Question

I want to create a multi-module (maven) spring MVC application, with modules like:

web
persistance (hibernate)
core (general libs)
models
job-server (queue based jobs)
services (business logic)

Now to use Scala in this project, can I write scala everywhere without any problems?
Or should I use scala for my services module, and java for the web module?

I know hibernate will have to be in java.

Thoughts? Advice?

Are there any issues to look out for? Is this a good idea? Will I have to hack certain parts to glue them together?

Answer 1

Yes, you can use Scala for both your Spring MVC code and your Hibernate classes.

Here is an example of a Spring MVC Controller in Scala taken from one of my projects:

@Controller
class HomeController {
  val log: Logger = LoggerFactory.getLogger(this.getClass.getName)

  @RequestMapping(Array("/"))
  def home: String = {
    log.debug("HomeController::home")

    "home/home"
  }
}

And an example of a Hibernate domain class. Note the use of private Java collection classes for Hibernate adapted by public Scala collection classes for users of the class (helped by Scala’s JavaConversions class).

@Entity
class Role {
  @Id @GeneratedValue
  var id: Long = _

  @Index(name="role_name")
  var name: String = _

  var created_at: Date = _
  var updated_at: Date = _  

  @ManyToMany
  private var sub_role: java.util.Set[Role] = _
  def subRoles: Set[Role] = {
    if (sub_role == null) sub_role = new java.util.HashSet[Role]
    sub_role
  }

  @ManyToMany
  private var permission: java.util.Set[Permission] = _
  def permissions: Set[Permission] = {
    if (permission == null) permission = new java.util.HashSet[Permission]
    permission
  }
}

The only thing I’ve found that I’ve had to use Java for is writing @Retention(RUNTIME) annotations (for JSR-303 validations).

I use Maven and the maven-scala-plugin with mixed Java/Scala projects.