I’ve just discovered the Ninja Web Framework. This one isn’t “yet another framework”, it’s actually heavily based on the very popular Play Framework ideas. It seems to provide a substitute for the latter, since Zenexity and Typesafe have formed an alliance to further support Play primarily in the Scala ecosystem. Some people may feel that this makes the Play+Java combination a second-class citizen. The Ninja Web Framework is maintained by a Berlin-based company called FinalFrontierLabs, who were great fans of Play when they were using it in Java. You have to love their company profile:
As some people seem to have regretted Play’s focus on Scala, this framework is certainly one to keep an eye out for in the near future!
As a former user of Play 1, this indeed looks promising. Especially the dependency on Guice. Also, that they did away with the plain text routes file.
Of course, the docs could be improved, but the same might be said about Play 1.
From what I can tell, they’ve just started this venture…
If you like ninjas, have a look at http://blog.ninja-squad.com/2013/09/27/dbsetup1.1.0/
When did they announce the switch towards Scala-only support? I haven’t heard anything about this and can’t find any information about it.
Thanks for the hint. Yes, that’s not correct. I’ll fix this in the post. It should read “to further support Play primarily in Scala”
And even that is incorrect, talking to the typesafe guys it seems as though they have every intention to keep supporting Java in parallel to Scala for Play2 (just like they do with Akka).
Yes, you can use Play with Java. But you will still need Scala templates:
http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.2.x/JavaTodoList
It reads:
Apparently (e.g. see Stéphane C’s comment), not everyone agrees with the above assessment.
Thanks for sharing. I’ve been on the lookout for a different framework, perhaps this one would satisfy my needs.
I am myself one of those people that were total play 1.x fans, I switched to play 2.x and now, since I did not like scala, I deeply regret my investment in this framework !.
I gave it a try some months ago and found it very interesting. I don’t know how advanced it is but there is a plugin that allows you to use the rythm template engine instead of freemarker for views, that would make ninja a very serious alternative to play
Great! Maybe you join the ninja user group. I’m sure, Raphael would look forward to some motivational input!
Hey Stephane, I recommend you to take a look at https://github.com/actframework, which is my replacement for play1 (just like you I was a crazy fan of play 1.x, but choose to left since play2). The project is still ongoing and I estimate it will take probably a few months to reach beta. However the most of the function are ready. Have a look at the demo apps, run and play with them. I am sure you won’t regret this time ;-) PS: I am the author of Rythm and thank you for your interesting in Rythm template engine
It seems that your blog post raised a discussion on the play user group. A member of the play team will be focusing on java for the next releases, especially java8.