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Ash Framework: Create Declarative Elixir Web Apps
Ash Framework is the game-changing toolkit for Elixir developers. With modular, plug-and-play building blocks, Ash slashes development time, effort, and complexity, letting you do more with less code. Design declarative, customizable domain models that are easy to maintain and optimized for performance. Shift your focus to what to build, instead of how, using Ash's intuitive design principles. Tackle bigger challenges and build scalable, future-proof web applications with confidence. Elevate your Elixir skills and revolutionize your workflow with Ash.
Discover a dynamic new way to build web applications with Elixir and Ash Framework. Ash enables you to structure and organize the code you write in a declarative programming style so you can build functionality more quickly and answer complex questions about data more easily.
Start with a Phoenix LiveView app and grow it into a fully functional system as you master Ash's core principles. You'll build the domain model for a music database throughout the book. As you create this model, you'll learn how to define resources with ease, connect them through adaptable relationships, and enrich your models with calculated attributes and aggregates to make your data work smarter. Secure your app with seamless authentication and authorization policies that integrate cleanly across APIs and user interfaces. Skip the busywork by generating REST and GraphQL APIs from your resources, freeing you to focus on building standout features. From dynamic search and nested forms to pubsub and real-time updates, you'll explore practical, real-world scenarios at every turn.
Coauthored by the creator of Ash, this book is packed with insider knowledge, best practices, and actionable guidance to get you started fast. By the end, you'll have the skills and confidence to create applications that grow with your needs.
What You
The book will use and show outputs from the latest versions of Elixir and Erlang, but earlier versions will be supported.
Minimum Elixir 1.15, Erlang/OTP 26, PostgreSQL 14
Discover a dynamic new way to build web applications with Elixir and Ash Framework. Ash enables you to structure and organize the code you write in a declarative programming style so you can build functionality more quickly and answer complex questions about data more easily.
Start with a Phoenix LiveView app and grow it into a fully functional system as you master Ash's core principles. You'll build the domain model for a music database throughout the book. As you create this model, you'll learn how to define resources with ease, connect them through adaptable relationships, and enrich your models with calculated attributes and aggregates to make your data work smarter. Secure your app with seamless authentication and authorization policies that integrate cleanly across APIs and user interfaces. Skip the busywork by generating REST and GraphQL APIs from your resources, freeing you to focus on building standout features. From dynamic search and nested forms to pubsub and real-time updates, you'll explore practical, real-world scenarios at every turn.
Coauthored by the creator of Ash, this book is packed with insider knowledge, best practices, and actionable guidance to get you started fast. By the end, you'll have the skills and confidence to create applications that grow with your needs.
What You
The book will use and show outputs from the latest versions of Elixir and Erlang, but earlier versions will be supported.
Minimum Elixir 1.15, Erlang/OTP 26, PostgreSQL 14
294 pages, Paperback
Published September 30, 2025
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8 people want to read
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
February 21, 2026
I admit I was curious about Ash framework, but I never had some time to put my hands on it. A book by PragProg was a great opportunity to get a glimpse of what Ash is and where it makes a difference. Sadly, I ended up pretty disappointed - it's a very oldfashioned lang/framework learning book that:
- doesn't do well when it comes to explaining the idea of the framework (& its idioms, & the patterns it offers)
- doesn't teach you writing real-time solutions, but only "Hello world" trivial (& useless) apps
- doesn't compare the framework against the competition, revealing where it shines and where it would not work
- doesn't even touch practical aspects of running Ash applications in the wild (observability, operability, what 3rd party supports it and what doesn't)
I didn't learn much, sadly. In fact, the author started by presenting Ash as a framework to build rich-domain business logic alongside web-specific abstractions, but I totally didn't feel that in the examples provided by the book.
TLDR - 3 stars, rounded up from 2.2 (!), because there's no written alternative (any other book on Ash). In fact this book has cooled down my enthusiasm towards the framework - that's probably not the intended effect.
- doesn't do well when it comes to explaining the idea of the framework (& its idioms, & the patterns it offers)
- doesn't teach you writing real-time solutions, but only "Hello world" trivial (& useless) apps
- doesn't compare the framework against the competition, revealing where it shines and where it would not work
- doesn't even touch practical aspects of running Ash applications in the wild (observability, operability, what 3rd party supports it and what doesn't)
I didn't learn much, sadly. In fact, the author started by presenting Ash as a framework to build rich-domain business logic alongside web-specific abstractions, but I totally didn't feel that in the examples provided by the book.
TLDR - 3 stars, rounded up from 2.2 (!), because there's no written alternative (any other book on Ash). In fact this book has cooled down my enthusiasm towards the framework - that's probably not the intended effect.
Displaying 1 of 1 review