Elixir and Phoenix Quickstart Guide

May 27, 2015

I've begun tinkering with Elixir and the Phoenix framework. The guides on the Phoenix site seem to be slightly out of date, so I thought it'd be helpful to post a quick start guide. I am running OS X 10.10.3.

1 - Install Elixir via Homebrew

$ brew install elixir

The latest version as of today is `1.0.4`. Along with Elixir comes Mix.

Mix is a build tool that provides tasks for creating, compiling, testing Elixir projects, as well as handle dependencies, and more.

2 - Install Hex

Hex is a package manager for the Erlang ecosystem.

$ mix local.hex

3 - Install latest version of Phoenix

As of today, the latest Phoenix release is `v0.13.1`. Check the project's Releases page to be sure you're going to install the latest version.

$ mix archive.install https://github.com/phoenixframework/phoenix/releases/download/v0.13.1/phoenix_new-0.13.1.ez

4 - Create your Phoenix app

By default, your app will be created in the same directory you're in when you run this command:

$ mix phoenix.new phoenix_test_app

Specifying an absolute path also works:

$ mix phoenix.new /path/to/my/phoenix_test_app

Be sure to type "Y" when prompted to install all dependencies.

5 - Start the web server</h5>
$ cd phoenix_test_app
$ mix phoenix.server

Open your browser and visit http://localhost:4000. You should see the following: