§Writing Plugins

Play comes with a few plugins predefined for all applications, these plugins are the following:

• DBPlugin -> providing a JDBC datasource
• EvolutionPlugin -> provides migration (only available if db was configured)
• EbeanPlugin -> provides Ebean support_ (only available if db was configured)_
• MessagesPlugin - > provides i18n support
• BasicCachePlugin -> provides in-memory caching
• GlobalPlugin -> executes application’s settings

However, one can easily add a new plugin to an application by following these steps:

• implement play.Plugin (see this for an example)
• this plugin should be available in the application either through pulling in it from a maven repository and referencing it
  as an app dependency or the plugin code can be part of a play application
• you can access it like

import static play.api.Play.*;
import static play.libs.Scala.*;

public Myplugin plugin() {
   return orNull(unsafeApplication().plugin(MyPlugin.class)).api();
}

which will return an instance or subclass of MyPlugin fully initialized or null.

• in your app create a file: conf/play.plugins and add a reference to your plugin:

  5000:com.example.MyPlugin

The number represents the plugin loading order, by setting it to > 10000 we can make sure it’s loaded after the global plugins.