Build Your Own Web Framework in Elixir

1

Introducing the Cowboy Web Server

“Web servers are written in C, and if they’re not, they’re written in Java or C++, which are C derivatives, or Python or Ruby, which are implemented in C.”

– Rob Pike, co-creator of Go

The web server is a key component of any modern-day web framework. Expanding on the point made in the preceding quote by Rob Pike, the Cowboy web server, written in Erlang, is also in a way implemented in C. Cowboy is the default web server used by Phoenix, the ubiquitous web framework in Elixir.

In this chapter, we will not be learning C, unfortunately, but we will take a closer look at how a web server is designed. We will provide some background on how a web server is built and set up to communicate with a client using