Getting Started Tutorial

This tutorial will walk you through creating a very simple application that uses Ash. The finished application will look like this: https://github.com/mario-mazo/my_app

Creating an application

The first step is to create an application.

mix new my_app

Note: alternatively you create a phoenix application with mix phx.new (which is covered in more detail in the next guide).

Add Ash

Add ash to your dependencies in mix.exs. The latest version can be found by running mix hex.info ash.

# in mix.exs
def deps() do
  [
    {:ash, "~> x.x.x"}
  ]
end

If you want to have a more idiomatic formatting (like the formatting used in the documentation) of your Ash resource and APIs, you need to add :ash (and any other extensions you use like :ash_postgres) to your .formatter.exs otherwise the default Elixir formatter will wrap portions of the DSL in parenthesis.

 import_deps: [
    :ash # add this line
  ]

Without that, instead of:

attribute :id, :integer, allow_nil?: true

the Elixir formatter will change it to:

attribute(:id, :integer, allow_nil?: true)

Create an Ash API

Create an API module. This will be your primary way to interact with your Ash resources. We recommend lib/my_app/api.ex for simple setups. For more information on organizing resources into contexts/domains, see the Contexts and Domains guide.

# lib/my_app/api.ex
defmodule MyApp.Api do
  use Ash.Api

  resources do
  end
end

Create a resource

A resource is the primary entity in Ash. Your API module ties your resources together and gives them an interface, but the vast majority of your configuration will live in resources.

In your typical setup, you might have a resource per database table. For those already familiar with Ecto, a resource and an Ecto schema are very similar. In fact, all resources define an Ecto schema under the hood. This can be leveraged when you need to do things that are not yet implemented or fall outside of the scope of Ash. The current recommendation for where to put your resources is in lib/my_app/resources/<resource_name>.ex. Here are a few examples:

# in lib/my_app/resources/tweet.ex
defmodule MyApp.Tweet do
  use Ash.Resource

  attributes do
    uuid_primary_key :id

    attribute :body, :string do
      allow_nil? false
      constraints max_length: 255
    end

    # Alternatively, you can use the keyword list syntax
    # You can also set functional defaults, via passing in a zero
    # argument function or an MFA
    attribute :public, :boolean, allow_nil?: false, default: false

    # This is set on create
    create_timestamp :inserted_at
    # This is updated on all updates
    update_timestamp :updated_at

    # `create_timestamp` above is just shorthand for:
    # attribute :inserted_at, :utc_datetime_usec,
    #   private?: true,
    #   writable?: false,
    #   default: &DateTime.utc_now/0
  end

end

# in lib/my_app/resources/user.ex
defmodule MyApp.User do
  use Ash.Resource

  attributes do
    attribute :email, :string,
      allow_nil?: false,
      constraints: [
        # Note: This regex is just an example
        match: ~r/^[\w.!#$%&’*+\-\/=?\^`{|}~]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*$/i
      ]

    uuid_primary_key :id
  end
end

For full details on defining a resource, see: Ash.Resource.Dsl.

Add resources to your API

Alter your API (lib/my_app/api.ex) to add the resources we created on the previous step:

resources do
  resource MyApp.User
  resource MyApp.Tweet
end

Test the resources

Now you are able to create changesets for your resources using Ash.Changeset.new/2:

iex(7)> changeset = Ash.Changeset.new(MyApp.User, %{email: "ash.man@enguento.com"})
#Ash.Changeset<
  action_type: :create,
  attributes: %{email: "ash.man@enguento.com"},
  relationships: %{},
  errors: [],
  data: %MyApp.User{
    __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
    __metadata__: %{},
    aggregates: %{},
    calculations: %{},
    email: nil,
    id: nil
  },
  valid?: true
>

If you try to use an invalid email (the email regex is for demonstration purposes only) an error will be returned:

iex(6)> changeset = Ash.Changeset.new(MyApp.User, %{email: "@eng.com"})
#Ash.Changeset<
  action_type: :create,
  attributes: %{},
  relationships: %{},
  errors: [
    %Ash.Error.Changes.InvalidAttribute{
      class: :invalid,
      field: :email,
      message: {"must match the pattern %{regex}",
       [
         regex: "~r/^[\\w.!#$%&’*+\\-\\/=?\\^`{|}~]+@[a-zA-Z0-9-]+(\\.[a-zA-Z0-9-]+)*$/i"
       ]},
      path: [],
      stacktrace: #Stacktrace<>
    }
  ],
  data: %MyApp.User{
    __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
    __metadata__: %{},
    aggregates: %{},
    calculations: %{},
    email: nil,
    id: nil
  },
  valid?: false
>

Add your data layer

To be able to store and later on read your resources, a data layer is required. For more information, see the documentation for the data layer you would like to use. The currently supported data layers are listed below:

Storage	Datalayer	Storage Documentation
postgres	AshPostgres.DataLayer	Postgres Documentation
csv	AshCsv.DataLayer	CSV Information
ets	Ash.DataLayer.Ets	Erlang Term Storage Documentation
mnesia	Ash.DataLayer.Mnesia	Mnesia Documentation

To add a data layer, we need to add it to the use Ash.Resource statement. In this case we are going to use ETS which is a in-memory data layer that is built into the BEAM and works well for testing purposes.

