Top 10 Elixir Frameworks

Elixir is comparatively a new programming language, but it is gaining much attention from developers and enterprises nowadays because of its properties.

Indeed, this general-purpose scripting language is known because of its great scalability features, concise code and fast API. However, it becomes tough to find a suitable framework to build applications with Elixir.

Thus, this guide is going to share one of the best and reliable Elixir frameworks with coders and businesses. This article would also present the pros and cons of using this dynamic programming language.

What is a Framework?

A scheme or structure that is used as a base to create an application by utilizing particular elements and artefacts is known as a framework. In the programming world, a framework confers a foundation to build software where various modules and segments can be rehashed for more than one project.

Benefits of Using a Framework

The use of a framework definitely keeps a coder away from numerous scripting errors. Withal, we are sharing the top benefits of using a framework below:

• Improves Efficiency

With frameworks, developers don’t have to invest their energies in composing code from scratch. Surely, these schemes provide built-in features and tools to write the script in a short time. In the same token, frameworks also emphasize enhancing the reusability and readability of programming scripts.

These facilities definitely improve the performances of both novices and experienced coders. Hot and Live Reloads also play their roles in bettering the efficiency during this process.

• Effortless Maintenance & Debugging

Though renowned programming languages offer good maintenance and debugging features but it has been noticed that most of them lack these properties. However, with the use of a framework, it is seamless for developers to debug their applications. Coders can also get help from these frameworks’ communities and unit testing tools in this regard.

• Enhances Database Expertise

The use of a framework is also very beneficial if you are willing to improve your database handling. The majority of frameworks use Object Relational Mapper (ORM) system to conduct database functions easily.

With the use of this ORM mechanism, developers don’t have to write long SQL scripts and can deal with database functionalities with great ease. In addition, frameworks also enable coders to manage rational databases effectively.

• Strengthens Security

Another fascinating benefit of using a framework for building mobile and web applications is its remarkable security. Developers don’t have to worry about app security when they use a good framework. Yes, a good framework confers protection against data tampering, SQL injection, cyber & DDoS attacks and cross-site request forgery etc.

These built-in safety features of these frameworks don’t only fight against the current security-oriented threats but are also beneficial to deal with future hazards.

What is Elixir?

Elixir is a concurrent multipurpose programming language that was developed by José Valim in 2011. This dynamically-typed programming language is also considered the continuity of Erlang because it is composed of Erlang’s bytecode and virtual machine. Its syntax is similar to Ruby and getting much popular among big enterprises.

The recent developer survey of Stack Overflow also ranked it at the 3rd position among the top paying technologies. Yes, with an $80,077 yearly salary, participants listed it among the highest paying programming languages. Pinterest, Lonely Planet, Moz and Discord are the leading tech giants that use this functional programming language.

Advantages of Elixir

Here are the core advantages of the Elixir programming language:

Elixir is composed on the top of Erlang’s VM Beam that permits it to build applications with great concurrency. It is less challenging to script codes simultaneously with Elixir. With these properties, it does not only write shortcodes but also consumes fewer servers. Pinterest has also used this programming language in 2014. By using this language, Pinterest reduced half of its servers and coding time.

Similarly, Elixir also takes less disk space and improves the software’s speed, performance, and scalability. In 2016, Moz also started using the Elixir language and noticed a huge improvement in speed, data customization and divisions. It enhanced APIs’ speed up to 20 times and took 63% less disk space.

Elixir is also considered a very productive programming language because of its syntax. It is effortless to write codes with Elixir. Yes, its Ruby-like syntax makes it easy for new developers to learn and write this programming language.

Around 2080 developers claimed on StackShare that they are using Elixir to build applications. Moreover, Financial Times has used this language to build GrapQL API. According to their development team, it was seamless to learn and use this language.

This dynamic programming language is also fault-tolerant. In this regard, it deals with both internal and external errors. Because of its complied nature, you can’t begin a program if it has errors. In the same token, it also separates the wrong components and resumes them after fixing the problem.

Another advantage of using Elixir is its scalability characteristics. Definitely, Elixir is able to manage a large number of audiences without paying anything extra with this programming language. It is surely a perfect choice for projects where users can be increased with the passage of time.

Limitations of Elixir

Elixir is a new programming language compared to the language like PHP, Java and Python etc. That is why it is hard to find good Elixir developers.

Similarly, the charges of such Elixir developers could also be high compared to the Java and PHP developers. In short, it could be an expensive venture if you build an app with Elixir.

Most of the scripting languages are object-oriented ones. Due to which it could be challenging for development teams to work with this functional language.

Top 10 Elixir Frameworks

1. Phoenix

Phoenix is one of the Elixir frameworks that is closest to modern web development. It has 17.1K stars on GitHub. Presently, it has a number of users and is considered the first choice by many for Elixir development needs.

