Lift Application Development Cookbook

Table of Contents

Lift Application Development Cookbook

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Getting Started with Lift Basics

Introduction

Creating a Lift application using SBT

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Creating a Lift application using Maven

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Defining a SiteMap

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Logging using logback

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Sending e-mails using Gmail's SMTP server

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

2. Working with HTML

Introduction

Transforming HTML elements using their IDs

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Creating an HTML list using CSS selectors

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Creating an HTML table with dynamically defined columns

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Nesting snippets

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Dynamic menu rendering

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Localizing templates

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Testing snippets using Specs2

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Creating custom error pages

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Sending JavaScript commands from the server

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Invoking server-side functions from the client

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

3. Working with Forms

Introduction

Creating forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Validating forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating an Ajax form

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating multipage forms

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Defining a relation between form fields

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

4. Working with REST

Introduction

Getting data from the server

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Creating data using the REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Modifying data using the REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Deleting data using the REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Testing a REST service using Specs2

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Uploading a file using the REST service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating an RSS feed

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

5. Working with Databases

Introduction

Configuring a connection to database

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also...

Mapping a table to a Scala class

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also...

Creating one-to-many relationships

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Creating many-to-many relationships

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Creating CRUD features with CRUDify

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Paginating result sets

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Using an in-memory database in application tests

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

6. Working with Record

Introduction

Configuring a connection to a database using Squeryl

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Mapping a table to a Scala class

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Migrating the database using Liquibase

Getting ready...

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Creating one-to-many relationships

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Creating many-to-many relationships

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Paginating result sets using Record

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Testing your application using an in-memory database

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

7. Working with MongoDB

Introduction

Connecting to MongoDB using record

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Mapping a MongoDB collection to a Scala class

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Mapping embedded objects

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Mapping referenced objects

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Querying with Rogue

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

8. Integrating Lift with Social Media

Introduction

Signing up using a Facebook account

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also...

Fetching a user's Facebook data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Signing up using a Gmail account

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Fetching a user's Gmail data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Signing up using a LinkedIn account

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Fetching a user's LinkedIn data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Signing up using a Twitter account

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also...

Fetching a user's Twitter data

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Index

Lift Application Development Cookbook

Lift Application Development Cookbook

Copyright © 2013 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: September 2013

Production Reference: 1190913

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84951-588-7

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Suresh Mogre (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Gilberto T. Garcia Jr.

Reviewers

Diego Medina

Peter Petersson (karma4u101)

Peter Robinett

Paulo Suzart

Acquisition Editor

Vinay Argekar

Lead Technical Editor

Azharuddin Sheikh

Technical Editors

Jalasha D'costa

Akashdeep Kundu

Proshonjit Mitra

Shiny Poojary

Copy Editors

Brandt D'Mello

Mradula Hegde

Gladson Monteiro

Project Coordinator

Angel Jathanna

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Ameesha Green

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Graphics

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

Nilesh R. Mohite

Cover Work

Nilesh R. Mohite

About the Author

Gilberto T. Garcia Jr. has a Bachelor's degree in Philosophy from USP, and has been working with Internet-related technologies since 1999. He had worked with different programming languages in several projects with different sizes and complexities.

As a person who enjoys learning new things, he started to study and work with Scala and Lift in 2010.

I want to thank my wife, Lavinia, for all the love and encouragement to write this book, and for her support and patience during the writing process. I also want to thank my family and friends.

Thanks to David Pollak for creating Lift, and thanks to the Lift committers and everyone who makes the Lift community such a nice place to be around.

About the Reviewers

Diego Medina lives on the mountains of North Carolina with his wife, daughter, and their three cats. He has been a developer for the past 12 years, and his focus has been on web development and more specifically, web security.

He is a proud Lift committer and a very active member of the Lift community, answering questions on the mailing list as well as writing articles on his personal blog.

Peter Petersson lives in the south of Sweden with his wife and one-year-old boy.

He has been a developer for 18 years. He started his developer career at Ericsson Software Technology mostly using C++, but at the time Java was emerging, he soon jumped onto that bandwagon. He has been a co-owner in a tour operator information system company and is currently a system developer and consultant at Avalon Innovation.

He started looking at Scala and functional programing at the beginning of 2011, about the same time he found Lift to be an awesome web framework. He is a proud Lift committer and creator of the Lift FoBo, Front End Toolkit Module, as well as the jQuery module.

Peter Robinett is a web and mobile developer based in Amsterdam. He is passionate about Scala and is a committer to the Lift project. He works under the name Bubble Foundry, and blogs occasionally at www.bubblefoundry.com.

Paulo Suzart worked in different types of companies in the last 10 years, from e-commerce to insurance, as a Java programmer and lately as an SOA specialist. He currently runs a digital media startup as CTO.

He truly believes that startups are open fields for new technologies and functional programming languages, such as Scala and Clojure.

