I came from a similar background, but with some detours after Rails through Erlang, GAE w/ Django, and web2py. It took me about 2 months to finally start having fun with Lift and Scala, but I can tell you now it's really nice to just sit down, write something, and watch it work!
I'm no expert yet, and I'm constantly reading all the books I can find, but the rewards and power are definitely there. Where I needed dozens of files with Rails, I only need 3 models, 3 snippets, and 2 templates now, and they are far cleaner! My advice is to slow down, do the 'ToDo' app tutorial, and then start adding functionality to it. As you add features, you will research and learn about new things and how to do them. As a study aid, I keep the 'PocketChange' app from the book open, and look to see how similar problems were solved there. As they say, almost everything you need to know is contained in those two examples. As to all the niceties of the servers and deployment to a VPS, I suggest you leave that for later. The little Jetty thing running on localhost will give you a taste of how Maven sets up things, and how to tweak them (adding logging, comments, debugging messages, etc), plus you always have the Group here for help. Lift (and Scala) are both very young, so it will take a while for all the books, websites, tutorials, and videos to come out. Imagine Rails 5 years ago and you have some idea of where we are, and that's not even considering the new 'Goat Rodeo' project... No worries -- have fun! On Jun 19, 1:09 pm, "Nolan Darilek" <no...@thewordnerd.info> wrote: > Hi, all. I'm new to Lift and have a few questions about using it. For > background, I'm coming from Ruby to Scala, having finally been > frustrated by some aspects of the former enough to try jumping ship. I > know Java syntax, but the simplicity of Ruby has always been a powerful > draw for me, so when I used Java I always stayed away from Maven and > other cornerstones of the Java tool community. I say all of this not to > stir up Ruby vs. Scala drama (because we just don't have enough of that > already :P ) but to explain that I'm mistified by much of the Java > ecosystem, and a lot of what's out there seems to take it for granted > that I know all of this. So please pardon my newbie questions, and feel > free to point me to the FM on the subject if there is one, because I've > certainly been *trying* to RTFM. :) I also recognize that these topics > aren't specific to Lift, but I figure I'm likely to find more proponents > of low ceremony in the Scala community than I'd find if I seeked out > some more general purpose Java enterprise deployment resource. > > First...servlets? Web containers? App servers? Oh my. I want to write a > few hobbyist apps with Lift and deploy them to my VPS. They may or may > not take off, in which case I'd like a solution that can scale to > real-world use. Not heavy real-world use, mind you, but I figure a > separate VM/port for every app instance is overkill. So what do I need > for this? I gather the app server is what handles arranging web apps in > a single VM instance, but it's tough cutting through all the enterprise > language to figure out which one of these is best for my circumstances, > especially since I'm not dealing with legacy code and just want to > launch hobbyist/personal projects. And I can't for the life of me figure > out whether Tomcat is an app server or something else entirely. This > seems so much more complicated than just throwing up a few Mongrels and > a load balancer, or reading through the nicely-written Passenger manual > and following the step-by-step instructions. I'm sure it has its > advantages, I just can't get a grip on how it works. > > I've also been reading a lot about OSGi and it looks really nice. Am I > correct in assuming that OSGi is to Java web apps what Rack is to Ruby > ones? OK, maybe not exactly, and I know it's a more general-purpose > mechanism (I'm toying with ScalaModules in a desktop app for providing > pluggable UIs and other services) but in poking through OSGi articles, > I've read a few statements hinting that this is probably the best way to > deploy new apps with no legacy dependencies. Is this true? Is an app > server actually needed here, or do I just create an OSGi execution > environment and start adding bundles? > > It seems like the way to deploy an app is to build a war file and drop > it into a specific directory of your servlet/app > server/doohicky-whatamajig serverletcontainerthingie. It also looks as > if all apps are installed into the same HTTP namespace, with URL path > collisions resolved by editing web.xml and prepending something to the > /* for the map elements. Is this accurate? Or is it possible to have the > server prepend /myapp or /myapp.war based on the name of the deployed > app, then handle the mappings via ProxyPass in the front-end server? > That's closer to what I'm used to in Ruby, where the app takes over the > URL namespace beneath whatever path you assign it, but it's not clear to > me based on what I've read that this happens with Java app servers. > > Thanks for reading, and again, feel free to respond with a link or > google keywords if I'm just missing something obvious. One of the > biggest challenges I find myself facing with this move is that most of > what I've found assumes a high ceremony->low ceremony migration path, or > at least assumes that you've spent enough time in the Java ecosystem at > some point to get it. :) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Lift" group. 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