7 ms·

Phoenix 1.2

404 points by sotojuan 10y ago

vvanders 10y ago
> [CodeReloader] The lib/ directory is now code reloaded by default along with web/ in development Nice! I found the way Phoenix deals with iteration to be quite refreshing, glad to see lib is now a part of this too.
chrismccord 10y ago
Wow this news front-paged fast! I just tagged the commit, grabbed a quick lunch, and I haven't finished drafting the official release announcement yet :) If you want to know what Phoenix 1.2 is all about, check my ElixirConfEU keynote which demos Phoenix Presence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n338leKvqnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n338leKvqnA José Valim and I were also on the changelog podcast talking about what's new: https://changelog.com/208/ https://changelog.com/208/
- gt565k 10y ago
  Hey Chris! Just watched the video from elixir conf EU Do you have more information about the "Phoenix with gaming" book that's in the works? I'd like to find out more about it and when it would be available. Thanks!
- bobwaycott 10y ago
  That was a fantastic presentation. Thanks a bunch for all your work.
- davidw 10y ago
  That talk was super interesting. Thanks! https://haslab.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/version-vectors-are-not-vector-clocks/ https://haslab.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/version-vectors-are-... - are you sure what you described is a version clock, and not a version vector? I'll readily admit to not having a thorough enough grasp of both to feel confident in making that call.
  - chrismccord 10y ago
    I believe they are technically version vectors, which I've mentioned in other talks, but I haven't been sure if the distinction is helpful and I haven't been confident enough yet to explain the nuances. Will check out the link
    - davidw 10y ago
      Ok - the reason I ask is because when I needed to figure some of that stuff out, I had more or less the same reaction you did in your talk. I'm still not 100% of everything :-)
- ghayes 10y ago
  Chris, been a huge fan of Elixir and Phoenix. Do you have any scope on the performance of Elixir versus standard erlang? I am gathering the opinion that erlangers believe Elixir to be slower in general? E.g. the performance of poison versus jiffy
  - di4na 10y ago
    Jiffy is not erlang but NIFs that call to C. So it is probably the source of the problem more than Elixir vs Erlang.
anonyfox 10y ago
are the new calendar-types from elixir 1.3 already rolled into phoenix/ecto?
- chrismccord 10y ago
  They are supported if you are on Elixir 1.3 since we ship with Ecto 2.0 out of the box, but we are waiting to make them the default with the Phoenix generators until we make Elixir 1.3 a hard dependency. Edit: I was wrong! My comments will apply to Ecto 2.1. Life is confusing living on the edge sometimes
  - quaunaut 10y ago
    Is there a good writeup on how to use them somewhere?
    - josevalim 10y ago
      Since that question is related to Ecto, I will take it. :) Right now it is not possible to use the new Calendar types in Ecto. The plan is for Ecto v2.1 to come in about a month, when v1.3 is a bit more stable, and it will introduce the `:datetime`, `:time` and `:date` types that will map to Elixir's v1.3 new Calendar types. TL;DR - not yet, soon.
      - anonyfox 10y ago
        Sounds good! I am actually waiting for this exact feature before starting my next project, since I have to deal with a lot of time range queries (all items from the Last 48h, ...) I really appreciate the work of you all!
Eclyps 10y ago
Long-time rails guy here, really looking forward to playing around with Phoenix soon. I keep hearing really positive things, just haven't had the time dive in. I tried diving into react for a bit, but I found that it was really hard to retain unless I was working with it every day. Lots of people are telling me that the switch from Rails to Phoenix will be a lot easier though (I hope so!)
- anonyfox 10y ago
  You'll feel instantly at home in phoenix, since you know more or less what MVC, migrations, ... are about. Then you'll dig deeper into und the actual syntax (a week for rubyists before it clicks?). Dont give up, its awesome. Then you'll be productive right away. And then you'll discover what OTP actually means in practice and be blown away. (Point of no Return) And then you fully "get" what channels, distributed systems, umbrella-refactorings and all the latest talks are about. Phoenix as a whole is so advanced compared with everything else we have currently its not even funny. I highly recommend the official book, it itself is one of the best books in web dev i've ever read.
  - davidw 10y ago
    > And then you fully "get" what channels, distributed systems, umbrella-refactorings and all the latest talks are about. I used Erlang on my last project, and it was an awesome fit for what we were doing. It's a really great system. That said... "don't drink too much kool-aid" - Rails is fine for lots of things, and continues to be fine. Not everyone needs a fault-tolerant, distributed system, or web sockets or some of the other stuff where Erlang is a win.
    - quaunaut 10y ago
      Very true, but what I particularly like is the raw speed- having a JSON API with an average response time in microseconds(ie, sub-millisecond) is super cool and goes a long way in transforming a web app into that native-app feel. To be able to get that without sacrificing productivity is huge.
lsh 10y ago
Phoenix is "A productive web framework that does not compromise speed and maintainability."
- mkesper 10y ago
  The readme doesn't even feature Elixir.
- aphextron 10y ago
  Came here to post this, was not disappointed.
lucidstack 10y ago
