Flashcow

Flashcow is simple Scala web framework originally built for teaching purposes.

This is still very much a work in progress. The code is insecure and should NOT be deployed in a real-world environment.

The framework includes an eponymous flashcard application. Currently the application is not separate from the framework. This is on the TODO list.

Credits

The code was written by Nate Nystrom (nate.nystrom@usi.ch).

Some code is derived from Michael Schmitz's HelloWorld Scala Servlet at:

https://github.com/schmmd/helloworld-scala-servlet

I made some changes to make the servlet easier to use out-of-the-box. The steps I took are described below.

Building and running

You can import this directory as an eclipse project. The easiest way to run the servlet, however, is from the terminal. You will need sbt (simple build tool). I have included sbt-launch.jar in this directory.

I am using a script to invoke sbt. You can run this script as

./sbt

I would copy the script to ~/bin/sbt where ~/bin is in my path, but it's not necessary.

To invoke sbt without a script, do:

java -jar sbt-launch.jar <options>

To run sbt from your terminal, type:

./sbt

This will give you a prompt that looks like this:

>

At this prompt, type:

> container:start

This will compile the application and start the server on port 8080. You should then see "Hello world!" at http://localhost:8080/.

To stop the server:

> container:stop

To reload the server after recompiling:

> container:reload

Sometimes it's nice to have your project continuously deployed (deployed after each saved change):

> container:start
> ~aux-compile

================================

Here are the steps I took to build this servlet from scratch. All commands, unless noted, are executed in the terminal.

1. First get the HelloWorld servlet.

   git clone https://github.com/schmmd/helloworld-scala-servlet cd helloworld-scala-servlet

2. Get sbt 0.11

   curl -O http://typesafe.artifactoryonline.com/typesafe/ivy-releases/org.scala-tools.sbt/sbt-launch/0.11.2/sbt-launch.jar

Create the following script as ./sbt:

--------------------------------
#!/bin/sh
java -Dfile.encoding=UTF8 -Dsbt.log.noformat=true -Xmx1536M -Xss1M -XX:+CMSClassUnloadingEnabled -XX:MaxPermSize=256m -Dsbt.boot.directory=$HOME/.sbt/boot/ -jar sbt-launch.jar "$@"
--------------------------------

3. Get the sbteclipse plugin.

Append the following (without the ----'s) to the file project/plugins.sbt:

--------------------------------

addSbtPlugin("com.typesafe.sbteclipse" % "sbteclipse-plugin" % "2.0.0")
--------------------------------

Note the blank line is important.

4. Fix dependencies.

   Change 0.2.9 to 0.2.10 in project/plugins.sbt

5. Rename the project.

   Change "helloworld" in build.sbt to "simple-servlet" (or whatever you want). Change the class name in src/main/webapp/WEB-INF/web.xml.

6. Download the dependencies.

   sbt update

7. Build an eclipse project.

   sbt eclipse

This will create an appropriately configured .project.

Now, you can edit the code in Eclipse.