A starter kit of questions to ponder over before beginning the Play framework application development for developers/app architects.

1. Designing a Play Framework
Application
By VulcanMinds

2. What is the Play Framework BTW ?
Open Source Web
So many more framework written Server-side
things! in Java/Scala stateless or share-
Full stack - nothing
Comes with framework
Compiler, Probably created
Embedded by frustrated Java
server,Hibernate,L geeks tired of
ogger,tTestrunner, complex Java
Email,Template Web App stack
engine,Scala
….that’s AHA! Play is also ideal
as a Dev platform
Not too many
with fast
specs, over-
incremental
architected mess!
features list dev
life-cycle
Sensible MVC stack with
Convention  great Template
over miserable Play Framework Engine,
configurable XMLs Persistence and
 Testing engines.
Great File-upload Cloud-aware and
support NoSQL friendly
Extremely
Has lots of out-of-
convenient to
the-box modules
write REST- JSON
(as side-orders for
based middleware
you if you need!)
functionality.
Renders well for UTF-8 is the
Also integrates with CI
server like Calimoucho Functional, Unit gold standard in
Tests and well Play.
suited with
Selenium based
GUI testing.

3. Why Play BTW?
• Think over deeply and get your own answers
Why use Play at all?
Do you want one of the Are you convinced?
best designed state-of- Are you sure? Is your application a
the-art stack for Web Application or a
building your Web site?
applications?
Are you tired of the How much is static
legacy Java stack for content versus dynamic
web app development? content ratio?
Do you want to
leverage the new
Actors-based
horizontally scalable, Do you want it fast and
functional programming do you believe in TDD?
advances to make your Play Web
app delight to your Application
developers and Design
responsive to your
users/customers?
Dont you want to
exploit the new multi- Is your Application the
core asynchronous next killer-App or just
(threading) available in another moth that also
the intelligent chips for crawled the room?
performance and
throughput?
Are you conventional
RDBMS rookie or the
new generation
Does your application NOSQL explorer who
work in an Antarctic wants to scale out or
cave or a portable Data Are your customers loose your wallet to
center, How does your Data sharky and cannibal
/employees
sharing/supporting look like and how you RDBMS product
increasingly shouting
Cloud authentication are fore-seeing it to pushers?
the BYOD slogan?
and provisioning grow? Will it morph or
(Browsers are
protocols? become fluid? Will your
morphing to every
App dev framework
shape and every size
support it?
and status=ubiquitous)

4. Play Framework App – Design considerations
finally!
• Where is the features –list of your Application?
• Next…Modularize .. You should be able to otherwise I doubt your
intention to do a clean job!
• Where is the use-cases list?
• What your user base will use to access this app? Desktop browsers,
handhelds and smart-phones, what else?
• How many users will access ? 20-50 or 1K to 100K or 1M to 5 M? How
many concurrent?
• Security – want to go standalone or federated or cloud-ish like for e.g.
OAuth,…blah blah blah?
• Database NOSQL or SQL ? Take a tutorial/weekend course for getting
started with NOSQL magic like MongoDB/Cassandra to make your future
life easier if you haven’t done that already!
• With SQL RDBMS consider using the built-in entity framework based
wrapper APIs.
• With NOSQL like MongoDB your schema is fluid like the morphing aliens
in the movies. Enjoy the freedom!
• Consider building a REST –JSON based app wrapper library to access
your app functionality with any device. Your application’s taste is really
the REST APIs that flavor it! Design it with artistic elegance!

5. Play Framework App – Design considerations
finally!
• Designing Models.
• Play supports Model objects that aren’t dumb! The model integrity
should be maintained by the model itself.
• Designing Controllers
• Segregate controllers by the functionality for easier maintenance
• Chaining controllers is a bad idea.
• Map methods to route URLs cleanly in REST-ful way consistently!
• Designing Views
• Use templates wisely to organize the bricks of your view content.
• If using REST-ful API back-end and rich-front-end like JQuery/ Ext-JS or
you-name it …use the JSON speak to have a stateless conversation with
the back-end as much as possible. Use Ajax magic to exchange content
wherever user refuses to drink coffee waiting for it!
• Use the inbuilt scheduler module to schedule jobs at startup or
otherwise.
• Use available addon modules like GAE, PDF generator, MongoDB or
secure social like oauth1 / 2 , openID blah blah if needed.