Scala on the Web

I was wondering how to approach Scala on a dojo about it, and I kept returning to the idea that I should first introduce Scala on the Web. So, how would I go about it? What sites would I mention? Scala has grown such a rich ecosystem around it since I first started using it that I'm actually feeling a bit lost nowadays. And, let me tell you, that's a nice change! :-)

Nevertheless, the problem remains. As I started compiling the sites in my head, I quickly realized I'd have to write it down somewhere, and where better than in my own, dusty blog? So, here it is: the DCS guide to Scala on the Web!

For a long time, the starting point and central hub to Scala resources has been the Scala-Lang site. From there you can download Scala, find documentation, guides, support information, news... and it has become dated. Mind you, it still is a great resource, but some alternatives -- some official alternatives! -- have emerged since then.

One of them is Typesafe. Typesafe is a startup created around supporting Scala and related technologies. While this might not sound like a starter resource, they provide the Typesafe Stack, a set of tools including not only the language, but also Eclipse support, a build tool, a distributed system framework and a web framework. I think they plan to add more elements to it, but, anyway, go to their DOWNLOAD link and you'll have Scala up-and-running in no time.

Another important resource is the Documentation Site. A newly designed site to replace the old one on scala-lang. Scala-lang even has a link to it, though it still keeps the old one as well. Here you'll find guides, tutorials, cheatsheets, FAQ, and even a glossary of Scala terms and a Scala Style Guide. Oh, and a link to the Scala Wiki as well.

While on the wiki, please pay close attention to the Tools and Libraries page. You might not find everything there, and you might find things that have not been kept up-to-date, but even so it is an invaluable resource.

And speaking of FAQs, some brave souls took the time to compile Stack Overflow Scala Tutorial! The thing is nothing short of amazing: dozens, maybe more than a hundred of the most important questions categorized in 31 different topics, from "Introduction to Scala" to "Functional Scala", with a side dish of five additional topics for further learning.

By the way, if you don't know Stack Overflow, it is a question&answer site about programming questions -- only it actually works and is enjoyable to use, as opposed to their competition. More importantly, the Scala community is well represented on Stack Overflow, and you can use it to get questions about Scala answered in no time. In fact, it has probably been asked and answered already. :-)

The only problem with Stack Overflow is that it doesn't search for symbols, and Scala has a fair share of them. If you have a question about a symbol, use the Symbol Hound site to search for it.

What else? Well, there's Planet Scala, a blog feed aggregator, and Implicit.ly, a feed of Scala projects that is automatically fed by a plugin on the build system. It doesn't contain all Scala projects, of course, but it goes a long way.

And if you want to try Scala without ever installing it, there's Simply Scala, a Scala tutorial that let you execute the sample code, as well as try out code of your own.

If you want to get more dee involved with Scala itself, look at its github account. Scala, compiler and library, is there, as well as the documentation site I mentioned earlier.

Ok, I'm sure I left a bunch of sites out (like some news aggregators -- I don't follow them, but if you do, send me the link and I'll put them up), but let's address now some of the basic tools most people will be searching for.

I spoke earlier about a build tool, so let's discuss it a bit. The build tool of preference for Scala is SBT. If you search for it on the Internet, you might come up on the link to the old version (up to 0.7.7), which is hosted on Google Code. The newer versions (0.10.0+) are hosted on Github, and are incompatible with the older ones. Make sure you get the new version.

Alternatively, you may opt to install the SBT Extras script instead. It's the same SBT, but with a starter script that provides a richer set of options. There's also a couple of alternate starter scripts on the SBT site, called "screpl" and "scalas", which uses SBT to load dependencies while starting Scala's REPL (that's an "interpreter" console, so to speak) or starting Scala shell scripts.

You don't actually need to download Scala at all if you install SBT: SBT will download whatever version of Scala you tell it your project uses, requiring only that you have a JVM installed.

What about testing, what should you use? Scala is in the unfortunate position of having two excellent testing frameworks: ScalaTest and Specs2. They are both mature, fully-featured, actively developed and supported, and with big communities. There's no way to recommend one over the other: it really comes down to personal preference.

Both of them also support ScalaCheck, a testing framework that test stuff by automatically generating input and verifying if the specified conditions hold true. ScalaCheck is great to find boundary conditions, and, as mentioned, you can use its checker under both ScalaTest and Specs2.

You can use existing Java mocking frameworks (Specs2 has special support for Mockito, though Specs, the older version, supported JMock and EasyMock as well), but there's a Scala mocking framework available as well: ScalaMock. ScalaMock has advanced features, such as mocking Scala objects (equivalent to Java static members) and even constructors! That means you can actually mock the behavior of a "new" statement without replacing it with factories or dependency injection.

To wrap it up, web frameworks and database access.

Scala has many web frameworks available, and there's even a healthy reuse of components between these frameworks. For instance, Scalate, a templating engine that can even serve as web server on a stretch, seems to be used by pretty much everyone nowadays. But let's look into the main alternatives.

Lift is the oldest one (at least among the more serious frameworks), and has a strong community. David Pollack, It's author looked into a number of successful frameworks and decided to pick the best of the best, add a few twists of his own, and use Scala's power to provide an incredible piece of software. Among Lift's strengths, there's a strong separation of concerns (web page design and code are strictly separated), a seamless AJAX/Comet integration, powerful wizards for common concerns, and a design that took security considerations into account right from the beginning. If you do go with Lift, however, please make use of their mailing list as support -- that is their main support channel, and they prefer to concentrate their help there.

To those who are familiar with Sinatra, there's Scalatra and Bowler, that latter being built on top of the former. And I might well be mistaken, but Circumflex seems to go the same way as well.

If providing a web service is just a small part of your application, you might want to opt for Unfiltered instead. With Unfiltered, the web server is a library in your application, instead of your application being a servlet inside a framework.

And if what you really need are web services to interconnect systems, try Blue Eyes.

Now, there are a lot of other web frameworks, I'll mention just one other. Typesafe has decided to integrate the Play! Framework into its stack. Play! offers the ease of web development that PHP has, but with all the advantages Scala has to offer.

Which leaves us, at last, with databases. Again, there are many options to choose from. If you are doing web development, the framework of your choice probably already has some recommended libraries to deal with it -- their own or others (did I mention that there's a healthy reuse of components? :). I suggest you go with that.

If not, I can make some suggestions. I don't have personal experience with this, so I'm mostly recommending based on what I perceive to be preferred choices with active communities. There's ScalaQuery, which has always been a favorite of mine (just waiting for a project where I can put it to use :). Querulous and Squeryl also get a lot of traffic, but once you get to NoSQL, the main choice seems to be MongoDB's Casbah driver. I have played a little bit with it, and it is certainly quite easy to get up and running for small projects or experiments.

Do look into the existing choices, however, as there might be something better suited to your needs.

And if you haven't payed attention the first time I linked to it, the Wiki of Tools and Libraries is a very good resource to get started on specialized, well, tools and libraries. :-)

If you are new to Scala, I hope this can get you going. If you are experienced, I hope you can use this when helping others. Of course, this post will get old, the links will get outdated, and new cool stuff will come up.

For now, enjoy!