Play Framework and Apache Cassandra example application

This is a simple application that shows how Play can access Apache Cassandra.

I must say that connecting to Cassandra from Play it's as easy as including the line below to the build.sbt file and grabbing the Quick start code from here: http://docs.datastax.com/en/developer/java-driver/3.3/manual/

libraryDependencies += "com.datastax.cassandra" % "cassandra-driver-core" % "3.3.0"

Introduction

The functionality of this application is based on the two examples shown in the online Udemy course Getting Started With Apache Cassandra. However, the course's examples have been changed to use the last version of Cassandra (currently the version 3.11.1) and the Play Framework technology using an MVC pattern. See my course notes here if you want to follow this course and also use the last version of Cassandra.

The base Play code I've used to start this example comes from Lightbend and can be found here: https://github.com/playframework/play-java-starter-example

The library versions used in this example are:

• Play Framework 2.6.7
• DataStax Java Driver 3.3.0
• Apache Cassandra 3.11.1

Requirements

Step 1: You need a running instance of Apache Cassandra 3.11.1 with the following keyspaces and tables:

• Keyspace: home_security
  • Tables: activity, home
• Keyspace: vehicle_tracker
  • Tables: location

You can create the keyspaces and tables using the file db/create.cql included in this project by changing current directory to the db folder and then running from the system prompt:

cqlsh -f create.cql

or running from within cqlsh:

SOURCE 'create.cql'

Step 2: Change the file additional.conf to set the following values:

• cassandra.contact-point: an IP address of your Cassandra cluster
• googlemap.api-key: the google maps API key in order to show data on a map for the /track example

Running

After running the application with sbt run we have 3 different URL to see the example working.

1. http://localhost:9000/ shows an example page with some info about Play. The interesting thing is that this page already test the connection with Cassandra. In the page header you will see the Apache Cassandra version if the connection goes well.
2. http://localhost:9000/track displays the Vehicle Tracking example.
3. http://localhost:9000/alarms displays the Home Alarm System example.