Professional Heroku Programming

Chapter 13

Developing with Other Supported Languages

WHAT’S IN THIS CHAPTER?

• Developing with Python
• Developing with Node.js
• Developing with Clojure
• Developing with Scala
• Developing with Groovy using the Grails framework
• Developing non-Facebook applications on PHP

WROX.COM CODE DOWNLOADS FOR THIS CHAPTER

The wrox.com code downloads for this chapter are found at www.wrox.com/remtitle.cgi?isbn=1118508998 on the Download Code tab. The code is in the Chapter 13 download and individually named according to the names throughout the chapter.

In the last two chapters, we took an in-depth look at how to run Ruby and Java apps on Heroku. Although those are the most common languages with which apps are written, Heroku’s polyglot capabilities enable you to select the best tool for the job at hand. Heroku also officially supports Python, Clojure, Scala, Node.js, and Groovy. You will explore how to develop applications with each of these languages in this chapter.

At the time of writing, PHP is supported for writing Facebook apps only. However, you can use Heroku to run non-Facebook PHP apps. Even though full support is not quite available yet, this chapter takes a look at writing PHP apps on Heroku as well.

DEVELOPING WITH PYTHON

Python is a versatile, interpreted language that is easy to understand and read, using strict indentation for determining code blocks. Since its release in the 1980s, it has grown in popularity steadily and has built on its feature set, moving from its roots in simple ...