Documentation

All documentation is contained in the generated hex documentation located here. Head there for installation and usage information. What follows is only a brief introduction to Ash.

ALPHA NOTICE

Ash is in alpha. The package version is 1.0.0+, and most of the time that means stable, but in this case it does not. The 2.0 release will be the stable release.

Upgrading to 1.27.0+

Typically a project wouldn't have breaking changes on 1.0.0+ that only change the minor version. See the ALPHA NOTICE above.

If you were using Ash prior to 1.27.0, a breaking change was made that will affect you if you are

• using the postgres data layer
• are using the create_timestamp or update_timestamp helpers

The default type for those attributes was changed to :utc_datetime_usec. If you don't want to change your data, you can update the type used by your timestamps like so:

created_timestamp :inserted_at, type: :utc_datetime
updated_timestamp :updated_at, type: :utc_datetime

If you want to change the data to leverage this new (more specific) type, you can create a migration like so:

mix ecto.gen.migration update_timestamp_types

# In the generated migration

def change do
  # do this for each table
  alter table(:table_name) do
    # do this for each timestamp you want to change on that table
    modify :attribute_name, :utc_datetime_usec, from: :utc_datetime
  end

  ...
end

Dependency

def deps do
  [
    {:ash, "~> 1.29.0-rc0"}
  ]
end

Links

Guides

• Getting Started Tutorial
• Resource DSL Documentation
• API DSL Documentation
• API interface documentation
• Query Documentation
• Changeset Documentation
• Example Application

Extensions

APIs

• AshJsonApi
• AshGraphql (beta)

Authorizers

• AshPolicyAuthorizer

Datalayers

• AshPostgres
• AshCsv
• Ets (built-in) - Only used for testing
• Mnesia (built-in)

Introduction

Traditional MVC Frameworks (Rails, Django, .Net, Phoenix, etc) leave it up to the user to build the glue between requests for data (HTTP requests in various forms as well as server-side domain logic) and their respective ORMs. In that space, there is an incredible amount of boilerplate code that must get written from scratch for each application (authentication, authorization, sorting, filtering, sideloading relationships, serialization, etc).

Ash is an opinionated yet configurable framework designed to reduce boilerplate in an Elixir application. Ash does this by providing a layer of abstraction over your system's data layer(s) with Resources. It is designed to be used in conjunction with a phoenix application, or on its own.

To riff on a famous JRR Tolkien quote, a Resourceis "One Interface to rule them all, One Interface to find them" and will become an indispensable place to define contracts for interacting with data throughout your application.

To start using Ash, first declare your Resources using the Ash Resource DSL. You could technically stop there, and just leverage the Ash Elixir API to avoid writing boilerplate. More likely, you would use extensions like Ash.JsonApi or Ash.GraphQL with Phoenix to add external interfaces to those resources without having to write any extra code at all.

Ash is an open-source project and draws inspiration from similar ideas in other frameworks and concepts. The goal of Ash is to lower the barrier to adopting and using Elixir and Phoenix, and in doing so help these amazing communities attract new developers, projects, and companies.

Example Resource

defmodule Post do
  use Ash.Resource

  actions do
    read :read

    create :create
  end

  attributes do
    attribute :name, :string
  end

  relationships do
    belongs_to :author, Author
  end
end

See the Getting Started Tutorial for more information.

For those looking to add Ash extensions:

• see Ash.Dsl.Extension for adding configuration.
• If you are looking to write a new data source, also see the Ash.DataLayer documentation.
• If you are looking to write a new authorizer, see Ash.Authorizer
• If you are looking to write a "front end", something powered by Ash resources, a guide on building those kinds of tools is in the works.

Creating a new release of Ash

• check out the repository locally
• run mix git_ops.release (see git_ops documentation for more information)
• check the changelog/new release number
• push (with tags) and CI will automatically deploy the hex package