Full-stack Gleam

Appearance

Recap — The Web App ​

You've reached a natural finish line. The web track is complete: a PostgreSQL database, a Gleam API server, an integration test suite, and a styled Lustre frontend — all running in production behind Caddy, all driven from a single docker compose up.

Doable running in the browser

What You've Built ​

┌─────────────Docker───────────────────────┐
│      ┌────PostgreSQL───┐                 │
│      │┌───────────────┐│                 │
│      ││ Prod Database ││                 │
│      │└───▲───────────┘│                 │
│      └────┼────────────┘                 │
│┌──────────┼──Caddy──────────────────────┐│
││          │           ┌────────────────┐││
││┌─────────┴────────┐  │ Gleam Frontend │││
│││ Gleam API Server │  │  File Server   │││
││└─▲────────────────┘  └─────────▲──────┘││
│└──┼─────────────────────────────┼───────┘│
└───┼─────────────────────────────┼────────┘
    │                             │
┌───┴─────────────────────────────┴───┐
│             Browser                 │
└─────────────────────────────────────┘

A real, deployable web app, not a toy. Here's what that actually means.

Skills You've Picked Up ​

Gleam on Erlang. You wrote a Wisp router, threaded a supervised OTP connection pool through it, and used gleam shell to poke at live modules. That's not "Gleam-the-language" — that's Gleam in its natural environment.

Gleam on JavaScript. The same language, the same type system, a totally different runtime. You built a Lustre app with the Elm Architecture, wired it to the API with typed decoders, and shared validation logic between frontend and backend via the shared project.

The infrastructure around the code. PostgreSQL with reversible migrations. Type-safe SQL with Squirrel. Integration tests against a real database with transaction rollback between cases. Multi-stage Dockerfiles. lustre_dev_tools driving the frontend pipeline, Caddy serving it in production. These are the pieces that turn a prototype into something you can actually ship.

Stop Here, or Keep Going ​

If you came to this guide to learn how to build a full-stack web app in Gleam — you're done. The remaining chapters are a bonus track.

The same Lustre frontend you just built can run outside the browser, too. The next four chapters wrap it in Tauri:

  • Tauri Setup — turn the Lustre project into a native macOS/Windows/Linux app with no changes to the Gleam code.
  • Desktop Additions — a View menu, Cmd+R reload, and platform detection.
  • Native HTTP — route API calls through Tauri's Rust backend so production desktop builds escape browser CORS.
  • Mobile Setup — the same frontend on iOS and Android simulators.

Nothing in those chapters changes the web app you just shipped. If you'd rather stop and reinvest the time elsewhere, this is a good place to do it.

Either way: well done.