Fantastic week for the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem! Another thanks to the teams behind all these amazing releases, and particularly (for this news) Phoenix.Presence and Phoenix.PubSub, for the wide range of new exciting applications they'll have.
- ghayes 10y ago
  Just bumped my servers to erlang 19, Elixir 1.3 and Phoenix 1.2. The erlang and Elixir communities have done a great job shipping. At my organization, I created our first internal service which uses Elixir and Phoenix. I've had a number of both junior and senior devs come up to me really excited about building on Phoenix and Elixir. It's rock-solid stable, fast and fun to use. Props to José, Chris and the rest of the team for their continued hard work.
dustinfarris 10y ago
I'm 10-years Python/Django and making the leap to Phoenix. I can't begin to describe how thrilled I am with the intelligence and warmth of this community—something I always treasured at Django and was afraid of losing. Phoenix 1.2 looks ready for prime-time! I just finished setting up a continuous integration/deployment pipeline with edeliver and CircleCI and couldn't be happier with how everything is fitting together. Very excited for the bright future of Phoenix!
- rattray 10y ago
  Thanks for sharing! What are the biggest pros/cons you've encountered so far? What do you miss from Django? What do you wish Django could copy from Phoenix?
  - dustinfarris 10y ago
    I'm still learning, but I've already noticed some incredible response times. Phoenix is very fast. I wish I had actual numbers to give you that compare to Django but I'm just not that far along yet. Elixir as a language is very nice. This is my first taste of "functional" programming and I really like it. Shifting my mindset from object-oriented has been difficult, but I find the code I write much more straight-forward so far for the types of apps I will be building. What do I miss? Maturity. Django dotted its Is and crossed its Ts a long time ago. I wouldn't say Phoenix is buggy at all—I think it is production ready—but the recent work Django has been doing with things like Postgres libraries are several steps ahead of where Phoenix is at today. Also, Django documentation is bar-none. There is nothing about Phoenix that jumps out at me and says "Django would be so much better if it had this!" Maybe Presence will be one of those things, but I have not had a chance to play with it yet. I am excited about how Elixir (on top of Erlang OTP) scales horizontally with virtually no effort, which is something that Python cannot replicate as easily without a lot of thought and some sort of bolted on message db—and in the end, slower. The robust concurrency story (and what that could mean long-term) is exciting to me.
    - MartinMond 10y ago
bcardarella 10y ago
I posted this in the Elixir 1.3 thread but also relevant here. If you're looking to understand why you/your company may want to consider migrating from Rails to Phoenix you can check out my RailsConf talk on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhTQdcieQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhTQdcieQE
rlbaker 10y ago
Does anyone know if Programming Phoenix will be receiving an update for 1.2? Are there any backwards incompatible changes in 1.2 or Ecto 2.0?
wyldfire 10y ago
What is Phoenix (in this context)? Since it took me a few clicks to figure out, I'll share: > A productive web framework [using node] that does not compromise speed and maintainability. CORRECTION: > A productive web framework [using elixir] that does not compromise speed and maintainability. Apologies for incorrect info, I saw the "npm install" content in the instructions and assumed it meant phoenix used node.
- msie 10y ago
  Node? I thought Elixir was the underlying language/platform?
  - dashoffset 10y ago
    You are correct. Node is just an optional dependency.
  - chrismccord 10y ago
    The tagline is definitely not about using node :) We include brunch.io, a nodejs asset builder, for our css/js building/bundling. Phoenix is first and foremost and Elixir web and distributed systems framework, which is where we get our productivity, speed, and maintainability.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
findjashua 10y ago
Phoenix looks great, but seems like it's focus is on serving html to websites (like Rails). Is there something simpler for building REST apis for mobile/single-page apps (like Sinatra)?
- jclem 10y ago
  I serve an API with it and also some services that use WebSockets. I've actually never used Phoenix to serve HTML, but I'd definitely recommend it for API development.
- noam87 10y ago
  I have just started working on a serious Phoenix project after watching from the sidelines for a while. It takes a completely different approach to Rails. First of all there's no magic (everything is completely explicit). It's extremely adaptable to different needs (JSON apis, real-time communication, etc). Also note: Phoenix is not so much a singular framework, it's more of a collection of libraries (Plug, Ecto, etc.)... it's just that Elixir makes cohesive communication between independent libraries so dead simple it "feels" like a Rails-like monolith. But once you actually look at the structure of the project, there's really not a whole lot that's hidden "behind the scenes" like in Rails. You can just add remove any of these components as you like. Honestly give it a try. This is the first backend environment I've tried that feels "right" (and man I've been searching); everyone else I know who's tried it agrees. It's just a pleasure to work with. So far every surprise has been pleasant!
- di4na 10y ago
  You can tear out any part of Phoenix. Try to look at passing --no-html to the phoenix new command :) There is even a generator for json API iirc.

