I really like Play and it adresses all the problems I had when develpoing web applications. My next project involves calculations on graphs (in this case biological networks) and visualization of large graphs. All the ‘backend’ stuff is done with the JUNG Graph API, which can be easily integrated in a Play project.
I used to do graph visualization in web applications with yFiles AJAX from yWorks. You will most likely know yWorks if you have ever worked with graphs in Java. yFiles AJAX is basically a JAVA/JavaScript library that offers:
a) Server components that hold the graph model. They mostly extend the extend the Java Servlet API.
b) Client side components that display the graph. This is based on Dojo, which should work in Play.
The components are discribed in detail here: yFiles AJAX dev guide
I know that Play does not use the Servlet API for many good reasons. My question is more general, because I am not that experienced with Play or other frameworks:
Can I use something like yFiles AJAX, which relies on servlets, inside a Play application? Or do I have to stick to a basic JAVA EE project with servlets/jsps?
I hope you understand my question 🙂
I don’t know your API and apparently it heavily relies on servlets everywhere.
I’m not even sure that they provide the code for those server parts…
So in this case, I’m not sure that the servlets are just facade that call backend services. From what I can see in the doc, it doesn’t seem to be the case.
Therefore, I think it would be better to keep this module besides Play and not to try to put it into Play, you will spend long time.
Nevertheless, there are some business modules used by the servlets clearly identified in the doc so I think that with some work, it could be modified and become a play module. But how long would it take??? I don’t know 😉