Play Framework 2.3 on OpenShift database token substitution not working - openshift

Question

I am trying to deploy a Play Framework 2.3 application to OpenShift.
I am following this example: https://github.com/JamesSullivan/play2-openshift-quickstart
Building and deploying the application is working (by that I mean the push to the git repository is working and the build is completing successfully), but during startup I see this error in play.log:
AbstractConnectionHook -
Failed to obtain initial connection Sleeping for 0ms and trying again.
Attempts left: 0. Exception: null.
Message:No suitable driver found for jdbc:${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_URL}
Oops, cannot start the server.
Configuration error: Configuration error[Cannot connect to database [default]]
at play.api.Configuration$.play$api$Configuration$$configError(Configuration.scala:94)
at play.api.Configuration.reportError(Configuration.scala:743)
at play.api.db.BoneCPPlugin$$anonfun$onStart$1.apply(DB.scala:247)
at play.api.db.BoneCPPlugin$$anonfun$onStart$1.apply(DB.scala:238)
at scala.collection.immutable.List.map(List.scala:272)
at play.api.db.BoneCPPlugin.onStart(DB.scala:238)
at play.api.Play$$anonfun$start$1$$anonfun$apply$mcV$sp$1.apply(Play.scala:91)
at play.api.Play$$anonfun$start$1$$anonfun$apply$mcV$sp$1.apply(Play.scala:91)
at scala.collection.immutable.List.foreach(List.scala:381)
at play.api.Play$$anonfun$start$1.apply$mcV$sp(Play.scala:91)
at play.api.Play$$anonfun$start$1.apply(Play.scala:91)
at play.api.Play$$anonfun$start$1.apply(Play.scala:91)
at play.utils.Threads$.withContextClassLoader(Threads.scala:21)
at play.api.Play$.start(Play.scala:90)
at play.core.StaticApplication.<init>(ApplicationProvider.scala:55)
at play.core.server.NettyServer$.createServer(NettyServer.scala:244)
at play.core.server.NettyServer$$anonfun$main$3.apply(NettyServer.scala:280)
at play.core.server.NettyServer$$anonfun$main$3.apply(NettyServer.scala:275)
at scala.Option.map(Option.scala:145)
at play.core.server.NettyServer$.main(NettyServer.scala:275)
at play.core.server.NettyServer.main(NettyServer.scala)
Caused by: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_URL}
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:596)
at java.sql.DriverManager.getConnection(DriverManager.java:215)
at com.jolbox.bonecp.BoneCP.obtainRawInternalConnection(BoneCP.java:363)
at com.jolbox.bonecp.BoneCP.<init>(BoneCP.java:416)
at com.jolbox.bonecp.BoneCPDataSource.getConnection(BoneCPDataSource.java:120)
at play.api.db.BoneCPPlugin$$anonfun$onStart$1.apply(DB.scala:240)
... 18 more
So it looks like the ${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_URL} environment variable token-substitution is not working.
If I log in to my application, I see this via env (obviously I replaced the username, password, IP and port for the purposes of posting here):
OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_URL=postgresql://xxxx:yyyy#ip:port
I have also tried using the other environment variables, like OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_HOST but those too do not get substituted.
The relevant part of my openshift.conf looks like this:
db.default.driver=org.postgresql.Driver
db.default.url="jdbc:${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_URL}"
db.default.user=myappuser
db.default.password=myapppassword
From the linked quickstart project, the following command is used to start the Play server (again, I replaced server-ip for the purposes of this post):
/app-root/runtime/repo/target/universal/stage/bin/myapp
"-DapplyEvolutions.default=true"
-Dhttp.port=8080 -Dhttp.address=server-ip
-Dconfig.resource=openshift.conf
You can see the openshift.conf file being referenced.

Answer 1

I tried a lot of things, eventually I found something that worked:
db.default.driver=org.postgresql.Driver
db.default.url="jdbc:postgresql://"${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_HOST}":"${OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_PORT}/mydb
db.default.user=(((db-user)))
db.default.password=(((dp-password)))
The upshot is, it seems, you need to watch out very carefully for correct usage of the quotation characters.
It looks "wrong" (at first glance) since the last quotation character closes the string prior to the OPENSHIFT_POSTGRESQL_DB_PORT variable.