[lawik]

I would say Phoenix doesn't attempt to be quite as magical as Rails and Django-style frameworks. It is a bit more explicit and as such hopefully easier to follow. The goal doesn't seem to be Rails for Elixir but rather that every new backend language needs a good web framework or it may be dead in the water.

As someone suggested, check out the Hex docs. That is where you get the better in-depth stuff and API reference. I've found the Getting started-stuff very helpful but also a bit limited in scope.

[mercer]

I've found that it really helps to start with the high-level overview of Phoenix if you don't have experience with 'Railsy' frameworks.

Then look at the 'magic' bits. <app_name>_web.ex is an important one, and the view/template distinction can be a bit confusing at first.

From there I suppose endpoint.ex covers pretty much all the rest of it (and then hands things off to router.ex).

With Rails I was always uncomfortable that I couldn't quite follow or understand the path taken through my codebase, but with the exception of a few 'magic' things, Phoenix is wonderfully transparent in this regard.