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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

I have been writing Elixir full time since 2018, and I quite like Phoenix, warts and all.

Can a willing reader pitch Ash Framework in a few lines for me please? What is its killer feature vs Phoenix? Also, is it compatible, or does it have an alternative to LiveView?

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Ash isn’t an alternative to Phoenix. It’s an alternative to Ecto. It’s a data layer that uses Ecto under the hood.

If you read the first few paragraphs of the linked tutorial, I think you’ll have a pretty decent understanding of what it does.

You can use Ash with Phoenix and Liveview.

Well, today I learned, thanks.

I really wish the Ash website made this more immediately clear; the initial description makes it sound like Ash has a broader scope than it actually does (as far as I can tell).

We tried to make it a bit clearer recently with the section on "Compatibility". "Works great with Phoenix, Ecto and all the other first rate tools in the Elixir ecosystem."But you aren't the first person to say this. It's complex because we do build your APIs for you, and it's not a requirement to use Phoenix to make this work. But Ash also can (and usually does) act as something you use alongside Phoenix. It makes it difficult to message :(

Hi, the tutorial writer here. The first few paragraphs in the tut would give you a sense of what Ash does, but thank you for the comment that its role in comparison with Phoenix should be spelt out at some point. Ash helps provide a thoughtful underpinning to structure your data, and Phoenix / LiveView presents it to the world. If you are a poetry person:

Phoenix rise from Ash.

It doesnt replace phoenix. Think of it as ecto schemas but with superpowers. Instead of "just" getting changesets etc from a schema you get json api, admin, calcuations etc.

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