Using a database with the Play framework

Question

I've been following this tutorial to get accustomed to the Play framework:

http://www.playframework.org/documentation/2.0.2/ScalaTodoList

When reaching the "Persist the tasks in a database" segment, it is unclear to me whether I have to do anything to start up the database or if this is done automatically for me. I am currently receiving this error:

[Exception: DB plugin is not registered.]

Answer 1

It depends on the type of database you use.

H2 database (the one used in Play! tutorial) can be used as an in-memory database or as a disk based database. Play will handle all for you if you go for this database. You don't have to run a specific service to have the persistent database.

But you will have to describe in your application.conf which driver to use and which url to access :

db.default.driver=org.h2.Driver

db.default.url="jdbc:h2:mem:play"

As you probably don't have the right driver in your classpath, you would have to include this driver lib. As explained in Play2 documentation, you can manage this in project/Build.scala. For h2 driver lib the dependency will be :

val appDependencies = Seq(
  "com.h2database" % "h2" % "1.3.167"
)

After having changed your dependencies, you will need to reload the application build file and update the dependencies :

//in sbt
reload
update

How to link your play application with a database is explained here

If you want to use an other database (Mysql, Postgresql...) you will have to run the database service yourself and repeat the steps described here.