I have been developing in play, and I always feel the need of having a database in memory with test data being loaded each time I run the server. With this approach, I don’t need to have a SQL server running and I don’t need to be worried about changing my database model (for instance, conflict test data), so I just need to change my test data and run the play server again.

The new database manager that playframework uses is called H2. H2 is a Java SQL database which allows to access in-memory/embedded/server databases. In my case, which I use a memory database and I have test data already, I just need to have a line in my Application.conf:

The second thing is to do to access the H2 database manager inside the play is access the http://localhost:9000/@db url (I am supposing that the dev server is running on your localhost). After accessing the database you just need to configure the H2 login like the image:

Now you just need to press the connect button and voilá!

Conclusions:

1. Run your playframework: play run myproject (with the >=1.2 version of playframework)
2. Access http://localhost:9000/@db
3. Configure JDBC URL: jdbc:h2:mem:play (you can access other databases, for instance mysql)
4. Default authentication: username: sa / Password: (empty)

1. Choose the JAR with the drivers according to your oracle’s database version and put in the lib/ directory of your web application
2. Configure your application.conf file,  located inside the conf/ directory
   • In the JPA Configuration Section you have to choose the JPA (Hibernate) dialect. In my case I was working with oracle10g so i had to insert in the configuration file:

     • jpa.dialect=org.hibernate.dialect.Oracle10gDialect

   • Now you just need to add the following lines, according to your database (including username and password).

     • db.url=jdbc:oracle:thin:@yourdatabaseserver:1521:dbname
       db.driver=oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleDriver
       db.user=yourusername
       db.pass=yourpassword

3. Now you just need to restart the server. He adds the database drivers automatically to the classpath of the project.
4. If you want, you can generate Netbeans or Eclipse projects, so you can open this projects with everything configured.

Really easy with no XMLs!