Oops, sorry for the derp.

In all Phoenix projects where I had any influence, I always moved such functions outside the _web namespace. They absolutely don’t belong there in my eyes. They are also not views per se, they are like data reshapers / transformers / whatever-you-want-to-call them.

So yep, move them to the other namespace and don’t have a care in the world.

From the docs (https://hexdocs.pm/phoenix/views.html)

“Phoenix views have two main jobs. First and foremost, they render templates (this includes layouts). The core function involved in rendering, render/3 , is defined in Phoenix itself in the Phoenix.View module. Views also provide functions which take raw data and make it easier for templates to consume. If you are familiar with decorators or the facade pattern, this is similar.”

Thanks for the reply @dimitarvp

I am using view logic to format the data in the same way as we do in our templates.

Here is a trivial example:

# in controller
def csv_users(conn, params) do
  binary = Accounts.buid_users_csv_export()
  send_download(conn, binary: binary)
end

# in Accounts.Users.ExportCSV
def buid_users_csv_export() do
    Users.list_users() 
    |> Enum.map(fn user ->
      [
        UserView.format_name(user),
        UserView.format_address(user),
      ...
      ]
     |> NimbleCSV.build_csv()
end

This is a really basic example of pseudo code but it is exactly the issue that I am facing in many places in my application. In reality, there is too much formatting to just redefine the functions locally to this module.

Any help really appreciated