Database transactions in Play framework scala applications (anorm)

Question

I am developing an application using Play framework and scala. I am using anorm for data-access layer. And I\'ve got a problem I could not solve.

Brief:

Answer 1

The solution I've seen used elsewhere (principally in Squeryl), is roughly the following:

import java.sql.Connection
object Helper {
  private val conn: ThreadLocal[Connection] = new ThreadLocal

  def inTransaction[X](f: Connection => X) = {
    conn.get() match {
      case null =>
        DB.withConnection { newConn =>
          conn.set(newConn)
          try f(newConn)
          finally conn.set(null)
        }
      case c => f(c)
    }
  }
}

This way, the inTransaction method is re-entrant, so there's no harm in calling it redundantly inside dao.select.

If you prefer, you can expose conn via a public method, and change the signature of f to => X - you lose some compile-time safety, but the API is a little cleaner.

One pitfall with this approach is that connections are tied to threads, which may cause problems if you're using futures or actors, and a process can resume on a different thread (this is a tricky area anyway, but one you should be aware of).

You might want to look into Squeryl too - it may already do what you need.