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Learning Elixir

Learning Elixir

By : Kenny Ballou, Kenneth Ballou
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Learning Elixir

Learning Elixir

5 (1)
By: Kenny Ballou, Kenneth Ballou

Overview of this book

Elixir, based on Erlang’s virtual machine and ecosystem, makes it easier to achieve scalability, concurrency, fault tolerance, and high availability goals that are pursued by developers using any programming language or programming paradigm. Elixir is a modern programming language that utilizes the benefits offered by Erlang VM without really incorporating the complex syntaxes of Erlang. Learning to program using Elixir will teach many things that are very beneficial to programming as a craft, even if at the end of the day, the programmer isn't using Elixir. This book will teach you concepts and principles important to any complex, scalable, and resilient application. Mostly, applications are historically difficult to reason about, but using the concepts in this book, they will become easy and enjoyable. It will teach you the functional programing ropes, to enable them to create better and more scalable applications, and you will explore how Elixir can help you achieve new programming heights. You will also glean a firm understanding of basics of OTP and the available generic, provided functionality for creating resilient complex systems. Furthermore, you will learn the basics of metaprogramming: modifying and extending Elixir to suite your needs.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
What this book covers
What you need for this book
Who this book is for
Conventions
Reader feedback
Customer support
Free Chapter
1
1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally
1. Introducing Elixir – Thinking Functionally
Why functional?
Installing Elixir
Hello, World!
Exercises
Summary
2
2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming
2. Elixir Basics – Foundational Steps toward Functional Programming
Everything is an expression
A short introduction to types
Invariable variables and pattern matching
Elixir structure
Elixir files
Exercises
Summary
3
3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks
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3. Modules and Functions – Creating Functional Building Blocks
Modules
Anonymous functions
Named functions
Calling functions
Grabbing functions
When patterns aren't enough for matching
Functional algorithms for everyday problems
Mix – the ladle of Elixir
Building functional projects
More to do about modules
Testing with comments
Exercises
Summary
4
4. Collections and Stream Processing
4. Collections and Stream Processing
Keywords, maps, and dictionaries
Flow-based programming
Stream processing and Elixir
Exercises
Summary
5
5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch
5. Control Flow – Occasionally You Need to Branch
Branching with Elixir
Examples using branching
Exception handling
Determinism
References
Exercises
Summary
6
6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency
6. Concurrent Programming – Using Processes to Conquer Concurrency
Parallel computation and concurrent computation
Erlang processes and OS processes
Basics of Elixir process
Applications
Summary
7
7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework
7. OTP – A Poor Name for a Rich Framework
Applications
Gen(eric) behaviours
Supervisors
Exercises
Summary
8
8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node
8. Distributed Elixir – Taking Concurrency to the Next Node
Obligatory discussion about distributed computing
Another short discussion about networks
Distributed computing with Elixir
Summary
9
9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less
9. Metaprogramming – Doing More with Less
Behaviours and protocols
Abstract syntax trees
Our first macros
Context and macro hygiene
Macro examples
Domain-specific languages
With great power...
Exercises
Summary
Going forward
10
Index
Index

Modules

If you're familiar with other languages such as Python, modules aren't really a new concept. They define a set of functions and essentially namespace these functions from others. This avoids name conflicts and introduces a level of plugability and reusability throughout. Elixir modules, similarly, follow suit.

A module in Elixir defines a set of public and private functions that can either be used externally or internally. Modules in Elixir are defined with the defmodule name do block end construct. In fact, the simplest module we can define is the following:

defmodule Foobar do end

Of course, this is a highly uninteresting module, but we can define it. In fact, we can even define it in our interactive session:

iex>(1) defmodule Foo do end
{:module, Foo,
 <<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 3, 136, 66, 69, 65, 77, 69, 120, 68, 99, 0, 0, 0, 60, 131, 104, 2, 100, 0, 14, 101, 108, 105, 120, 105, 114, 95, 100, 111, 99, 115, 95, 118, 49, 108, 0, 0, 0, 2, 104, 2, ...>>,
 nil}

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