Introduction to Play Framework

I have recently discovered this magical web framework named Play Framework written with Java. I have never thought web development would be fun and joyful with Java until I saw Play. Only Play was able to change my mind. If you are a Java developer and developing web applications with other frameworks or if you are a web developer who wants to develop web applications with Java I strongly suggest you giving Play a try. I also see that Rails developers want to try Grails, ofcourse I encourage them for this however I recommend them trying also Play framework.

Play is different than other Java Frameworks.

Is that so? Absolutely. Let me explain why.

• Play is fast. So damn fast.
• No configuration. Not even one.
• Play is fun and joyful to develop web applications.
• Update your code and refresh your browser. Yes, you don't need to restart the server.
• It doesn't use maven. It uses Python.
• Play uses Groovy for the template system.
• Play Routing is amazingly easy.
• Play is heavily influenced by Rails, Django and Grails.
• Testing your code is easy.
• Play easily integrates with Eclipse, NetBeans, Intellij IDEA and TextMate.

If you are convinced then go to the hello world application. If you are not convinced then put "This is a Java web framework" at the beginning of each sentence and read the list again. An interesting thing to note is that Play will support Scala in the applications.

Play looks very promising. Jump into it. Experience it. Play has good sample applications you can study. If you don't like let me know why.

If you want to get support you can use Play's Google Group or the IRC channel (#playframework) on freenode.

Good luck. Hope you enjoy your Play experience.