Phoenix Controllers

Phoenix controllers are the intermediary modules between the router and views in a Phoenix application. They handle HTTP requests, process parameters, interact with contexts, and determine what response to send back to the client. Controllers are stateless and receive a connection struct (conn) that represents the current HTTP request.

Basic Controller Structure

The simplest Phoenix controller uses the HelloWeb, :controller macro and defines actions as functions that receive the connection and parameters:

defmodule HelloWeb.PageController do
  use HelloWeb, :controller

  def home(conn, _params) do
    render(conn, :home, layout: false)
  end
end

Each controller action receives: