I know, you already heard something like this in the Rails world. But for somebody that never created an application with Phoenix and Elixir, it is a good point to start.

Introduction

Elixir is a new language created by José Valim. It's a functional language that makes things safer and this language has a framework called Phoenix that help us with HTTP requests and so.

Dependencies

First of all, you need to install the Erlang/Elixir package manager. In this world, try to use the asdf that you can install via brew using Mac:

brew update
brew install asdf

You need to teach asdf how install Erlang and Elixir adding some plugins on it:

asdf plugin add erlang
asdf plugin add elixir

Now install the last version of Erlang and install it globally:

asdf install erlang 24.0
asdf global erlang 24.0

And then the last version of Elixir:

asdf install elixir 1.12
asdf global elixir 1.12

Check your versions:

elixir --version

# Erlang/OTP 24 [erts-12.0] [source] [64-bit] [smp:8:8] [ds:8:8:10] [async-threads:1] [jit]

# Elixir 1.12.0 (compiled with Erlang/OTP 22)

You save which Erlang and Elixir version you use in a file called .tool-versions, very similar the .ruby-version in Ruby world:

# .tool-versions

elixir 1.12
erlang 24.0

Our dependencies package manager calls Hex so let's install it:

mix local.hex

And finally, we can install the Phoenix Framework:

mix archive.install hex phx_new 1.5.9

Creating the project

I'll create the project skeleton skipping the dependencies install since we want to use Yarn over NPM:

mix phx.new bible
cd bible

Configuring Database

You'll need to install Docker and then create a docker file:

# docker-compose.yml

version: "3.8"

services:
  database:
    environment:
      POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD: trust

    image: postgres:13-alpine

    ports:
      - 5432:5432

Since we won't use a password in dev and test, let's set it to empty:

# config/dev.exs

config :bible, Bible.Repo,
  username: "postgres",
  password: "",

# config/test.exs

config :bible, Bible.Repo,
  username: "postgres",
  password: "",

• If you need to change the port, just add one extra property port: 5434, for example.

You're good to boot up your database:

docker-compose up -d

Now run some commands:

# installs the dependencies
mix deps.get

# creates the database
mix ecto.setup

# installs assets
cd assets && yarn install && cd -

# run the server
mix phx.server

Visit the URL and see your project running: localhost:4000

Creating an automatic CRUD

In Phoenix, we separate the code inside Modules, so the Persons will be a module containing our CRUD code.
Person is the model name and persons in the table with name and description as fields.

mix phx.gen.html Persons Person persons name:string description:text

Enable the CRUD routes adding the following code in the final of the block scope "/", BibleWeb do:

# lib/bible_web/router.ex

scope "/", BibleWeb do
  resources "/persons", PersonController
end

You should apply the migration in the database:

mix ecto.migrate

Just visit localhost:4000/persons and have fun!

Conclusion

Elixir and Phoenix are funny and strong worlds and we already have a lot of tools around this community. I believe that this language will be the future and will replace a couple of Java-like systems in big companies, mainly financial ones. What do you think?

Repository link: https://github.com/wbotelhos/crud-in-5-minutes-with-phoenix-and-elixir