ReadErl Is Live
Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sat, 31 Oct 2015 02:30:20 GMT
As my first Erlang project, I decided to create a multi-user RSS aggregator, sort of a simplified version of Google's now defunct "Reader". I named it ReadErl. I bought the ReadErl.com domain, put up a static HTML "coming soon" page, and created an Erlang shell to fill in. My initial idea was to write the code in Erlang and use Chicago Boss for the web framework.
Then I discovered Elixir and the Phoenix web framework. Blown away. So I switched ReadErl to use those, created a simple Phoenix project, edited its default templates to make the result look pretty much like my original static HTML page, started up a brand new $5/month Digital Ocean droplet, and got it running there.
Voila: ReadErl.com, github.com/billstclair/readerl
After getting up the initial page, I decided I wanted it to self-document the versions of the software on which it's based. That's now displayed in small type at the bottom of the ReadErl.com page.
Here's how I did it (thanks to utkarshkukreti for the better way to get the :vsn of an app):
<div class="small text-center">
<%= :erlang.system_info(:system_version) %><br/>
Elixir: <%= System.version %>,
Phoenix: <%= {:ok, vsn} = :application.get_key(:phoenix, :vsn); vsn %>
</div>
