Lift is a
free and open-source web framework that is designed for the
Scala programming language. It was originally created b
David Pollakwho was dissatisfied with certain aspects of the
Ruby on Rails framework. Lift was launched as an
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
project on 26 February 2007 under the
Apache License 2.0. A commercially popular web platform often cited as being developed using Lift is
Foursquare.
Design goals and overview
Lift is an expressive framework for writing web applications. It draws upon concepts from peer frameworks such as
Grails,
Ruby on Rails,
Seaside,
Wicket
In cricket, the term wicket has several meanings:
* It is one of the two sets of three stumps and two bails at either end of the pitch. The fielding team's players can hit the wicket with the ball in a number of ways to get a batsman out. ...
and
Django. It favors
convention over configuration in the style of Ruby on Rails, although it does not prescribe the
model–view–controller
Model–view–controller (MVC) is a software architectural pattern commonly used for developing user interfaces that divide the related program logic into three interconnected elements. This is done to separate internal representations of infor ...
(MVC)
architectural pattern. Rather, Lift is chiefly modeled upon the so-called "View First" (designer friendly) approach to web page development inspired by the Wicket framework. Lift is also designed to be a high-performance, scalable web framework by leveraging Scala actors to support more concurrent requests than is possible with a thread-per-request server.
As
Scala program code executes within the
Java virtual machine (JVM), any existing
Java
Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mo ...
library and
web container can be used in running Lift applications. Lift web applications are thus packaged as
WAR files and deployed on any
servlet 2.4 engine (for example,
Tomcat 5.5.xx,
Jetty
A jetty is a structure that projects from land out into water. A jetty may serve as a breakwater, as a walkway, or both; or, in pairs, as a means of constricting a channel. The term derives from the French word ', "thrown", signifying somet ...
6.0, etc.). Lift programmers may use the standard Scala/Java development toolchain including
IDEs such as
Eclipse
An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object or spacecraft is temporarily obscured, by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer. This alignment of three ce ...
,
NetBeans and
IDEA
In common usage and in philosophy, ideas are the results of thought. Also in philosophy, ideas can also be mental representational images of some object. Many philosophers have considered ideas to be a fundamental ontological category of be ...
. Dynamic web content is authored via templates using standard
HTML5 or
XHTML
Extensible HyperText Markup Language (XHTML) is part of the family of XML markup languages. It mirrors or extends versions of the widely used HyperText Markup Language (HTML), the language in which Web pages are formulated.
While HTML, prior ...
editors. Lift applications also benefit from native support for advanced web development techniques such as
Comet
A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or Coma (cometary), coma, and sometimes also a Comet ta ...
and
Ajax.
The main characteristics of Lift applications are:
*Resistant to common vulnerabilities including many of the
OWASP.
*Fast to build, concise and easy to maintain.
*High performance and scale in the real world to handle big traffic levels.
*Interactive like a desktop application.
History
The stable version 1.0 of Lift was released on 26 February 2009 (two years after initiation of the project). Lift 2.0 was released in June 2010. David Pollak, the original creator of Lift, discussed the release of Lift 2.0 on the popular
FLOSS weekly podcast.
Lift reached five years of continuous development on 26 February 2012.
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*
*
External links
*
*
Asta4D: Lift inspired Java port
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lift (Web Framework)
Web frameworks
Scala (programming language)
Cross-platform software
Virtual machine
In computing, a virtual machine (VM) is the virtualization/ emulation of a computer system. Virtual machines are based on computer architectures and provide functionality of a physical computer. Their implementations may involve specialized har ...
Free software programmed in Scala
Software using the Apache license