Unable to load dependency in Play framework project

Question

I am trying to use a library called REST Assured with the Play Framework. The documentation - https://code.google.com/p/rest-assured/wiki/GettingStarted - gives the following artifact for Maven -

<dependency>
      <groupId>com.jayway.restassured</groupId>
      <artifactId>rest-assured</artifactId>
      <version>1.8.0</version>
      <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

So I altered my Build.scala file as follows to include this dependency -

  val appDependencies = Seq(
    // Add your project dependencies here,
    javaCore,
    javaJdbc,
    javaEbean,
    "com.jayway.restassured" % "rest-assured" % "1.8.0" % "test"
  )

Then I try and use this library in a Java by statically importing some packages, which is what the documentation instructs me to do -

import static com.jayway.restassured.RestAssured.*;
import static com.jayway.restassured.matcher.RestAssuredMatchers.*;
import static org.hamcrest.Matchers.*;

But this results in an Compilation error when I try and run the Play application -

error: package com.jayway.restassured does not exist

I know that Play/sbt is retrieving the dependency because I can see a "com.jayway.restassured" directory in the play-2.1.0/repository/cache directory. However it is not showing in the play-2.1.0/repository/local directory, I don't know if that has any significance.

So what's going wrong, why can't I access this library in my Play application?

Hmmm, the imports seem to work if I place them in Java file in my /test directory. But not if I place them in a Java file in my /app directory. I get the package does not exist error if I try and use them in my files in my /app directory. Any idea why this happens? — sonicboom

avik avik · Accepted Answer · 2013-04-20T16:21:24

If you need to access REST Assured from non-test code, the dependency should be defined as:

"com.jayway.restassured" % "rest-assured" % "1.8.0"

In other words, drop the "test" declaration. When that's present you're specifying that the library is a test-scope dependency. At the moment you're saying that REST Assured is not a dependency of your production code, and only needs to be scoped to code in your test tree (i.e added to the test classpath).

I guess the follow-up question is why you wish to reference a testing library from your app code?

Unable to load dependency in Play framework project

1 Answers