Modular web framework for Elixir

Note - 2014-07-18

Sugar may transition to more of an educational project. Either way, it will remain updated to a certain degree, especially once Elixir v1 hits.

If you're looking for a project with a more steady backing of support, please use Phoenix.

• Speed. Sugar shouldn't be slow and neither should your project.
• Ease. Sugar should be simple because simple is easy to learn and use.
• Effective. Sugar should aid development. You have better things to which to devote your time.

Why build this when Dynamo, Weber, and Phoenix exist with growing communities? While both projects are great in their own right, Sugar aims to be another contender, sparking more development on all three projects (and/or others that may follow) and giving developers another option when deciding what framework fits their needs best. Sugar may even strive to shake things up just as ChicagoBoss has done.

# Clone this repo
git clone https://github.com/sugar-framework/simple.git
cd simple

# Get project dependencies
mix deps.get

# Start the web server
mix server # or `iex -S mix server` if you want access to iex

Currently, Sugars expects a Config module to be defined in your project that has a config/0 function defined for configuring your application. A simple Keyword list is returned with the configuration values.

Eventually, this will be replaced with a more elegant solution.

Valid options:

• log - true|false - turns logging on or off
• server - contains options to be sent to the underlying web server (currently, only Cowboy)
  • ip - the ip to bind the server to. Must be a tuple in the format { x, y, z, w }.
  • port - the port to run the server. Defaults to 4000 (http) and 4040 (https).
  • acceptors - the number of acceptors for the listener. Defaults to 100.
  • max_connections - max number of connections supported. Defaults to :infinity.
  • dispatch - manually configure Cowboy's dispatch.
  • ref - the reference name to be used. Defaults to plug.HTTP (http) and plug.HTTPS (https). This is the value that needs to be given on shutdown.

defmodule Config do
  def config do
    [
      log: true,
      server: [
        port: 4000
      ]
    ]
  end
end

Because Sugar builds upon Plug, it leverages Plug.Router to do the heavy lifting in routing your application, adding an alternate DSL.

Routes are defined with the form:

method route [guard], controller, action

method is get, post, put, patch, delete, or options, each responsible for a single HTTP method. method can also be any, which will match on all HTTP methods. controller is any valid Elixir module name, and action is any valid function defined in the controller module.

defmodule Router do
  use Sugar.Router

  get "/", Hello, :index
  get "/pages/:id", Hello, :show
  post "/pages", Hello, :create
  put "/pages/:id" when id == 1, Hello, :show
end

All controller actions should have an arrity of 2, with the first argument being a Plug.Conn representing the current connection and the second argument being a Keyword list of any parameters captured in the route path.

Sugar bundles these response helpers to assist in sending a response:

• render/2 - sends a normal response
• not_found/1 - sends a 404 (Not found) response

defmodule Hello do
  use Sugar.Controller

  def index(conn, []) do
    render conn, "index.html.eex", []
  end

  def show(conn, args) do
    render conn, "show.html.eex", args
  end

  def create(conn, []) do
    render conn, "create.html.eex", []
  end
end

• basic authentication (?)
• Development error page
• Caching
  • Compiled HTML
  • Application Data
  • Adapters
    • ETS

Why, the contributors, of course! Would you consider being one? Please send a pull request :)

The main product of this repository is the example terms in the file CONTRIBUTING.md. This project uses those guidelines as the basis for its own development process. Please refer to that file.

Sugar is released under the MIT License.

See LICENSE for details.