Playframework & Spark

Question

I want to get started with the Playframework and Apache Spark.

I found the following activator to start with: https://www.typesafe.com/activator/template/spark-play

Question 1:

Is this a reasonably good way to integrate spark into play? Or should I start differently? As most activators here https://www.typesafe.com/activator/templates#filter:spark seem to work directly with AKKA or AKKA & spray. Is an explicit AKKA integration needed at all as Play from 2.4 on is based on AKKA-HTTP?

Question 2:

The dependencies are managed in a non-standard way eg not using the standard build.sbt. layout. Is this "recommended" for spark integration? What are the benefits of it?

The Scala-dependency file is accompanied with

import play.sbt.PlayImport._
import play.sbt.routes.RoutesKeys._


name         := """sparkTest"""
organization := "ch.alexmass"
version      := "0.0.1"
scalaVersion := Version.scala



lazy val root = (project in file(".")).enablePlugins(PlayScala)

scalaSource in Compile <<= baseDirectory / "src/scala"

libraryDependencies ++= Dependencies.sparkAkkaHadoop

dependencyOverrides ++= Set(
  "com.fasterxml.jackson.core" % "jackson-databind" % "2.4.4"
)

releaseSettings

scalariformSettings

ivyScala := ivyScala.value map { _.copy(overrideScalaVersion = true) }

//routesGenerator := InjectedRoutesGenerator


fork in run := true

Thank you.

Answer 1

during the last couple of days I learnt a lot. I will try to answer this question myself.

Question 1

Play is fullstack and based on AKKA. I think for a prototype / UI app this integration is fine.

For a REST-only API AKKA only with something like spray would be better & faster. However spray will be deprecated in favour of akka-http.

Question 2

This is up to personal preference. However may sometimes provide a clearer structure of the dependencies.