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  • Book Overview & Buying Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir
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Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

By : Aditya Iyengar
4.6 (10)
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Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

4.6 (10)
By: Aditya Iyengar
Buy this Book

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)
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Preface
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Preface
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Who this book is for
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What this book covers
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To get the most out of this book
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Download the example code files
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Download the color images
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Conventions used
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Get in touch
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Share Your Thoughts
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Download a free PDF copy of this book
1
Part 1: Web Server Fundamentals
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Part 1: Web Server Fundamentals
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Introducing the Cowboy Web Server
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Chapter 1: Introducing the Cowboy Web Server
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Technical requirements
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What is a web server?
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Exploring the client-server architecture
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Understanding HTTP
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Understanding Cowboy’s architecture
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Building a web application using Cowboy
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Supervising the web server
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Adding routes with bindings
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Validating HTTP methods
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Responding with HTML files
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Testing the web server with ExUnit
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Summary
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Exercises
3
Chapter 2: Building an HTTP Server in Elixir
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Chapter 2: Building an HTTP Server in Elixir
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Technical requirements
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Listening over a TCP socket using :gen_tcp
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Responding over a TCP socket using :gen_tcp
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Writing an HTTP server package
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Defining an HTTP response struct
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Validating whether a responder is configured
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Creating responder behavior
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Testing the HTTP server
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Running the HTTP server with a sample application
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Adding concurrency to the server
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Bonus – starting a detached HTTP server
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Summary
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Exercise
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Part 2: Router, Controller, and View
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Part 2: Router, Controller, and View
5
Chapter 3: Defining Web Application Specifications Using Plug
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Chapter 3: Defining Web Application Specifications Using Plug
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Technical requirements
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What is Plug?
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Representing the state of the connection with the Plug.Conn struct
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Defining a plug
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Understanding Plug.Router
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Plugifying our HTTP server
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Summary
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Chapter 4: Working with Controllers
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Chapter 4: Working with Controllers
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Technical requirements
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What are controllers?
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Controllers in Phoenix
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Building a controller interface
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Integration with web servers
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Understanding redirects
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Testing the controller
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Summary
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Exercises
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Chapter 5: Adding Controller Plugs and Action Fallback
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Chapter 5: Adding Controller Plugs and Action Fallback
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Technical requirements
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Plug pipeline in controllers
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Understanding the Plug.Builder module
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Building the controller pipeline
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Implementing action fallback
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Summary
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Chapter 6: Working with HTML and Embedded Elixir
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Chapter 6: Working with HTML and Embedded Elixir
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Technical requirements
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Understanding and exploring embedded elixir
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Responding with html.eex files
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Testing our templates
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Testing with Floki
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Summary
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Chapter 7: Working with Views
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Chapter 7: Working with Views
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Technical requirements
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What is a view?
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Views in Phoenix
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Building a view interface
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Passing helper functions to templates
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Taking Goldcrest for a spin
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Summary
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Exercises
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Part 3: DSL Design
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Part 3: DSL Design
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Chapter 8: Metaprogramming – Code That Writes Code
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Chapter 8: Metaprogramming – Code That Writes Code
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Technical requirements
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The pros and cons of metaprogramming
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When to use metaprogramming
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Metaprogramming in Elixir
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Understanding quoted literals
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Evaluating quoted literals
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The hygienic evaluation of quotes
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Adding dynamic behavior to quotes
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Code injection using evaluation
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Code injection using macros
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The using macro
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Compile-time callbacks
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Building a music DSL in Elixir
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Writing the implementation
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Building the interface layer
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Testing the interface
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Adding DSL test helpers
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Summary
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Exercises
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Chapter 9: Controller and View DSL
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Chapter 9: Controller and View DSL
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Technical requirements
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Why use metaprogramming here?
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DSL design
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Building the controller DSL
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Extracting response helpers
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Building the View DSL
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Building a web app using the DSLs
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Creating test helpers for ease of testing and debugging
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Summary
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Exercises
13
Chapter 10: Building the Router DSL
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Chapter 10: Building the Router DSL
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Technical requirements
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Why use metaprogramming here?
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DSL design
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Building the router DSL
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Building router helpers
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Creating test helpers
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Summary
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Exercises
14
Index
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Index
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Introducing the Cowboy Web Server

“Web servers are written in C, and if they’re not, they’re written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C.”

– Rob Pike, co-creator of Go

The web server is a key component of any modern-day web framework. Expanding on the point made in the preceding quote by Rob Pike, the Cowboy web server, written in Erlang, is also in a way implemented in C. Cowboy is the default web server used by Phoenix, the ubiquitous web framework in Elixir.

In this chapter, we will not be learning C, unfortunately, but we will take a closer look at how a web server is designed. We will provide some background on how a web server is built and set up to communicate with a client using HyperText Markup Language (HTML).

We will also learn the fundamentals of how HTTP requests and responses work, including their anatomy. We will then learn how to construct an HTTP response and send it using a web server. Moreover, we will learn the fundamentals of web server architecture by examining the components of Cowboy. Lastly, we will learn ways to test a web server and measure its performance. Doing this will put us in a better position to build our own web server in the next chapter.

The following are the topics we will cover in this chapter:

  • What is a web server?
  • Fundamentals of client-server architecture
  • Fundamentals of HTTP
  • How an HTTP server works
  • Using Cowboy to build a web server
  • Using dynamic routes with Cowboy
  • Serving HTML
  • Testing the web server

Going through these topics and looking at Cowboy will allow us to build our own HTTP server in Chapter 2.

End of Section 1
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