[erlang-questions] Erlang web framework

Andrew Berman rexxe98@REDACTED
Sun Dec 11 02:50:41 CET 2011


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.
>> _______________________________________________
>> erlang-questions mailing list
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>
>
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