The emerging reactive model is ideal for high-performance web applications that need to manage the unpredictably-bursty behavior of the web, along with the potential instability of running on networks you don't fully control. By using application components that communicate asynchronously as they react to user and system events, reactive applications are more scalable, responsive, and fault-tolerant than standard monolithic applications. For web developers working in Java or Scala, the Play framework makes it easy to implement reactive applications without taking on the overhead of building everything from scratch.

Reactive Web Applications with Play teaches web developers how to benefit from the reactive application architecture and presents hands-on examples using the Play framework. This book quickly introduces Play as a framework to handle the plumbing of your application. As you move through the book, you'll alternate between chapters that introduce reactive ideas like asynchronous programming, managing distributed state, and fault tolerance and examples that show you how to build such applications using Play. Readers new to Play will be able to learn from the ground up. If you're already using Play, you'll get a deeper look at how to implement reactive web applications effectively.

Manuel Bernhardt is a software engineer who specializes in reactive web applications using Play, Scala and Akka. He's been using Play framework since its introduction.