Tips

Play 2.0 tips and tricks

To use Play Framework 2 with Twitter Bootstrap 2:

Renaming the Bootstrap include files

• Build Play from trunk (2.1-SNAPSHOT) (Since less version has been updated to 1.3)
• Copy bootstrap's less files into app/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap
• Add bootstrap/_ before each bootstrap.less import declaration and rename each file the same way ( This is the convention to not compile theses files while packaging compiled assets )
• Move bootstrap.less file into app/assets/stylesheets

This can be done with a script like this (run in app/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap)

    for a in *.less; do mv $a _$a; done 
    sed -i "" 's|@import "|@import "bootstrap/_|' _bootstrap.less 
    mv _bootstrap.less ../bootstrap.less
    sed -i "" 's|@import "|@import "bootstrap/_|' _responsive.less 
    mv _responsive.less ../bootstrap-responsive.less

Alternative: using the Build.scala configuration file

• Copy bootstrap's less files into app/assets/stylesheets/bootstrap

• Modify the project/Build.scala file to filter out the Bootstrap LESS files we don't want to compile:

• Define a new BuildPath resolver function:

    // Only compile the bootstrap bootstrap.less file and any other *.less file in the stylesheets directory
    def customLessEntryPoints(base: File): PathFinder = (
        (base / "app" / "assets" / "stylesheets" / "bootstrap" * "bootstrap.less") +++
        (base / "app" / "assets" / "stylesheets" * "*.less")
    )

Note: this will only compile stylesheets/bootstrap/bootstrap.less and stylesheets/*.less files. If you have any other LESS files in other subdirectories under stylesheets; adjust the function accordingly.

• Override the default lessEntryPoints setting key with the new function:

    val main = PlayProject(appName, appVersion, appDependencies, mainLang = JAVA).settings(
        lessEntryPoints <<= baseDirectory(customLessEntryPoints)
    )

• Include the bootstrap.min.css file in your view(s):

  <link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="@routes.Assets.at("stylesheets/bootstrap/bootstrap.min.css")" />

Be aware that Less 1.3 has a bug in it that means that if you have a subdirectory reference in a LESS file, you may get
"charAt" errors (see https://github.com/cloudhead/less.js/issues/723 for more details).

## MongoDB

When using [Salat](https://github.com/novus/salat), make sure to disable SQL evolutions in your `application.conf` via `evolutionplugin=disabled` or you will run into inexplicable ClassCastExceptions.