: 2.2 | September 20, 2013 | Upgraded support for SBT to 0.13, better support for buffering, built in support for gzip and newstage anddist tasks with support for native packaging on several platforms such as OS X (DMG), Linux (RPM, DEB), and Windows (MSI) as well as zip files. |
| Unsupported: 2.3 | May 30, 2014 | Introducing the Activator command, better tooling for static assets, support for Java 8 and Scala 2.11, better performance, Web Service enhancement and support to integrate Actors and Web Sockets. |
| Unsupported: 2.4 | May 26, 2015 | WithDependency injection out of the box, the possibility to embed Play inside other applications, improved Java 8 support,HikariCP as the default connection pool and better testing APIs. |
| Unsupported: 2.5 | March 29, 2016 | Switched from Iteratees toAkka Streams for all asynchronous IO and streaming, replaced custom functional types with Java 8 types (such asCompletionStage andOptional), introduced equivalent Java APIs for features that previously only existing in the Scala API, such as implementing filters and custom body parsers and with a 20% performance increase. |
| Unsupported: 2.6 | June 23, 2017 | UsingAkka HTTP as the default server backend, experimentalHTTP/2 support, Scala 2.12 support, no moreglobal state under the hood,JSON Web Token format for cookies, improved security and configuration improvements. |
| Unsupported: 2.7 | February 1, 2019 | Scala 2.13 support, support forCaffeine as underlying cache implementation, updated HikariCP andGuice versions, improved form validation and file uploading functions.[16] |
| Unsupported: 2.8 | December 13, 2019 | Java 11 support, Updated Akka, Jackson, support pre-seek sources for range results[17] |
| Latest version:2.9 | October 25, 2023[18] | Scala 3, Java 17, and Java 21 support.[19] |
| Latest version:3.0 | October 25, 2023[20] | Because Akka is no longer open source, Play switched from Akka to Apache Pekko.[21] |
Legend: Unsupported Supported Latest version Preview version Future version | ||
Play is heavily inspired byASP.NET MVC,Ruby on Rails andDjango and is similar to this family of frameworks. Play web applications can be written in Scala or Java, in an environment that may be lessJava Enterprise Edition-centric. Play uses no Java EE constraints. This can make Play simpler to develop compared to other Java-centric platforms.[22]
Although Play 1.x could also be packaged asWAR files to be distributed to standard Java EEapplication servers,[23] Play 2.x applications are now designed to be run using the built-inAkka HTTP orNetty web servers exclusively.
Play provides integration with test frameworks forunit testing andfunctional testing for both Scala and Java applications. For Scala, integrations withScalatest and Specs2 are provided out-of-the-box and, for Java, there is integration withJUnit 4. For both languages, there is also integration withSelenium (software).SBT is used to run the tests and also to generate reports. It is also possible to use code coverage tools by using sbt plugins such asscoverage orjacoco4sbt.
In August 2011,Heroku announced native support for Play applications on itscloud computing platform.[25] This followed module-based support for Play 1.0 onGoogle App Engine, and documented support onAmazon Web Services.[26]
As of October 2013[update], the Play Framework was the most popular Scala project onGitHub.[27]
In July 2015, Play was the 3rd most popular Scala library in GitHub, based on 64,562 Libraries. 21.3% of the top Scala projects used Play as their framework of choice.[28]
Corporate users of the Play Framework have includedCoursera,HuffPost,Hootsuite,Janrain,LinkedIn, andConnectifier.[29]
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