Hologram

Hologram is a full stack isomorphic Elixir web framework that can be used on top of Phoenix.

Inspired by

Hologram was inspired by Elm, Phoenix LiveView, Surface, Svelte, Vue.js, Mint, Ruby on Rails.

How it works

The Hologram concept is that your web app is composed from the basic Hologram blocks of Layouts, Pages and Components.

Hologram builds a call graph from the content of your Pages (which must follow some basic conventions) and determines what code is to used on the client and what code is to be used on the server. Hologram then transpiles the code to be used on the client to JavaScript.

Because the state is kept on the client, the programming model is simpler and thanks to stateless or stateful components the app is easily scalable.

Code that is to be run on the client is encapsulated in “actions”, and code that is to be run on the server is encapsulated in “commands”. Actions can trigger commands, commands can trigger actions. Both actions and commands can be triggered directly by DOM events.

The Client communicates with the Server using websockets. There is no boilerplate code required, Hologram automatically works out what is required.

I want to see some code!

To see how Hologram app is structured, and see some actual code, take a look at the Hologram’s test app: hologram/test/e2e

Basic example

defmodule MyPage do
  use Hologram.Page

  route "/my-page-path"

  def init(_params, _conn) do
    %{
      count: 0
    }
  end

  def template do
    ~H"""
    <div>Count is {@count}</div>
    <button on:click={:increment, by: 3}>Increment by</button>
    <Link to={MyOtherPage}>Go to other page</Link>
    """
  end

  def action(:increment, params, state) do
    put(state, :count, state.count + params.by)
  end

  def command(:save_to_db, _params) do
    # Repo.update (…)
    :counter_saved
  end
end

Is it used in production?

Yes, it's used in Segmetric: https://www.segmetric.com/. Take a look at the “join beta” and “contact pages" which showcase form handling, or check the mobile menu. This all works on transpiled Elixir code! (But please, submit the forms only if you actually want to join the Segmetric beta or contact Segmetric - it is a live page, thanks!)

Selling Points

• State on the client - and all of the problems that get solved by this approach (below)…

• No latency issues as most of the code is run immediately on the client. This makes it possible to create rich UI or even games. At the moment with LiveView you need something like fly.io to make it bearable, but you still have latency and can’t guarantee the response time (there is always some variance). And you still need some JS or Alpine to make it work. Until someone manages to create quantum internet (e.g. by taking advantage of entanglement), there are no workarounds for this problem. Not sure if this is even technically possible, though 😉

• Better offline support (internet connection loss, poor signal, etc.). Since most of the code is run on the client and you only hit the server to run some command from time to time, Hologram can work offline most of the time. This would also make it possible to create PWA’s or mobile apps through WebView, assuming you use something like LocalStorage.

• Less server RAM used - state is kept in the browser instead of the socket.

• Less CPU used - most of the code is run by the browser not by the server.

• Less bandwidth used - only commands need to communicate with the server, no need to send diffs to rerender components.

• No state sync problems - state is kept only in one place (browser) and the websocket communication used is stateless.

• No JS or Alpine.js needed except for communication with some third party scripts or widgets, but this can also be solved by creating some standardized libs for popular packages that would handle the interop.

• Very friendly to new Elixir converts or beginner devs. I want it to be very, very intuitive, so that you can focus on working on new features in your project instead of solving technical problems and writing boilerplate code.

History / background

I tried to write this kind of framework first in Ruby, and actually managed to create a working prototype, but the performance was not satisfactory. Then I tried Crystal, but it was very hard to work with its AST. Then I moved to Kotlin, but I realised that it’s better to use a dynamically typed language … Then I found Elixir in 2018 and fell in love with it. I started work on Hologram in the summer of 2020.

Roadmap

This is work in progress (although usable and used in production). To check what works and what is planned - take a look at the roadmap in the readme at: Github bartblast/hologram

To meet the objective of being a very friendly developer experience, Hologram will provide out of the box such things as UI component library (CSS framework agnostic), authentication, authorization, easy debugging (with time travel), caching, localization and some other features that you typically use in a web app.

I believe that using Hologram’s approach, i.e. Elixir-JS transpilation, code on client and action/command architecture it will be possible to create something as productive as Rails, without its shortcomings related to scalability, efficiency, etc.

