AndyL

AndyL

Interesting discussion in the may office hours!

Questions about igniter:

  • it sounds like igniter works with a tree of code-elements that perform generation. what do you call the bit of code that implements an ‘generator operation’? an agent? a performer? an action? (ansible calls them ‘modules’)
  • is the sequencing and structure of the “igniter tree” defined within the ‘modules’ (functional composition), or by a playbook type of recipe comparable to how ansible does it?
  • how is idempotency handled?
  • could igniter emit data that describes the application structure (someone said something about a diff…)
  • can someone post the URL of the igniter repo, to let outsiders study the pre-release code?

If it’s premature for questions like these, no problemo I’m happy to wait. Just thought I’d post these questions while they are fresh in my mind. :wink:

Showing Posts 1 to 3

zachdaniel

zachdaniel

Creator of Ash

:wave: great questions!

So there are two levels of granularity that are relevant here. There is a “task”, which is an abstraction over a mix task with one minor change, which is that you only define an igniter/2 function, which takes an igniter (a small wrapper around a Rewrite) and returns an igniter. This enables chaining. For example, here is a very early version of mix igniter.install.ash.resource

  defmodule Mix.Tasks.Igniter.Gen.Ash.Resource do
    use Igniter.Mix.Task

    @impl Igniter.Mix.Task
    def igniter(igniter, argv) do
      with {:ok, domain_underscore} <-
             Igniter.Args.validate_nth_present_and_underscored(
               igniter,
               argv,
               0,
               :domain,
               "Required first argument (snake_case domain) is missing"
             ),
           {:ok, resource_underscore} <-
              Igniter.Args.validate_nth_present_and_underscored(
                igniter,
                argv,
                1,
               :resource,
               "Required second argument (snake_case domain) is missing"
             ) do
        app_name = Igniter.Tasks.app_name()
        domain_module_name = Igniter.Module.module_name(Macro.camelize(domain_underscore))

        resource_module_name =
          Module.concat([domain_module_name, Macro.camelize(resource_underscore)])

        igniter
        |> Igniter.compose_task("igniter.gen.ash.resource_reference", argv)
        |> Igniter.create_new_elixir_file(
          "lib/#{app_name}/#{domain_underscore}/#{resource_underscore}.ex",
          """
          defmodule #{inspect(resource_module_name)} do
            use Ash.Resource,
              domain: #{inspect(domain_module_name)}

            actions do
              defaults [:read, :destroy, create: [], update: []]
            end

            attributes do
              uuid_primary_key :id
            end
          end
          """
        )
      else
        {:error, igniter} ->
          igniter
      end
    end
  end

That level of granularity would be called a task, and tasks can be composed with Igniter.compose_task/2. This means any task can be called via mix or composed, which is a very useful property.

At a lower level of granularity, you have individual functions that will modify a rewrite to make some code modification. We don’t currently have a name for these aside from “functions”, but you could perhaps call them “codemods”. Here is an example snippet from mix igniter.install.ash

      igniter
      |> Igniter.Deps.add_dependency(:picosat_elixir, "~> 0.2")
      |> Igniter.compose_task("igniter.install.spark", argv)
      |> Igniter.Formatter.import_dep(:ash)
      |> Igniter.Config.configure("config.exs", :spark, [:formatter, :"Ash.Resource"], [], fn x ->
        x
      end)
      |> Igniter.Config.configure("config.exs", :spark, [:formatter, :"Ash.Domain"], [], fn x ->
        x
      end)

add_dependency, import_dep and configure are examples of the building blocks Igniter will provide.

As you can see above, it is functional composition. A playbook/DSL version may come some day, but is not necessary to start.

When you run an igniter task, it displays a diff of all changes. Here is example output from running mix igniter.install ash in a new package (ignore the bit about the local dependency. You have to use a local dependency to test/work on your igniter :slight_smile:

Not looking up dependency, because a local dependency is detected
Igniter: Installing ash...

