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Getting Started with Elixir Phoenix

Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building scalable and maintainable applications. Phoenix framework is a popular choice for web development, and one of the most popular frameworks for building web applications in Elixir. In this post, we'll go over the basics of getting started with Phoenix.

What is Phoenix?​

Phoenix is a web framework for building scalable and performant web applications. It’s built using the Elixir programming language and is designed to be fast, flexible, and easy to use. With Phoenix, you can build robust web applications with a minimal amount of code, making it a great choice for developers of all levels.

Setting up Your Environment​

Before we start building our Phoenix application, we need to set up our development environment. To get started, you'll need to install Elixir, the Elixir package manager (Hex), and Phoenix.

Here's a quick rundown of the steps:

  1. Install Elixir - You can find instructions on how to install Elixir on the Elixir website.

  2. Install Hex - Open your terminal and run the following command: mix local.hex.

  3. Install Phoenix - Run the following command: mix archive.install hex phx_new.

Creating Your First Phoenix Application​

With our environment set up, we can now create our first Phoenix application. To do this, we’ll use the Phoenix generator, which will create a new Phoenix project for us with the basic structure and files we need to get started.

To create a new Phoenix project, run the following command in your terminal: mix phx.new my_app

Replace my_app with the name you’d like to give your application.

Running Your Phoenix Application​

With our Phoenix project created, we can now run our application. To do this, navigate to the directory for your project (e.g. cd my_app) and run the following command:

mix phx.server

This will start a local server on your machine. Open your web browser and navigate to http://localhost:4000, and you should see a welcome page for your Phoenix application.

Conclusion​

This is just the start of what you can do with Phoenix. From here, you can build out the functionality of your application and add custom routes, templates, and controllers as needed. With its simplicity and scalability, Phoenix is a great choice for building web applications in Elixir. Happy coding!