Book Image

Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

By : Aditya Iyengar
Book Image

Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

By: Aditya Iyengar

Overview of this book

Elixir's functional nature and metaprogramming capabilities make it an ideal language for building web frameworks, with Phoenix being the most ubiquitous framework in the Elixir ecosystem and a popular choice for companies seeking scalable web-based products. With an ever-increasing demand for Elixir engineers, developers can accelerate their careers by learning Elixir and the Phoenix web framework. With Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir, you’ll start by exploring the fundamental concepts of web development using Elixir. You'll learn how to build a robust web server and create a router to direct incoming requests to the correct controller. Then, you'll learn to dispatch requests to controllers to respond with clean, semantic HTML, and explore the power of Domain-Specific Languages (DSL) and metaprogramming in Elixir. You'll develop a deep understanding of Elixir's unique syntax and semantics, allowing you to optimize your code for performance and maintainability. Finally, you'll discover how to effectively test each component of your application for accuracy and performance. By the end of this book, you'll have a thorough understanding of how Elixir components are implemented within Phoenix, and how to leverage its powerful features to build robust web applications.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Part 1: Web Server Fundamentals
4
Part 2: Router, Controller, and View
10
Part 3: DSL Design

Building a music DSL in Elixir

Now that we know the fundamentals of metaprogramming in Elixir, let’s build a DSL. This DSL will be used to compose music using Elixir.

Here are the features of the DSL that we will be building:

  • The DSL will provide a simple interface to compose music using Elixir
  • It will utilize the ALSA aplay command to play a note
  • The DSL should be able to define a sequence of notes so that the sequence can be reused throughout the track
  • A note should have the following attributes:
    • A class: C, D, E, F, G, A, B, or rest
    • A modifier: sharp or base
    • A duration in seconds
    • A volume
    • An octet to determine the final frequency
  • A sequence should be able to embed notes from another sequence
  • The DSL should be easy to read, idiomatic, and deterministic

Now, let’s come up with the shape of the DSL.

One of my favorite DSLs in Elixir is the Phoenix router. The interface is very simple and easy to learn, while still giving a lot of transparency...