Play2 development mode is very heavy because it checks file modification and reload classes for each requests. And it seems to process requests in serial. So loading web pages which contain many resources such as external CSS, JavaScript files or images is stressful.
play2-fastassets accelerates Play2 development mode by leveraging browser cache.
Replace the routing to controllers.Assets.at by jp.sf.amateras.play2.fastassets.FastAssets.get in conf/routes. This method returns a response which has a header: Cache-Control: private, max-age=3600.
#GET /assets/*file controllers.Assets.at(path="/public", file) GET /assets/*file jp.sf.amateras.play2.fastassets.FastAssets.get(file)
And add following configurations into conf/application.conf.
fastassets.urlPath=/assets fastassets.realPath=/public
Use FastAssets.at instead of routes.Assets.at in HTML templates.
@(title: String)(content: Html)
@import jp.sf.amateras.play2.fastassets.FastAssets
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>@title</title>
<link rel="stylesheet" media="screen" href="@FastAssets.at("stylesheets/main.css")">
<link rel="shortcut icon" type="image/png" href="@FastAssets.at("images/favicon.png")">
<script src="@FastAssets.at("javascripts/jquery-1.7.1.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>
</head>
<body>
@content
</body>
</html>
FastAssets.at appends a last modified timestamp to the filename and your browser cache it. When you update the file, this timestamp is also updated. So the browser retrieves a new file from the server instead of the cached contents.
