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For example, Play-framework supports RESTful services like this: RESTful on Play! framework

How does this compare to something like Jax-RS Jersey implementation? Does a framework like Play run circles around Jersey because of all it's cool bells and whistles, and it does REST too?

Developer productivity is important, but so is a proper implementation. Perhaps using an MVC framework for REST only services is 'wrong'?

Note, only RESTful services, no UI components at all.

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jsidlosky
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3 Answers3

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Even though it's not "wrong" to use an MVC framework for RESTful services, there are some pros and cons versus using a JAX-RS implementation.

(Disclaimer: I have only used Jersey and Play! for fun, and not on production-grade systems, so I have tailored my comments more generally to MVC vs. JAX-RS. Keep in mind that these are broad generalizations.)

MVC frameworks--at least the ones that are considered developer friendly and "slick"--typically save you from having to build a persistence layer (the model part). Most also simplify "routing" requests using either scaffolding via convention or some form of configuration. The downsides are that you have to conform to some conventions for your controllers and usually have to write a view for each resource (or build layers of abstractions to avoid rewriting the same code).

JAX-RS excels at defining the routing (using Java annotations) as well as eliminating any restrictions on the service class. In my experience, that has greatly reduced the amount of boilerplate code and developer overhead. Jersey and Apache CXF also handle the XML or JSON serialization using JAXB annotations, which eliminates the need to figure out the view in an MVC context. The downside here is that you have to figure out your own ORM or persistence layer, which could be good or bad depending on whether you're building on top of existing data or creating a greenfield system (or using something other than an JPA/RDBMS e.g. NoSQL data store).

My own personal comment: Play! is a really cool framework, but I'd choose CXF (or Jersey) over an MVC framework any day for building out a RESTful service. In my experience, this frees up the developer to focus on the logic needed for the service, and opens up options for different database approaches. Right tool for the right job.

nafisto
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  • On a more personal note: I invested a lot of time studying and researching Play! to develop a RESTful framework only to keep running into limitations, version differences, documentation problems, etc. Play! has a lot of cool features but it's tempermental enough that I wish I dived right into a Jersey/JAX-RS solution. – IcedDante Jan 02 '13 at 19:03
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    You can use whatever data layer you want with either Jersey or Play. XML/JSON is similar. You mention JAXB -> you can get that working with either Jersey, CXF, or Play. The big deciding factor should be do you want to work in the Scala world or the Java world. – user2684301 Apr 27 '14 at 00:23
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As a rule of thumb: For Scala, use Play. For Java, use Jersey.

You can use Jersey/Scala and Play/Java; I've done both. It works. It isn't bad. But unless you have a particular reason to do that, I wouldn't mix ecosystems. Java and Scala are interoperable but they have different ecosystems, I would avoid adding Java-isms if you are using Scala or Scala-isms and dependencies if you are running straight Java.

Jersey and Play are generally close for REST services. Neither really has any killer features over the other.

Jersey defines URL mappings in annotations, Play defines them in a service wide route file. And they bundle or have varying quality of integration with different libraries for things like XML, JSON, database, testing, mocking, dependency injection libraries and app server deployment.

The Java world has JMS, Spring, JUnit, jdbi/hibernate/jpa, Jetty/Grizzly. The Scala world has Akka, specs2/ScalaTest, Anorm/slick. Jersey is a better fit for the first world, Scala for the second. You can definitely cross that, but it will be a little less elegant and might require more glue coding.

user2684301
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JAX-RS is a standard and implementations can be created by different vendors. Jersey is one such implementation. The other frameworks may make use of JAX-RS but are not standards. So it is not a one-to-one comparison.

I have never heard of Play before but it does look interesting, more akin to Rails and Django than Jersey. What I like about Jersey is that it can be integrated into existing Java web applications by simply adding the JARs and declaring some things in the web.xml. What I find confusing about Jersey and JAX-RS is the routing.

Play seems to make routing easier, however, correct me if I'm wrong, seems like it is an all-or-nothing framework and cannot be used alongside other servlets in the same web application.

kwo
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