A Play Framework 2.6 startup script example (Scala)

By Alvin Alexander. Last updated: November 14, 2019

Play Framework FAQ: Can you share an example of a Play Framework 2.6 startup script, i.e., a shell script that shows the commands and parameters you use to run a Play Framework application?

Sure. Assuming that you created a production mode version of your application with the sbt dist command, deployed that zip file to a production server, and have a Play Framework 2.6 application named “myapp,” you can put a command like this in a Unix/Linux shell script to start your Play application:

nohup \
    myapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/bin/myapp \
    -Dplay.http.secret.key='YOUR_APPLICATION_SECRET_HERE' \
    -Dhttp.port=5150 \
    -J-Xms128M \
    -J-Xmx256m \
    -J-server \
    -Dconfig.file=/var/www/myapp/myapp.conf \
    &

Of course you can change some of those parameters as need be, but that gives you a basic idea of how to:

Run the Play Framework 2.6 “run” command (i.e., myapp-1.0-SNAPSHOT/bin/myapp)
How to set the Play Framework secret key
How to set the port your Play Framework application runs on
How to set several JVM parameters
How to specify the location of your production-mode configuration file

A Play Framework 2.6 production mode configuration file

To go along with that shell script, here’s an example of a Play Framework production-mode configuration file:

include "application.conf"


# can set the secret key here, if you prefer
#play.http.secret.key="foobar"


# needed to make play happy
# see: stackoverflow.com/questions/45070168/host-not-allowed-error-when-deploying-a-play-framework-application-to-amazon-a
# see: www.playframework.com/documentation/2.6.x/AllowedHostsFilter
# “As of Play 2.6.x, the Allowed Hosts filter is included in Play’s list of default filters”
play.filters.hosts {
  allowed = [".myapp.com"]
}
# can also try "127.0.0.1:9000"
# i had to restart nginx after making changes here


# mysql
# db.default.url="mysql://user:password@localhost/database"
# note: only works when i manually override all three of these; the first is not enough
db.default.url="mysql://my_username: my_password@localhost/my_database"
db.default.username="my_username"
db.default.password="my_password"


# set other production mode variables ...
webapp.title = "My Web App"
webapp.description = "A description of my web app ..."