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Preface

Lift is a web framework built in Scala. Its main goal is to be a secure framework that helps developers to build scalable web applications in a concise and maintainable way.

There are six things—according to the official website, http://liftweb.net/—that makes Lift different from any other web framework available today:

Secure: Lift apps are resistant to common vulnerabilities, including many of the OWASP Top 10 projects

Developer-centric: Lift apps are fast to build, concise, and easy to maintain

Designer-friendly: Lift apps can be developed in a totally designer-friendly way

Scalable: Lift has a number of high-performance apps, and they scale in the real world to handle insane traffic levels

Modular: Lift apps can benefit from easy-to-integrate, pre-built modules

Interactive like a desktop app: Lift's Comet support is unparalleled, and Lift's Ajax support is super easy and very secure

The goal of this book is to introduce you to the basics of Lift, and teach you everything that you need to know to build applications using Lift.

By providing you with hands-on examples, we hope that you find this book useful as your first introduction to Lift, and also as a reference guide when building your own web applications.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Getting Started with Lift Basics, covers the basics of Lift which include how to start a new application using build tools such as SBT and Maven. It also explains how to define the application structure using SiteMap object and how to use the Mailer object to send e-mails.

Chapter 2, Working with HTML, introduces the reader to CSS selectors and shows how to use them to transform the HTML that will be rendered in the browser. It also covers how to test snippets, how to generate a JavaScript code from the server, and how to invoke server-side functions using JavaScript. It also explains how to localize templates.

Chapter 3, Working with Forms, covers the different ways the reader can work with forms, such as how to create a single page form and a wizard-like form. It also explains how to submit forms using Ajax and how to wire form fields.

Chapter 4, Working with REST, introduces Lift's RestHelper object and how to use it to create a REST API. It also explains how to test the REST API, how to upload files, and how to create an RSS feed.

Chapter 5, Working with Databases, explains how to use Mapper to integrate the application with a database. It also covers the basics of ORM mapping and how to use an in-memory database to test an application that uses Mapper.

Chapter 6, Working with Record, explains how to integrate a Lift application with a database using Record and Squeryl. It also covers how to test an application that uses Record and Squeryl using an in-memory database.

Chapter 7, Working with MongoDB, covers the integration of a Lift application with MongoDB, how to use Record to create such an integration, and explains how to query MongoDB using Rogue.

Chapter 8, Integrating Lift with Social Media, explains how to use social login to authenticate users and how to get their data from their Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, or LinkedIn accounts.

What you need for this book

To be able to follow the recipes, you will need to have Java 7 installed on your computer.

Who this book is for

This book is for developers who want to learn how to develop web applications using the Lift framework. However, we assume that the reader at least knows the basics of Scala, HTML, and JavaScript.

Conventions

In this book, you will find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: The bigger difference lies in the snippet code. You can see that after getting the user data, we've invoked a method called fetchUserData and used its result to change the contents of a li tag.

A block of code is set as follows:

import code.lib.googleSession

import net.liftweb.util.BindHelpers._

import net.liftweb.common.Full

object GmailData {

  def render = {

    googleSession.get match {

      case Full(email) => .email #> email

      case _ =>  * #> Not authorized

    }

  }

}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

        {longDate(Calendar.getInstance().getTimeInMillis)}         {ClientCache.clients.flatMap {

        c =>

           

            Name: {c.name} - E-mail: {c.email}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

scala> val transformSpanContent = span * #> Some Text

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: If you select a name in the combobox and click on the Delete Selected button, you'll see an alert saying that the name you selected was deleted.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.

Tip

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Reader feedback

Feedback from our readers is always welcome. Let us know what you think about this book—what you liked or may have disliked. Reader feedback is important for us to develop titles that you really get the most out of.

To send us general feedback, simply send an e-mail to <[email protected]>, and mention the book title via the subject of your message.

If there is a topic that you have expertise in and you are interested in either writing or contributing to a book, see our author guide on www.packtpub.com/authors.

Customer support

Now that you are the proud owner of a Packt book, we have a number of things to help you to get the most from your purchase.

Downloading the example code

You can download the example code files for all Packt books you have purchased from your account at http://www.packtpub.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit http://www.packtpub.com/support and register to have the files e-mailed directly to you.

Errata

Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you find a mistake in one of our books—maybe a mistake in the text or the code—we would be grateful if you would report this to us. By doing so, you can save other readers from frustration and help us improve subsequent versions of this book. If you find any errata, please report them by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the errata submission form link, and entering the details of your errata. Once your errata are verified, your submission will be accepted and the errata will be uploaded on our website, or added to any list of existing errata, under the Errata section of that title. Any existing errata can be viewed by selecting your title from http://www.packtpub.com/support.

Piracy

Piracy of copyright material on the Internet is an ongoing problem across all media. At Packt, we take the protection of our copyright and licenses very seriously. If you come across any illegal copies of our works, in any form, on the Internet, please provide us with the location address or website name immediately so that we can pursue a remedy.

Please contact us at <[email protected]> with a link