Backend with pure elixir (direct SQL in DataBase) without frameworks possible?

Hi Megatomic! Welcome to the forum!

There’s no need for any specific library or framework to make a backend in Elixir, it just means that you have to make more decisions about what conventions and patterns to employ, and you may need to implement some functionality that the frameworks might otherwise offer.

At my previous workplace we had Elixir services that didn’t use the Phoenix framework or the Plug webserver abstraction, instead we just used the Elli web server (which has a very simple interface). We could have also done the same with Cowboy if desired.
The Raxx web server would have also been a good fit, we went for Elli as Raxx didn’t have middleware at the time.

The service that had a postgres database used Ecto, though if writing it again we might have instead opted to use the Postgrex library directly as we didn’t find Ecto offered much in that specific use-case. Our tech stack was quite diverse so we found that keeping things as simple as possible and using as few libraries and macros as possible made maintenance and on-boarding easier.

So yes, it is possible to implement a backend in Elixir without frameworks.

What’s a BD?

Sure, as another example, I use Phoenix for routing etc, but not ecto: phoenix + postgrex.

PostgreSQL

I intend to use PostgreSQL

tnks

Postgres is a RDBMS, relational database management system. I’ve not yet heard someone classifying it as a BD.

Could you therefore elaborate on that term?

Sorry: a failed act at writing
BD = DB
BD in portuguese, DB in english (DataBase)

Hi @Megatomix,

I don’t see any blocks that would keep you from interacting directly with a database, without using a library. I also don’t see a good reason to not use a library such as Ecto, tho. Why would you like to do such a thing?

By the way, the answer for your question is YES. It’s completely possible to interact with databases directly. You would still have to deal with the issues that libraries like Ecto solve, but assuming you have a good reason to do so, and your preference for Postgres, I would advise you to take a closer look at postgrex, the package that allows you to interact with Postgres using Elixir.

Yes.

Less pleasant API and that will probably be it.

And crying yourself to sleep because you don’t have proper queries, joins and aggregations which you will inevitably need no later than two weeks in the project.

SQL query builders such as Ecto are just one approach to querying a database, other options are available, and in some other ecosystems these options more popular.

Personally I am a fan of writing plain SQL and have written a small library to make this a bit more convenient in Elixir. GitHub - lpil/yesql: An Elixir library for using SQL. · GitHub