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a walk in the dark side

Previously I got my first version of simple todo rest service working with scala and play framework and had some ideas what to do next. Since then I've implemented a second version of the rest service, this time backed by MongoDB. I also managed to create a simple web application as a user interface for the service.


TL;DR;


https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo/tree/mongodb-integration
https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo-ui


MongoDB with scala


This was a idea that I had earlier and the actual implementation was pretty straightforward with the help of salat library. Integrating salat with play framework required me to implement a custom context but salat documentation already provided this solution so it was just a matter of reading the documentation.

Other issue that I faced was with reading and writing json documents but that's where play's documentation provided the needed answers after some initial searches with google.

Like before the implementation is shared at my github account https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo/tree/mongodb-integration.


Walking in the dark side


It's been a long time since I've done anything related to user interfaces let alone created one from the scratch. I had decided that my todo application will have a user interface and it will be done with something out of my comfort zone.

The idea had been in my head for a while. I've seen and heard how modern javascript frameworks can do pretty nice things and easily interact with rest services. I asked my colleagues what was the hip javascript framework for interacting with rest services and got to work.

The choice was AngularJS as I was told that rest integration with it would be easy to implement. Sure the implementation was easy after series of trial and error and the fact that AngularJS is evolving fast also means that Q&A found in various blogs or at stackoverflow were partly outdated even if they were just a few months old.

I don't believe my implementation follows the best practices but with my lack of expertise with javascript I'm just happy I got it working.

This is also shared at my github account https://github.com/jorilytter/simple-todo-ui. If you feel the need to comment please be gentle, as I said this is way off my comfort zone.

In the end I'm happy that I went out of my comfort zone and actually managed to get something that works and I'm definitely going to do it again.
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