✅  ==  DONE

🚧  ==  IN PROGRESS (partially done, some features work)

❌  ==  TODO

Runtime

Core

Feature	Status	Comments
Actions	✅
Commands	✅
Routing	🚧	done: paths without params, todo: params
Session	❌

Template Engine

Feature	Status	Comments
Components	🚧	done: stateless/stateful components, todo: props DSL
If Directive	🚧	done: element nodes, todo: component nodes
Interpolation	✅
Layouts	✅
Navigation	✅
Pages	✅
Templates	🚧	done: template in module, todo: template in separate file
Two-Way Binding	❌

Events

Event	Status	Comments
Blur	✅
Change	🚧	done: form tags, todo: input, select, textarea tags
Click	🚧	done: event handling, todo: event metadata
Click Away	❌
Focus	❌
Key Down	❌
Key Press	❌
Key Up	❌
Mouse Move	❌
Params	❌
Pointer Down	🚧	done: event handling, todo: event metadata
Pointer Up	🚧	done: event handling, todo: event metadata
Resize	❌
Scroll	❌
Select	❌
Submit	✅
Tap	❌
Target	❌
Touch Cancel	❌
Touch End	❌
Touch Move	❌
Touch Start	❌
Transition End	✅

Tools

Tool	Status	Comments
Authentication	❌
Authorization	❌
Caching	❌
Code Reload	🚧	done: recompiling, reloading, todo: incremental compilation
Localization	❌
Time Travel	❌

Elixir Syntax

Types

Type	Status	Comments
Anonymous Function	🚧	done: regular syntax, todo: shorthand syntax, multi-clause
Atom	✅
Binary	❌
Bitstring	❌
Boolean	✅
Exception	❌
Float	✅
Integer	✅
IO Data	❌
List	✅
Map	✅
Nil	✅
Range	❌
Regex	❌
String	✅
Struct	✅
Tuple	✅

Operators

Overridable General Operators

Operator	Status
unary +	✅
unary -	✅
+	✅
-	✅
*	✅
/	✅
++	✅
--	✅
and	❌
&&	✅
or	❌
||	✅
not	❌
!	✅
in	✅
not in	❌
@	✅
..	❌
<>	❌
|>	❌
=~	❌

Non-Overridable General Operators

Operator	Status
^	❌
.	✅
=	✅
&	❌
::	❌
[ | ]	✅

Comparison Operators

Operator	Status
==	✅
===	❌
!=	✅
!==	❌
<	✅
>	❌
<=	❌
>=	❌

Bitwise Module Operators

Operator	Status
&&&	❌
^^^	❌
<<<	❌
>>>	❌
|||	❌
~~~	❌

Pattern Matching

Type	Status
Anonymous Function	❌
Binary	❌
Bitstring	❌
Case	✅
Comprehension	✅
Cons Operator	✅
Module Function	✅
If	❌
List	✅
Map	✅
Range	❌
Struct	❌
Tuple	✅

Control Flow

Structure	Status	Comments
After	❌
Anonymous Function Call	🚧	done: regular syntax, todo: shorthand syntax (capture operator)
Case	✅
Catch	❌
Comprehension	🚧	done: generator, todo: filter, into
Cond	❌
Else (If)	✅
Else (Rescue)	❌
Guards	❌
If	✅
Module Function Call	❌
Raise	❌
Rescue	❌
Throw	❌
Unless	❌
With	❌

Definitions

Structure	Status
Exception	❌
Function Head	✅
Macro	❌
Module	✅
Module Attribute	✅
Private Function	✅
Public Function	✅

Directives

Directive	Status
Alias	✅
Import	✅
Multi-Alias	❌
Require	✅
Use	✅

Sigils

Sigil	Status
~c	❌
~C	❌
~D	❌
~N	❌
~r	❌
~R	❌
~s	❌
~S	❌
~T	❌
~U	❌
~w	❌
~W	❌

Other

Feature	Status
Behaviours	❌
Codepoints	❌
Custom Sigils	❌
Default Arguments	❌
Function Capturing	❌
Map Update Syntax	❌
Module Attribute Accumulation	❌
Module __info__/1 callback	✅
Module Nesting	❌
Protocols	❌
Variable rebinding	❌

Not on Roadmap

• Types: PID, Port, Reference
• Control Flow: Exit, Receive
• Operators: Custom, Overriding
• Other: Erlang Libraries

Work in progress

Runtime / Core / Commands

Done: commands trigerred by action
Todo: commands trigerred by event