404 points by sotojuan 10y ago

> [CodeReloader] The lib/ directory is now code reloaded by default along with web/ in development Nice! I found the way Phoenix deals with iteration to be quite refreshing, glad to see lib is now a part of this too.

chrismccord 10y ago

Wow this news front-paged fast! I just tagged the commit, grabbed a quick lunch, and I haven't finished drafting the official release announcement yet :) If you want to know what Phoenix 1.2 is all about, check my ElixirConfEU keynote which demos Phoenix Presence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n338leKvqnA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n338leKvqnA José Valim and I were also on the changelog podcast talking about what's new: https://changelog.com/208/ https://changelog.com/208/

gt565k 10y ago
Hey Chris! Just watched the video from elixir conf EU Do you have more information about the "Phoenix with gaming" book that's in the works? I'd like to find out more about it and when it would be available. Thanks!
bobwaycott 10y ago
That was a fantastic presentation. Thanks a bunch for all your work.
davidw 10y ago
That talk was super interesting. Thanks! https://haslab.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/version-vectors-are-not-vector-clocks/ https://haslab.wordpress.com/2011/07/08/version-vectors-are-... - are you sure what you described is a version clock, and not a version vector? I'll readily admit to not having a thorough enough grasp of both to feel confident in making that call.
- chrismccord 10y ago
  I believe they are technically version vectors, which I've mentioned in other talks, but I haven't been sure if the distinction is helpful and I haven't been confident enough yet to explain the nuances. Will check out the link
  - davidw 10y ago
    Ok - the reason I ask is because when I needed to figure some of that stuff out, I had more or less the same reaction you did in your talk. I'm still not 100% of everything :-)
ghayes 10y ago
Chris, been a huge fan of Elixir and Phoenix. Do you have any scope on the performance of Elixir versus standard erlang? I am gathering the opinion that erlangers believe Elixir to be slower in general? E.g. the performance of poison versus jiffy
- di4na 10y ago
  Jiffy is not erlang but NIFs that call to C. So it is probably the source of the problem more than Elixir vs Erlang.