Constant User Management — It keeps track of the connected users on all nodes. Phoenix has built-in “Channels and Presence” technology that ensures that all active users are tended to and accounted for.

MVC-like Pattern of Programming — Phoenix is a web development program that employs functionality the same as the Model View Controller architecture. This gives it the same functionality advantage while improving on the complication. Phoenix focuses on the business domain with its functionalities and endorses productivity within any portfolio. Moreover, it endorses maintainability and understanding of code.

Versatile — Phoenix is one of the only Elixir frameworks that come packed with all the capabilities of a web development interface. It has a number of tools that allow any seasoned developer to a web app to be able to get used to it. It also employs Erlang to help with better connections within the servers. It also takes advantage of Erlang to eradicate managing layers of cache to reduce operating complexities.

Toolkits — It comes with a number of tools that make it a good choice for developers. These include the presence of a dashboard that can facilitate enterprise applications and otherwise.

2. Nerves

Nerves is an Elixir framework first released in 2017. It is commonly used to work on the development of applications that need to be embedded. It can develop applications that are smooth and lightweight and have little to no space on local memory.

Moreover, it ensures less effort is required to set up and get used to it on the developer’s end. This is achieved by employing a number of basic features such as build management and a CLI-based management and development engine.

Linux VM Boot — This is an entire standalone project that boots into a Virtual Machine. This makes it fast, less error-prone and more capable of using the resources that it is provided with.

Fast Booting — The applications that are based on the Nerves Elixir framework are less likely to have errors. This is because the resources that it uses in development are properly mapped out. Every step from debugging to development is completed on the VM with an integrated environment with shallow background memory usage.

Toolkit — Nerves has a number of build management applications that can help manage and employ frameworks. This also ensures that the features loaded into Nerves can be made to run efficiently. It also has a command-line interface that ensures that the developer has to spend less time configuring the workspace.

Ready to Go — The framework in itself has an integrated IDE and a CLI based interface which makes it a complete package. It can be used to create applications fast without the hassle of having to set the applications and frameworks up first.

3. Sugar

Sugar is a very modular framework that was initially released in 2014. The updates over the years have made it a good option to go for creating web applications.

Speedy — It has a number of features such as a smaller footprint and efficient memory management to make Sugar faster. Its modular nature only loads the features and functionalities that are being used. This makes it fast and compact.

Easy to use — Sugar has a simple interface that can easily be used by any developer looking to make use of it.

Effective Toolkit — The feature set has a number of options that can be loaded into the IDE or final application.

4. Hedwig

Hedwig is a bot creation Elixir Framework Bots are generally used to automate processes that may be too redundant for human beings. This helps in automation and streamlining processes for customers. It also eradicates the need for human resources for these tasks. Hedwig in itself is a “Chatbot”. This bot is supported and inspired by Hubot.

Adapters — Hedwig supports several third-party adapters. This makes it a good option to be integrated into already running websites. This also makes it an easier decision for developers. It comes with SMS, XMPP, IRC. WIP, Flowdock, and many others.

Application Support — The number of adapters that it comes with makes it easy to be integrated into applications. It can support some applications that are already established and deployed.

Testing Capabilities — The bot has several testing options as it can change responders according to the developer and application needs. It can allow YouTube, Weather, Mopidy, etc. These give Hedwig an edge over its competitor frameworks.

5. Plug

The Plug is a framework that allows other frameworks to communicate in between them. It provides pipelines or connections between web servers and frameworks to allow for them to understand each other. This allows for all Erlang Servers to easily be integrated with any Elixir Framework.

Supports Erlang VM — Plug is a simple framework that allows easy communication between the server and web framework. It can easily support frameworks and servers that may be using Erlang VM, which opens up room for many possibilities for the developers to opt for Plug.

Documentation Available — Plug is one of the Elixir frameworks available which have proper first-party documentation available. This documentation is not only simple but also walks through the basic code and implementation of the framework.

Helper Modules — It has many helper modules that can assist in coding and programming. This helps with debugging errors and comes up every time an error is found. These can also assist developers in case of crashes. Developers can add helpful content on pages to be redirected to in case of crashes.

Testing Modules — Plug comes with testing modules such as “Plug.Test”, which helps test the routers, connections, and coding discrepancies. This can assist in testing through coding and with the creation of an error-free code that does not require much effort on the developer’s part.

6. Trot

Trot Framework is an Elixir microframework. It has become more popular over the last few years ever since it was first released in 2015. Trot is heavily inspired by Flask and Sinatra frameworks which are both well known in the development industry. It is aimed at creating APIs and making the process very easy.

