Flash

Flash support, allowing you to store information across requests and expire it immediately after a redirect, is included within Scalatra by default.

The scalatra-http-demo has a working example of flash support.

Basic usage

Flash entries are not normally available within the current request scope. The exception is adding new flash entries into flash.now.

In order to enable flash support, you’ll need to extend your servlet class with FlashMapSupport. You can set the flash like this:

class FooServlet extends ScalatraServlet with FlashMapSupport {
 post("/articles/create") {
    // watch out: this creates a session!
    flash("notice") = "article created succesfully"
    redirect("/home")
  }

  get("/home") {
    ssp("/home", "flash" -> flash)
  }
}

and then you can use it in your view, to let the user know what happened. home.ssp might look like this:

<%@ import val flash:org.scalatra.FlashMap %>
<html>
  <body>
    <p>Here is the flash: <%= flash.get("notice") %></p>
  </body>
</html>

Adding multiple entries

You can add more than one entry to the FlashMap, using +=:

flash = ("notice" -> "Hello from your application")
flash += ("error" -> "An error occurred")
flash.now += ("info" -> "redirect to see the error")

flash.now operates pretty much in the same way as flash does, except that it sets a value for the current request only. It will be removed before the next request unless explicitly kept.

FlashMapSupport and sessions

Please note: extending your ScalatraServlet with FlashMapSupport triggers a session, which is why it’s an optional mixin.