How do i use play ws library in normal sbt project instead of play?

Question

When i tried using Play WS library in a normal sbt project instead of play project I was bound to use play.api.Play.current and got java.lang.RuntimeException: "There is no started application" when tried to run the application.

Solution 1

To use play-ws outside of play see "Using WSClient" section of documentation: http://www.playframework.com/documentation/2.3.x/ScalaWS

val builder = new com.ning.http.client.AsyncHttpClientConfig.Builder()
val client = new play.api.libs.ws.ning.NingWSClient(builder.build())
val response = client.url(url).get()

Solution 2

Usage in 2.4.x

import play.api.libs.ws.ning.NingWSClient   

val wsClient = NingWSClient()
wsClient.url("http://wwww.something.com").get()

build.sbt :

libraryDependencies += "com.typesafe.play" %% "play-ws" % "2.4.3"

Usage in 2.5.x

import play.api.libs.ws.ahc.AhcWSClient

implicit val actorSystem = ActorSystem()
implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()
wsClient.url("http://wwww.something.com").get()

//at the very end, to shutdown stuff cleanly :
wsClient.close()
actorSystem.terminate()

build.sbt :

libraryDependencies += "com.typesafe.play" %% "play-ws" % "2.5.4"

Logs

As someone noted in the comment, by default you might get a bunch of verbose logs coming from the underlying async-http-client. One way to fix it is to start configuring a logback.xml, and placing it in src/main/resources

<configuration>

<conversionRule conversionWord="coloredLevel" converterClass="play.api.Logger$ColoredLevel" />

<appender name="STDOUT" class="ch.qos.logback.core.ConsoleAppender">
    <encoder>
        <!-- The logging pattern, you might want to adapt it -->
        <pattern>%d %coloredLevel %t - %logger - %message%n%xException</pattern>
    </encoder>
</appender>

<!-- Here you can change the levels of specific loggers -->
<logger name="somelogger" level="INFO" />

<!-- Default logging level for every logger -->
<root level="ERROR">
    <appender-ref ref="STDOUT" />
</root>

</configuration>

Comments

[Chris W.]

What is the dependency-line needed for one's build.sbt/build.scala file? Is a special resolver necessary?

[planetenkiller]

try (untested): resolvers += "Typesafe Releases" at "https://repo.typesafe.com/typesafe/releases/" and "com.typesafe.play" %% "play-ws" % "2.3.7". (small note: play-ws has a dependency to play so you will have the whole play framwork in your project)

[plamb]

Does anyone know how to turn off WS's verbose logging (printing of all the response headers) in this scenario (i.e. using it outside of play). It makes it very hard to debug anything

[Felipe]

Thanks. posting a link to a very useful comparison of HTTP toolkits for Scala: implicitdef.com/2015/11/19/…

[ses]

seems deprecated already. they recommended now:play.api.libs.ws.ahc.AhcWSClient

[Andy Hayden]

I thought I used to be able to do this in sbt console but I keep seeing: res23: scala.concurrent.Future[play.api.libs.ws.WSResponse] = List() as the return from get.., !

[stanislav.chetvertkov]

^^^ try using Await.result(), List() means that there is no value yet