anonyfox 10y ago

are the new calendar-types from elixir 1.3 already rolled into phoenix/ecto?

chrismccord 10y ago
They are supported if you are on Elixir 1.3 since we ship with Ecto 2.0 out of the box, but we are waiting to make them the default with the Phoenix generators until we make Elixir 1.3 a hard dependency. Edit: I was wrong! My comments will apply to Ecto 2.1. Life is confusing living on the edge sometimes
- quaunaut 10y ago
  Is there a good writeup on how to use them somewhere?
  - josevalim 10y ago
    Since that question is related to Ecto, I will take it. :) Right now it is not possible to use the new Calendar types in Ecto. The plan is for Ecto v2.1 to come in about a month, when v1.3 is a bit more stable, and it will introduce the `:datetime`, `:time` and `:date` types that will map to Elixir's v1.3 new Calendar types. TL;DR - not yet, soon.
    - anonyfox 10y ago
      Sounds good! I am actually waiting for this exact feature before starting my next project, since I have to deal with a lot of time range queries (all items from the Last 48h, ...) I really appreciate the work of you all!

Eclyps 10y ago

Long-time rails guy here, really looking forward to playing around with Phoenix soon. I keep hearing really positive things, just haven't had the time dive in. I tried diving into react for a bit, but I found that it was really hard to retain unless I was working with it every day. Lots of people are telling me that the switch from Rails to Phoenix will be a lot easier though (I hope so!)

anonyfox 10y ago
You'll feel instantly at home in phoenix, since you know more or less what MVC, migrations, ... are about. Then you'll dig deeper into und the actual syntax (a week for rubyists before it clicks?). Dont give up, its awesome. Then you'll be productive right away. And then you'll discover what OTP actually means in practice and be blown away. (Point of no Return) And then you fully "get" what channels, distributed systems, umbrella-refactorings and all the latest talks are about. Phoenix as a whole is so advanced compared with everything else we have currently its not even funny. I highly recommend the official book, it itself is one of the best books in web dev i've ever read.
- davidw 10y ago
  > And then you fully "get" what channels, distributed systems, umbrella-refactorings and all the latest talks are about. I used Erlang on my last project, and it was an awesome fit for what we were doing. It's a really great system. That said... "don't drink too much kool-aid" - Rails is fine for lots of things, and continues to be fine. Not everyone needs a fault-tolerant, distributed system, or web sockets or some of the other stuff where Erlang is a win.
  - quaunaut 10y ago
    Very true, but what I particularly like is the raw speed- having a JSON API with an average response time in microseconds(ie, sub-millisecond) is super cool and goes a long way in transforming a web app into that native-app feel. To be able to get that without sacrificing productivity is huge.

lsh 10y ago

Phoenix is "A productive web framework that does not compromise speed and maintainability."

mkesper 10y ago
The readme doesn't even feature Elixir.
aphextron 10y ago
Came here to post this, was not disappointed.

lucidstack 10y ago

Fantastic week for the Erlang/Elixir ecosystem! Another thanks to the teams behind all these amazing releases, and particularly (for this news) Phoenix.Presence and Phoenix.PubSub, for the wide range of new exciting applications they'll have.

ghayes 10y ago
Just bumped my servers to erlang 19, Elixir 1.3 and Phoenix 1.2. The erlang and Elixir communities have done a great job shipping. At my organization, I created our first internal service which uses Elixir and Phoenix. I've had a number of both junior and senior devs come up to me really excited about building on Phoenix and Elixir. It's rock-solid stable, fast and fun to use. Props to José, Chris and the rest of the team for their continued hard work.

dustinfarris 10y ago

I'm 10-years Python/Django and making the leap to Phoenix. I can't begin to describe how thrilled I am with the intelligence and warmth of this community—something I always treasured at Django and was afraid of losing. Phoenix 1.2 looks ready for prime-time! I just finished setting up a continuous integration/deployment pipeline with edeliver and CircleCI and couldn't be happier with how everything is fitting together. Very excited for the bright future of Phoenix!