Igniter: Proposed changes:

.formatter.exs

  1 + |# Used by "mix format"
  2 + |[
  3 + |  import_deps: [:ash],
  4 + |  plugins: [Spark.Formatter],
  5 + |  inputs: ["{mix,.formatter}.exs", "{config,lib,test}/**/*.{ex,exs}"]
  6 + |]
1 7   |
2   - |


config/config.exs

  1 + |import Config
  2 + |config :spark, formatter: ["Ash.Domain": [], "Ash.Resource": [], remove_parens?: true]
  3 + |config :igniter_example, :ash_domains, [IgniterExample.ExampleDomain]
1 4   |
2   - |


lib/igniter_example/example_domain.ex

  1 + |defmodule IgniterExample.ExampleDomain do
  2 + |  use Ash.Domain
1 3   |
  4 + |  resources do
  5 + |    resource(IgniterExample.ExampleDomain.ExampleResource)
  6 + |  end
  7 + |end


lib/igniter_example/example_domain/example_resource.ex

    1 + |defmodule IgniterExample.ExampleDomain.ExampleResource do
    2 + |  use Ash.Resource,
    3 + |    domain: IgniterExample.ExampleDomain
 1  4   |
    5 + |  actions do
    6 + |    defaults([:read, :destroy, create: [], update: []])
    7 + |  end
 2  8   |
    9 + |  attributes do
   10 + |    uuid_primary_key(:id)
   11 + |  end
   12 + |end
   13 + |


Proceed with changes? [Yn]

Since those are all new files, I need to figure out a way to hide the left side of those line numbers representing the original files, just haven’t done that yet :slight_smile:

The codebase is not quite ready, but I will share it before too long.

zachdaniel

zachdaniel

Creator of Ash

In the spirit of building in the open, the source code has been made public: GitHub - ash-project/igniter: A code generation and project patching framework. · GitHub There isn’t much to it yet, but more will come, and a 0.1 release should happen in the next few weeks ideally.

TwistingTwists

TwistingTwists

Waiting! :slight_smile:

— All posts loaded —

Where Next? Top

Trending in Discussions Top

budgie
A little off-topic, but I feel like people here have a good head on their shoulders. I used to be quite good at making software. Was luc...
New
juhalehtonen
There has been a thread to discuss the Stack Overflow Developer Survey on this forum every year since 2018, so here’s yet another one for...
New
axelson
Hi there! :wave: @frigidcode and I (but mostly him) have been running an Elixir Book club, we’re almost done with Designing Elixir Syste...
New
achempion
I’ve been using Emacs as my main code editor for more than a two years. It’s a custom build version although I’ve tried doom emacs and sp...
New
budgie
I love Elixir. It’s one of 2 programming languages I’ve ever fallen in love with. But I don’t use it anymore. Serverless was the promis...
New
jtormey
Lately I’ve been thinking about how to organize components as a LiveView application grows. One of the pain points I’ve found (for myself...
New
Null-logic-0
What IDE or editor are you using for Elixir development? Personally, I use Zed, and I really like it, but sometimes I wish there were a ...
New

Other Trending Topics Top

GenericJam
Edit: 2026 May 15 - This post is archived. Mob is alive!! Main docs: mob v0.7.11 — Documentation A bit of explanation for the slightly c...
New
KristerV
Hey. Is there anyone here who creates agents in their apps? Not talking about using agents, but creating them. I’m finding it pretty diff...
New
mudasobwa
I fully migrated to my own harness from Anthropic/Gemini and I think it’s time to share it. Welcome DSH, the DeepSeek Harness, fully writ...
New
jimsynz
Beam Bots (or just BB for short) is a framework for building fault-tolerant robotics applications in Elixir using familiar OTP patterns. ...
New
ausimian
Emily is an Elixir library that runs Nx computations on Apple’s MLX. Install it as the default Nx backend and Nx, defn, Axon, Nx.Serving,...
New
OndrejValenta
(I just needed to vent somewhere and LinkedIn is full of hope, or hype, I’m not sure which exactly) AI dream has many faces, but general...
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement

Options

Thread Display Mode




Thread Preview

Skip Thread Previews