[erlang-questions] Erlang web framework

[Andrew Berman]

I'm doing something similar to Tristan.  I'm using Webmachine in the
backend which houses all the db, business, and security logic and using
SpineJS and CoffeeScript for my front-end which communicates with
Webmachine using JSON.  After writing a web app this way, I have to say
that it is more difficult than most prepackaged frameworks, however, it
allows you a complete separation of concern, forces you to really think
about your security, and also forces you to focus on a solid, usable REST
API.  The cool thing is that you are using your own REST API and if you're
looking for an API for your service/web app, you can find and fix any pain
points that someone else might encounter using your API.

Unlike Tristan, however, I separated all my sessioning into a completely
separate web app from the main Webmachine web app.  I saw the Webmachine
app as something I wanted to keep as a completely standalone service and so
I basically wrote an intermediate app using Misultin which proxies messages
from the front-end to Webmachine adding any necessary authentication
tokens, dealing with sessions, and any web security features.  As for web
security, this is built into my Misultin app and I followed this guide:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/security.html.  It's pretty easy to implement
them yourself.

I haven't used Opa, but I have used NodeJS and I was very tempted to use it
for the intermediate app.  You might want to look at Express for NodeJS if
you're looking for more of a framework.

Hope this helps,

Andrew

On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Tristan Sloughter <
tristan.sloughter@REDACTED> wrote:

> I've tried pretty much every Erlang web framework (some more than others).
>
> Could you explain what you mean about Lift's security, 'ajax+html
> component security'?
>
> The main frameworks are: ChicagoBoss (Railish), Nitrogen (evet-based
> architecture), Zotonic (a CMS/framework in my opinion, they may just say
> CMS), Erlang Web (the one I have least played with but does seem the most
> OTP fitting) and Erlyweb.
>
> I haven't personally been happy with building full projects in any of
> these (though Zotonic has been GREAT for projects that just need a CMS like
> my wedding website, and Chicago BOSS looks great for MVC style Erlang web
> development) and now I'm doing my own which is based on Webmachine and
> Batman.js with security based on resource access control using Seresye (
> https://github.com/afiniate/seresye) and an Erlang security framework
> Genbu.
>
> So the idea is the client is built completely in Batman.js and
> communicates (JSON) with the Webmachine based RESTful interface of the
> backend (which I am greatly simplifying the necessary steps needed to
> build). And then all security on the backend is based on the idea of
> writing a rules engine with Seresye which will be simplified for web
> resource/db use as part of Genbu (which I am moving all web session,
> authentication logic from Maru to).
>
> I hope to have the pieces for Genbu and Maru and an example, for others to
> start using it, committed tomorrow or sometime this week, but
> http://claimstrade.github.com/maru/ is the "idea" -- well its more than
> an idea I am building this while building a real business on top of it. So
> it is taking what I find I need as I build the business and then adding it
> to the framework, or taking out and moving to the framework. Also is based
> on a couple years of Webmachine based web development and what I saw went
> wrong in some cases as we did so.
>
> That said, and even though this is an Erlang list so I hope I'm not yelled
> at :), I have to also point you at Opa (http://opalang.org/) because I
> really like it for building sites. And it is very secure
> and statically typed (even your frontend code is compiled and type
> checked!).
>
> Tristan
>
> On Sat, Dec 10, 2011 at 3:41 PM, eigenfunction <emeka_1978@REDACTED>wrote:
>
>> Hi everybody, i would loke to get my feet wet into erlang web
>> development so i wanted to ask: what is the state of erlang web
>> frameworks? i did google a little bit and found a couple  of
>> interesting projects. But having written some web applications in
>> webobjects before, security is paramount for me. I have been playing
>> with "scala lift" lately and wanted to know if the erlang community
>> has something of the sort, i mean easy ajax + html component security.
>> Or something in the line of smaltalk seaside. Thank you very much
>> indeed.
>> _______________________________________________
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>
>
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