Moreover, it can make coding practices easier without compromising on the flexibility of the code. Trot makes coding convenient for many patterns that are commonly being used in Plug. These patterns can easily be converted to Plug to customize and edit for further functionality.

Documentation and Support — A set of standard documentation is available for Trot on GitHub that ensures the functionalities are properly explained and implemented. Moreover, it is a necessity of the application to be able to ease the process of application. Hence, all basic steps to the implementation of the functionalities are properly documented.

Speed Implementation — owing to the set functionalities and the nature of the framework, this Elixir framework ensures speedy implementation of basic and more commonly used functionalities. Moreover, due to the lack of needing for coding all of the plug capabilities, it can significantly reduce the need to code. It also adds all the adapter functionalities that Plug initially comes with.

Functionality — Creating APIs is a very simple task as it requires lesser focus coding and more focus on the desired outcome. This allows developers to easily integrate the basic requirements that accompany the use of the Plug framework.

7. Placid

Placid is a REST toolkit that was initially released in 2014. It allows the developers to build highly scalable APIs. These APIs are also very tolerant of simple faults that might occur during the coding practices. This REST toolkit allows HTTP APIs to be easily generated to be integrated into applications.

Scalable — The APIs generated with Placid is highly scalable to fit any application needs. These applications can allow developers to make amends as users increase. This also allows developers to add users and allow for the expansion of databases consistently. This feature makes it an easy choice for any project.

Functionalities — IT provides several unique modules that help expand the functionalities. These modules have several options such as routing, handling, CORS, handles, configuration, request parsing, rendering, Internalization, and others.

Support Available — It has proper documentation available on GitHub and has a few third-party support forums available. This helps developers not only learn and easily shift to this option, but it also allows them to discuss issues that may arise with experts.

8. Kitto

Kitto is one of the more recent Elixir frameworks. This was released in 2016 as a “dashboard” framework that allowed the Elixir apps written with an emphasis on data to be easily displayed. It allows applications to run individual processes as concurrently as “supervised”.

In addition, all the widgets and features added to this are very similar to the react framework. This allows more familiarity and modernization for the end-user.

Easy Deployment — IT is effortless to deploy as most of the functionalities and features required are already built into this Elixir framework. Moreover, it is a simple yet efficient development environment that does not take much time to get used to.

Low Resource Consumption — It allows streaming SSE. This means that certain data is optimized to allow shorter loading times and less memory consumption on the client’s computer. It also helps create faster applications that are more optimized to the physical capabilities of the machine it is running on.

Integrated Fail-Safe — It can apply exponential back-offs to failing jobs. This helps prevent crashes. It automatically understands and recognizes any potential errors within the data translation to deal with it on the backend than to have it crash in front of the user.

Reloads Code on Backend Updates — This automatically reloads the code to account for updates before any additions can be made to the current code. This can make updates easy and would require less interaction from the client to the developer.

9. Maru

Maru is another great REST API designed to be run on Plug. This is mostly inspired by Grape. It has only increased in its popularity since it was first released in 2015. It can also be easily integrated into the already deployed application to create RESTful APIs.

Maru also makes it a simple yet powerful tool to be used as an Elixir framework. The powerful APIs that can be created have some REST features in them but can easily be broken down to Plug code.

REST Features — This comes packed with many REST functionalities such as featuring HTTP request manipulation and many others. These features not only let it stand out but also gives it an edge over its competitors.

Plug Integration — The use of Plug for the framework to run is a great decision for any Elixir framework. In addition to the aforementioned fact, it is also an essential part of the nature and coding of this tool.

HTTP Request Routing — HTTP request routing and other HTTP manipulation features make it a unique choice. Furthermore, it can employ more control over HTTP due to the REST capabilities.

Powerful Toolkit — it comes packed with several unique REST and Plug features. These unique features include parameter validation and coercion, versioning, process response, and supplementary unit test.

10. Flowex

Flowex is a powerful tool initially released in 2016. Flowex is one of the rare frameworks added to this list that employ Elixir as a basis. It allows any user to employ a Flow-based programming paradigm. This uses ROP (Railway Oriented Programming) and FBP to help users move forward with their projects.

Piping — This allows each request or process to be assigned to a pipeline. This eradicates the room for error for more data-dependent tasks.

ROP Usage — ROP allows a more streamlined usage of memory. It can help ensure that each part of the program is doing its part and is being executed sequentially.

Elixir GenStage Basis — This allows for each aspect of the program to be more efficient. It is only possible because the framework is based on the same language as the one desired.

Conclusion

The use of the Elixir programming language is enhancing among SMEs and large enterprises in the last few years. Particularly, to build custom applications, it is considered a reliable language.

If you are confused about the ideal framework for Elixir, then the above list is going to assist you. Definitely, we have discussed one of the top Elixir frameworks.

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