Failing Big with Elixir and LiveView
Phoenix LiveView is, without a doubt, one of the greatest web development innovations in recent years. In this article, I will explore how I created one of the world’s first production deployments with LiveView - and how I caused a lot of trouble while trying to improve it.
If you’re already familiar with LiveView, feel free to skip to the following two paragraphs. For everyone else, here’s here’s a quick explanation of what LiveView is:
LiveView is part of Elixir’s Phoenix web framework and lets you build interactive applications without needing to write your own front-end JavaScript. It does that by keeping the application state on the server. When the application state changes, it automatically pushes an update to the user’s browser via Websockets. At the same time, it can also send user events (such as button clicks or form submits) back to the server. And all that, automagically, without the need to worry about front-end JavaScript.
For me, LiveView has meant unparalleled speed when developing web applications. What’s more, I find that writing all code in Elixir really reduces the mental load that usually comes from juggling a backend language with JavaScript for the frontend. And so it’s no surprise that the Ruby and PHP communities have come up with their own spins of the idea, StimulusReflex and Livewire.
