playframework Getting started with playframework Getting started with Play 2.4.x/2.5.x - Windows, Java

Example

Installations

Download and install:

1. Java 8 - download the relevant installation from Oracle site.

2. Activator - download zip from www.playframework.com/download and extract files to the target Play folder, for example to:

   c:\Play-2.4.2\activator-dist-1.3.5
   

3. sbt - download from www.scala-sbt.org.

Define environment variables:

1. JAVA_HOME, for example:

   c:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_45
   

2. PLAY_HOME, for example:

   c:\Play-2.4.2\activator-dist-1.3.5;
   

3. SBT_HOME for example:

   c:\Program Files (x86)\sbt\bin;  
   

Add path to all three installed programs to the path variables:

 %JAVA_HOME%\bin;%PLAY_HOME%;%SBT_HOME%;

Play 2.5 installation fix

Installation of Play 2.5.3 (the last 2.5 stable release) comes with a minor problem. To fix it:

1. Edit the file activator-dist-1.3.10\bin\activator.bat and add the "%" character at the end of line 55. The proper line should be like this: set SBT_HOME=%BIN_DIRECTORY%
2. Create sub-directory conf under the activator root directory activator-dist-1.3.10.
3. Create in the conf directory an empty file named sbtconfig.txt.

Creating a new application with CLI

Start the cmd from the directory, where a new application should be created. The shortest way to create a new application via CLI is to provide an application name and template as CLI arguments:

  activator new my-play-app play-java

It is possible to run just:

  activator new

In this case you will be prompted to select the desired template and an application name.

For Play 2.4 add manually to project/plugins.sbt:

// Use the Play sbt plugin for Play projects
addSbtPlugin("com.typesafe.play" % "sbt-plugin" % "2.4.x")

Be sure to replace 2.4.x here by the exact version you want to use. Play 2.5 generates this line automatically.

Make sure that the proper sbt version is mentioned in project/build.properties. It should match to sbt version, installed on your machine. For example, for Play2.4.x it should be:

sbt.version=0.13.8

That's it, a new application now may be started:

  cd my-play-app
  activator run

After a while the server will start and the following prompt should appear on the console:

  [info] p.c.s.NettyServer - Listening for HTTP on /0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:9000
  (Server started, use Ctrl+D to stop and go back to the console...)

The server by default is listening on port 9000. You can request it from a browser by the URL http://localhost:9000. You will get something like this:

Running activator on a different port

By default the activator runs an application on port 9000 for http or 443 for https. To run an application on the different port (http):

activator "run 9005"