🧠 Michael Cordell's Brain Dump

Phoenix Webframework

2 min read

Adding authentication to a Phoenix Webframework Application hacks

  1. Added dependency to application
{:phx_gen_auth, "~> 0.6", only: [:dev], runtime: false},
  1. mix phx.gen.auth Account User users
  2. Updated and committed files as needed
  3. Fixed test suite

Collapsing Migrations and Schema dumping hacks

Run ecto.dump to dump the schema file at priv/repo/structure.sql. Commit the file and modify the the aliases section of mix.exs to run ecto.load --skip-if-loaded --quiet1.

--- a/mix.exs
+++ b/mix.exs
         "cmd npm --prefix assets install",
         "cmd npm --prefix assets run deploy"
       ],
-      "ecto.setup": ["ecto.create", "ecto.migrate", "run priv/repo/seeds.exs"],
+      "ecto.setup": ["ecto.create", "ecto.load --skip-if-loaded --quiet", "ecto.migrate", "run priv/repo/seeds.exs"],
       "ecto.reset": ["ecto.drop", "ecto.setup"],
       test: ["ecto.create --quiet", "ecto.migrate --quiet", "test"],
       "assets.deploy": [

Notes on framework

connection
|> endpoint()
|> plug()
|> plug()
...
|> router()
|> HelloWebController()

lib/app_name/application.ex has the logic for starting, stopping, and supervising each application lib/app_name_web/endpoint.ex: beginning of the web logic

“Generally speaking, a context encapsulates all business logic for a common purpose. This way, we can interact with our business logic from controllers, channels or remote APIs, without having to duplicate code. In a nutshell, a controller exists to work with context functions. It parses end user requests, calls context functions and translates those results into something the end user can understand. Each slice of code has an isolated purpose. The context doesn’t know about the controller, and the controller doesn’t know about the business rules.”

– Form Programming Phoenix2 Rails Console equivalent

iex -S mix

Rendering Pathway

Router: define pipelines and routes → Controller: functional logic before view → View: render template → Template: .eex extension

Releases

  • Historically, releases were served by distillery a third party utility that packaged the web app up as a tar ball. This was replaced by a native elixir solution via mix release in elixir 1.9.

Deployment

Deploy a Phoenix app with Docker stack ### Install phoenix simply on macOS

brew install elixir
mix local.hex
mix archive.install phx_new

1. Ericksen, M. Developing after mix ecto.dump. https://fly.io/phoenix-files/developing-after-a-mix-ecto-dump/ (2023).

2. McCord, C., Tate, B. & Valim, J. Programming Phoenix: Productive | Reliable | Fast. (Pragmatic Bookshelf, Dallas, Texas, 2016).

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