Setup Play Application

Instructions for setting up a Scala development environment with the Play Framework and an IDE.

Building the starter project

Install a Java Development Kit (JDK) from Oracle (this is a link to Java 8, but you can install anything up to 11)
Install the Scala Built Tools (SBT), instructions for Mac, Linux and Window can be found here
Open a terminal/command prompt in the location you want to create your project.
Run the following command sbt new playframework/play-scala-seed.g8 This instruction can be found on the play framework getting started site.
Navigate to the top level directory of the project. (the one with build.sbt) In the case of the example this is play-scala-seed.
Run sbt run and open a browser and navigate to localhost:9000
If everything works, you should see a Welcome to Play! message.

Download the Intellij community edition (free) IDE for your operating system. Instructions can be found on the jetbrains website here
Open the preferences and install the scala plugin (screenshot below)

Click on File > Open... and navigate to the project folder. Click on the build.sbt file and then open. You will be given 3 options:

Choose Open as Project (this is critical to get the IDE to recognise this as a Scala project and have intelli-sense work correctly)
You will be given an option to Import Project from sbt. Leave the options at default and click OK.

At the top of the IDE there is an option to Add Configuration (this is for building and running).