rattray 10y ago
Thanks for sharing! What are the biggest pros/cons you've encountered so far? What do you miss from Django? What do you wish Django could copy from Phoenix?
- dustinfarris 10y ago
  I'm still learning, but I've already noticed some incredible response times. Phoenix is very fast. I wish I had actual numbers to give you that compare to Django but I'm just not that far along yet. Elixir as a language is very nice. This is my first taste of "functional" programming and I really like it. Shifting my mindset from object-oriented has been difficult, but I find the code I write much more straight-forward so far for the types of apps I will be building. What do I miss? Maturity. Django dotted its Is and crossed its Ts a long time ago. I wouldn't say Phoenix is buggy at all—I think it is production ready—but the recent work Django has been doing with things like Postgres libraries are several steps ahead of where Phoenix is at today. Also, Django documentation is bar-none. There is nothing about Phoenix that jumps out at me and says "Django would be so much better if it had this!" Maybe Presence will be one of those things, but I have not had a chance to play with it yet. I am excited about how Elixir (on top of Erlang OTP) scales horizontally with virtually no effort, which is something that Python cannot replicate as easily without a lot of thought and some sort of bolted on message db—and in the end, slower. The robust concurrency story (and what that could mean long-term) is exciting to me.
  - MartinMond 10y ago

bcardarella 10y ago

I posted this in the Elixir 1.3 thread but also relevant here. If you're looking to understand why you/your company may want to consider migrating from Rails to Phoenix you can check out my RailsConf talk on the subject https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhTQdcieQE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxhTQdcieQE

rlbaker 10y ago

Does anyone know if Programming Phoenix will be receiving an update for 1.2? Are there any backwards incompatible changes in 1.2 or Ecto 2.0?

wyldfire 10y ago

What is Phoenix (in this context)? Since it took me a few clicks to figure out, I'll share: > A productive web framework [using node] that does not compromise speed and maintainability. CORRECTION: > A productive web framework [using elixir] that does not compromise speed and maintainability. Apologies for incorrect info, I saw the "npm install" content in the instructions and assumed it meant phoenix used node.

msie 10y ago
Node? I thought Elixir was the underlying language/platform?
- dashoffset 10y ago
  You are correct. Node is just an optional dependency.
- chrismccord 10y ago
  The tagline is definitely not about using node :) We include brunch.io, a nodejs asset builder, for our css/js building/bundling. Phoenix is first and foremost and Elixir web and distributed systems framework, which is where we get our productivity, speed, and maintainability.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

findjashua 10y ago

Phoenix looks great, but seems like it's focus is on serving html to websites (like Rails). Is there something simpler for building REST apis for mobile/single-page apps (like Sinatra)?

jclem 10y ago
I serve an API with it and also some services that use WebSockets. I've actually never used Phoenix to serve HTML, but I'd definitely recommend it for API development.
noam87 10y ago
I have just started working on a serious Phoenix project after watching from the sidelines for a while. It takes a completely different approach to Rails. First of all there's no magic (everything is completely explicit). It's extremely adaptable to different needs (JSON apis, real-time communication, etc). Also note: Phoenix is not so much a singular framework, it's more of a collection of libraries (Plug, Ecto, etc.)... it's just that Elixir makes cohesive communication between independent libraries so dead simple it "feels" like a Rails-like monolith. But once you actually look at the structure of the project, there's really not a whole lot that's hidden "behind the scenes" like in Rails. You can just add remove any of these components as you like. Honestly give it a try. This is the first backend environment I've tried that feels "right" (and man I've been searching); everyone else I know who's tried it agrees. It's just a pleasure to work with. So far every surprise has been pleasant!
di4na 10y ago
You can tear out any part of Phoenix. Try to look at passing --no-html to the phoenix new command :) There is even a generator for json API iirc.