Part 3. Advanced topics

Part 3 covers advanced functionality in Play. The techniques covered here are generally not required to create a basic web application with Play, but they can make your application better.

Chapter 9 is about one of Play’s more powerful features: asynchronous request handling. It explains why long-running tasks are better performed “in the background,” and how to achieve that easily. It also shows how you can have a web application with streaming data, using WebSockets or Comet.

Chapter 10 explains how to build a secure application in Play. It explains how you can avoid common security problems, and how you can use filters to implement authentication.

Chapter 11 covers the build process of Play. It explains the configuration files, and shows you how to package your code in reusable modules. Finally, it shows you what’s involved with taking your application to production.

Chapter 12 introduces the tools that Play has for testing your application. It explains what different kinds of automated tests there are, and how you can write them for your application.