Converting Play 2.1 JSON to Scala XML

Working with JSON and XML is pretty simple in Play-framework. For JSON, it is recommended to use Play's type-class based library.

I recently, came across a scenario where I had to convert Play 2.1 JSON to Scala XML and vice versa. I didn't find any internal classes in Play which could handle this. Lift provides a tool to handle a similar conversion.

To convert the JSON into XML I used recursion. Although, the scala.xml.Elem constructor allows only one Node to be added as child, there is another method copy, which takes in a Seq[Node] as child.  

To handle conversion from XML to JSON, I modified the toJson method in Lift to result in Play JSON. 

Link to gist

Setting up Play-Scala Project in IntelliJ Idea

The easiest way to setup a Play-Scala project is by using the giter8 template.

Setup the project using by giving the following command in the terminal

$ g8 typesafehub/play-scala
# cd into the newly created directory and run with 'sbt run'

In the sbt console
$ idea

Once this is done, the project can be opened from Idea.

Setting up database for the project

1. Add the database driver in project/Build.scala (throws driver not found error on being skipped)
2. In conf/application.conf specify the database configuration(more on database in play)
3. In conf/evolutions/default create a file 1.sql which has the database schema(more on evolutions)

Prerequisites

1. sbt
2. giter8
3. Play and Scala plugin for IntelliJ Idea