Make a simple, runnable client/server skeleton to build off.

[apccurtiss]

The best place to start is a simple skeleton service! If anyone else gets to this before I do, feel free to take it over. ETA some time before the end of September.

[biljith]

Hey @apccurtiss Have you thought about which framework you are going to be using? I'm hoping to contribute so I better get up to speed on it.

[apccurtiss]

My personal goal was to use Scala for the backend and React for the frontend. I haven't built a website in either before, so I don't know the best framework. For simplicity I was thinking of just serving the React directly with no fancy react-specific framework support or bundler, and just using the most basic Scala web library, but if you have a better idea I'd love to hear it!

[mawiwillme]

I've built a couple webservers in scala. Its not that difficult, but its definitely a lot harder to do than a pythonic webserver, or node.js webserver. Here's a good framework that I've used: http://scalatra.org/ There's a couple requirements for deployment though, unless you want to run the whole thing through jetty.

[apccurtiss]

Honestly, I just want decent typechecking in my life. I was also seeing references to the Play framework, but I like the name Scalatra better and that seems like a good a reason as any...

[mawiwillme]

I was just looking at this: https://nordicapis.com/8-frameworks-to-build-a-web-api-in-scala/ play seems like a good choice to me, its drawbacks are not in the library itself, but the external plugins written by other people. After dealing with some of the issues with scalatra, I would definitely be down to using a different framework.

[apccurtiss]

Works for me! I'm guessing this won't be a huge project, so it shouldn't be too hard to refactor if it turns out one of these frameworks isn't the best option.

[mawiwillme]

I made a play template from the play sbt generator. I'm just gonna push it to master because its something everybody else can build off of.

[apccurtiss]

Awesome! You're the best. Let me know if you need any permissions or anything.