Scala, the functional and object-oriented language that started out on the Java Virtual Machine, is being used along with JavaScript in a new version of the Udash web framework.
The open source Udash, from device management provider AVSystem, compiles code to JavaScript and can work with JavaScript libraries such as Bootstrap and jQuery. Udash itself is based on Scala.js, the JavaScript variant of the Scala language. Developers working with Udash can use any IDE supporting Scala.
Mateusz Starzec, a Udash developer, likes Scala's type system, which he describes as concise and clear: “It makes code refactoring pleasant, it’s easy to understand someone else’s code and it catches a lot of errors in compile time.”
The features in Udash
The Udash Scala framework provides:
- An RPC (remote procedure call) system with a shared data model.
- A type-safe layer provided over CSS, HTML, and JavaScript through data binding over DOM templates.
- Client-server communication based on typed interfaces.
- Bidirectional RPC via WebSockets.
- Automatic synchronization of reactive data bindings between the user interface and data model.
Where to download Udash
Udash repos are available on the project’s Github page.