Elixir vs Ruby on Rails

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Well, actually there is httpd in OTP.

Rails is framework that is actually built from few libraries:

  • ActiveSupport
  • ActiveModel and ActiveRecord
  • ActionView
  • ActionPack

Other parts are helper modules for different aspects and do not really need to be included. In fact even ActiveModel and ActiveRecord aren’t really required parts.

So there is few tightly connected libraries that cannot live without each other (especially almost everything rely on ActiveSupport).

On the other hand Phoenix is just a helper library for Plug with few macros for simpler routing definitions and sockets handling, other than that there is really nothing “big” in it. Even the storage layer - Ecto - is completely independent, and while there are some people working on both, the projects aren’t related to each other in any way. For example most controllers in phoenix can be simplified to:

defmodule MyApp.Controllers.Foo do
  @behaviour Plug

  @impl true
  def init(opts), do: opts

  @impl true
  def call(%Plug.Conn{params: params} = conn, _opts) do
    action = Phoenix.Controller.action_name(conn)
    apply(__MODULE__, action, [conn, params])
  end

  # … 
end

Of course it is very simplified as there is few more things like setting default layout and view or calling Plugs defined within the controller, but very simple version of controller can look like that and for Phoenix there will be no difference, as there in reality is no more magic.

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