Go to your project and install the router module via conf/dependencies.yml:

require:
    - play
    - play -> router head

Then run playdeps and the router module should be installed in the modules/ directory of your application. Change your controller like this:

@StaticRoutes({
        @ServeStatic(value="/public/", directory="public")
})
public class Application extends Controller {

    @Any(value="/", priority=100)
    public static void index() {
        forbidden("Reserved for administrator");
    }

    @Put(value="/", priority=2, accept="application/json")
    public static void hiddenIndex() {
        renderText("Secret news here");
    }

    @Post("/ticket")
    public static void getTicket(String username, String password) {
        String uuid = UUID.randomUUID().toString();
        renderJSON(uuid);
    }
}

Installing and enabling the module should not leave any open questions for you at this point. As you can see in the controller, it is now filled with annotations that resemble the entries in the routes.conf file, which you could possibly have deleted by now for this example. However, then your application will not start, so you have to have an empty file at least.

The @ServeStatic annotation replaces the static command in the routes file. The @StaticRoutes annotation is just used for grouping several @ServeStatic annotations and could be left out in this example.

Each controller call now has to have an annotation in order to be reachable. The name of the annotation is the HTTP method, or @Any, if it should match all HTTP methods. Its only mandatory parameter is the value, which resembles the URI—the second field in the routes.conf. All other parameters are optional. Especially interesting is the priority parameter, which can be used to give certain methods precedence. This allows a lower prioritized catch-all controller like in the preceding example, but a special handling is required if the URI is called with the PUT method. You can easily check the correct behavior by using curl, a very practical command line HTTP client:

curl -v localhost:9000/

This command should give you a result similar to this:

> GET / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.21.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.21.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8o zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.18
> Host: localhost:9000
> Accept: */*
>

< HTTP/1.1 403 Forbidden
< Server: Play! Framework;1.1;dev
< Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_FLASH=;Path=/
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_ERRORS=;Path=/
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_SESSION=0c7df945a5375480993f51914804284a3bbca726-%00___ID%3A70963572-b0fc-4c8c-b8d5-871cb842c5a2%00;Path=/
< Cache-Control: no-cache
< Content-Length: 32
<

<h1>Reserved for administrator</h1>

You can see the HTTP error message and the content returned. You can trigger a PUT request in a similar fashion:

curl -X PUT -v localhost:9000/
> PUT / HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.21.0 (i686-pc-linux-gnu) libcurl/7.21.0 OpenSSL/0.9.8o zlib/1.2.3.4 libidn/1.18
> Host: localhost:9000
> Accept: */*
>

< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Server: Play! Framework;1.1;dev
< Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_FLASH=;Path=/
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_ERRORS=;Path=/
< Set-Cookie: PLAY_SESSION=f0cb6762afa7c860dde3fe1907e88473476e2564-%00___ID%3A6cc88736-20bb-43c1-9d43-42af47728132%00;Path=/
< Cache-Control: no-cache
< Content-Length: 16

Secret news here

As you can see now, the priority has voted the controller method for the PUT method which is chosen and returned.

The router module is a small, but handy module, which is perfectly suited to take a first look at modules and to understand how the routing mechanism of the Play framework works at its core. You should take a look at the source if you need to implement custom mechanisms of URL routing.