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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T19:27:30+00:00

With the recent release of Play Framework 2.0, I would like to know if

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With the recent release of Play Framework 2.0, I would like to know if anyone could summarize ,from a high level standpoint, the major differences between Play Framework 1 & 2.

I already compiled a few (play 1.0 -> play 2.0):

  • Template engine: Groovy Pages -> Scala Templates
  • Persistance: Hibernate -> Ebean
  • Language support: Java -> Scala, Java
  • Dynamic compilation: byte code injection -> dynamic compilation via SBT
  • Build system: n/a -> SBT
  • Extensibility: Modules, Plugins -> SubProjects, Plugins, SBT plugin

What else ? Akka?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Here’s my list, of course, with some duplications

    • breaks backward compatibility (it’s a rewrite from scratch)

    • core programmed in scala vs java (got to learn scala to collaborate)

    • scala for templates (but work is being done on groovy templates as a module, to ease migration), so you have to specify the type of each parameter

    • sbt console instead of python scripts

    • sbt for solving dependencies instead of built-in solution (play dependencies command)

    • modules availability, it will obviously take some time to migrate them all…

    • for java, it favours ebean in place of hibernate (but you’ll be able to use hibernate)

    • for scala, comes with anorm (but you’l be able to use other libraries)

    • more modular, easier to pick other components

    • more type safety – views and even routes are checked at compile time

    • better performance

    • typesafe support, it’s part of typesafe stack

    • less magic, not so much bytecode generation and similar stuff

    • more standard, (play projects are just standard sbt projects)

    • different controller API (more verbose, IMHO) you can compare a simple play 1.x crud controller with a similar play 2.0 one

    • scala is a first class citizen, but java is equally supported (has native API for each of them)

    • hot recompiling is slower (it’s still on beta, let’s hope they solve it)

    • scala IDE support is not as mature as java’s (but it’s evolving nicely)

    • async support delegated to akka

    • better prepared for different kinds of datasources, like nosql dbs

    For more info have a look at play 2.0 page (spanish translation available here) and the RC1 documentation

    Anyway, I think the main difference is that play 1.x tried to build it’s own stack while escaping away from j2ee, now they are part of a new and alternative stack, based on scala, akka, sbt and with the support of a company like typesafe…

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