How To Install Play Framework on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

In this tutorial, we will show you how to install Play Framework on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. For those of you who didn’t know, Play Framework is a popular open-source web application framework for building modern, scalable, and high-performance web applications using the Java and Scala programming languages. It is designed to be lightweight, fast, and developer-friendly, making it an excellent choice for building complex web applications quickly.

This article assumes you have at least basic knowledge of Linux, know how to use the shell, and most importantly, you host your site on your own VPS. The installation is quite simple and assumes you are running in the root account, if not you may need to add ‘sudo‘ to the commands to get root privileges. I will show you the step-by-step installation of Play Framework on Ubuntu 20.04 (Focal Fossa). You can follow the same instructions for Ubuntu 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.

Prerequisites

• A server running one of the following operating systems: Ubuntu 20.04, 18.04, 16.04, and any other Debian-based distribution like Linux Mint.
• It’s recommended that you use a fresh OS install to prevent any potential issues.
• A non-root sudo user or access to the root user. We recommend acting as a non-root sudo user, however, as you can harm your system if you’re not careful when acting as the root.

Install Play Framework on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa

Step 1. To begin the installation process, it’s crucial to update your system packages to their latest versions. This step ensures that you have access to the most recent security patches, bug fixes, and compatibility updates. Open a terminal and execute the following commands to update and upgrade your system packages:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
sudo apt install git unzip zip curl

Step 2. Installing Java Development Kit (JDK).

Play Framework requires a Java Development Kit (JDK) to be installed on your system. You can choose between OpenJDK and Oracle JDK. In this guide, we will install OpenJDK 8, which is a free and open-source implementation of the Java Development Kit:

sudo apt install openjdk-8-jdk

Verify the installation by running the following command:

java -version

Step 3. Installing Play Framework on Ubuntu 20.04.

Now download the SDK install script with which we will install sbt (Scala Build Tool) which is the tool with which we will finally manage the projects made with Play Framework:

curl -s "https://get.sdkman.io" | bash

Then, refresh the user’s PATH:

source "$HOME/.sdkman/bin/sdkman-init.sh"

Next, check the installed SDK version with the following command:

sdk version

When using the SDK, you should then install Java. To do this, you can run the following command below:

sdk install java $(sdk list java | grep -o "8\.[0-9]*\.[0-9]*\.hs-adpt" | head -1)

After that, use SDK to install sbt (Scala Build Tool):

sdk install sbt

Output:

Installing: sbt 1.5.6
Done installing!

Setting sbt 1.5.6 as default.

Step 4. Create a Sample project for Play Framework.

Run the following command to download the sample project to your system:

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/playframework/play-samples.git
cd play-samples/play-scala-hello-world-tutorial

Finally, run the project:

sbt run

Step 5. Accessing Play Framework Web Interface.

Once successfully create a sample project, open your web browser at http://localhost:9000 to view the content.

Congratulations! You have successfully installed Play Framework. Thanks for using this tutorial for installing the Play Framework the high-velocity web framework for Java and Scala on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Focal Fossa system. For additional help or useful information, we recommend you check the official Play Framework website.