  # in both lib/my_app/resources/user.ex
  # and lib/my_app/resources/tweet.ex

  use Ash.Resource, data_layer: Ash.DataLayer.Ets

Add actions to enable functionality

Actions are the primary driver for adding specific interactions to your resource. You can read the about Ash.Resource.Dsl actions to learn how to customize the functionality. For now we will enable all of them with default implementations by adding the following block to your resources:

  # in both lib/my_app/resources/user.ex
  # and lib/my_app/resources/tweet.ex

  actions do
    create :create
    read :read
    update :update
    destroy :destroy
  end

Test functionality

Now you should be able to use your API to do CRUD operations on your resources.

Create resource

iex(1)> user_changeset = Ash.Changeset.new(MyApp.User, %{email: "ash.man@enguento.co
m"})
#Ash.Changeset<
  action_type: :create,
  attributes: %{email: "ash.man@enguento.com"},
  relationships: %{},
  errors: [],
  data: %MyApp.User{
    __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
    __metadata__: %{},
    aggregates: %{},
    calculations: %{},
    email: nil,
    id: nil
  },
  valid?: true
>
iex(2)> MyApp.Api.create(user_changeset)
{:ok,
 %MyApp.User{
   __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
   __metadata__: %{},
   aggregates: %{},
   calculations: %{},
   email: "ash.man@enguento.com",
   id: "2642ca11-330b-4a07-83c7-b0e9ef391df6"
 }}

List and Read a resource

iex(3)> MyApp.Api.read(MyApp.User)
{:ok,
 [
   %MyApp.User{
     __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
     __metadata__: %{},
     aggregates: %{},
     calculations: %{},
     email: "ash.man@enguento.com",
     id: "2642ca11-330b-4a07-83c7-b0e9ef391df6"
   }
 ]}
iex(4)> MyApp.Api.get(MyApp.User, "2642ca11-330b-4a07-83c7-b0e9ef391df6")
{:ok,
 %MyApp.User{
   __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
   __metadata__: %{},
   aggregates: %{},
   calculations: %{},
   email: "ash.man@enguento.com",
   id: "2642ca11-330b-4a07-83c7-b0e9ef391df6"
 }}

Add relationships

With our resources stored in a data layer we can move on to create relationships between them. In this case we will specify that a User can have many Tweets - this implies that a Tweet belongs to a specific User.

# in lib/my_app/resources/user.ex
  relationships do
    has_many :tweets, MyApp.Tweet, destination_field: :user_id
  end

# in lib/my_app/resources/tweet.ex
  relationships do
    belongs_to :user, MyApp.User
  end

Test relationships

Now we can use the new relationship to create a Tweet that belongs to a specific User:

iex(8)> {:ok, user} = Ash.Changeset.new(MyApp.User, %{email: "ash.man@enguento.com"}) |> MyApp.Api.create()
{:ok,
 %MyApp.User{
   __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
   __metadata__: %{},
   aggregates: %{},
   calculations: %{},
   email: "ash.man@enguento.com",
   id: "0d7063f8-b07c-4d02-88b2-b671f1aa0ad9",
   tweets: #Ash.NotLoaded<:relationship>
 }}
iex(9)> MyApp.Tweet |> Ash.Changeset.new(%{body: "ashy slashy"}) |> Ash.Changeset.replace_relationship(:user, user) |> MyApp.Api.create()
{:ok,
 %MyApp.Tweet{
   __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
   __metadata__: %{},
   aggregates: %{},
   body: "ashy slashy",
   calculations: %{},
   inserted_at: ~U[2020-11-14 12:54:06Z],
   id: "f0b0b9d5-832c-45c9-9313-5e3fb9f1af24",
   public: false,
   updated_at: ~U[2020-11-14 12:54:06Z],
   user: %MyApp.User{
     __meta__: #Ecto.Schema.Metadata<:built, "">,
     __metadata__: %{},
     aggregates: %{},
     calculations: %{},
     email: "ash.man@enguento.com",
     id: "0d7063f8-b07c-4d02-88b2-b671f1aa0ad9",
     tweets: #Ash.NotLoaded<:relationship>
   },
   user_id: "0d7063f8-b07c-4d02-88b2-b671f1aa0ad9"
 }}

Add a Phoenix Frontend

Now that the Elixir API is complete, you can move on to the next guide to learn how to change the data_layer to PostgreSQL and expose it via a JSON API.

• AshJsonApi - can be used to build a spec compliant JSON:API.
• AshPostgres.DataLayer - can be used to persist your resources to PostgreSQL.

See Ash documentation for the rest

• Ash.Api for what you can do with your resources.
• Ash.Query for the kinds of queries you can make.
• Ash.Resource.Dsl for the resource DSL documentation.
• Ash.Api.Dsl for the API DSL documentation.