Elixir is an excellent language if you want to learn about functional programming, and with this hands-on introduction, you’ll discover just how powerful and fun Elixir can be. This language combines the robust functional programming of Erlang with a syntax similar to Ruby, and includes powerful features for metaprogramming. This book shows you how to write simple Elixir programs by teaching one skill at a time. Once you pick up pattern matching, process-oriented programming, and other concepts, you’ll understand why Elixir makes it easier to build concurrent and resilient programs that scale up and down with ease. Get comfortable with IEx, Elixir’s command line interface Discover atoms, pattern matching, and guards: the foundations of your program structure Delve into the heart of Elixir with recursion, strings, lists, and higher-order functions Create processes, send messages among them, and apply pattern matching to incoming messages Store and manipulate structured data with Erlang Term Storage and the Mnesia database Build resilient applications with Erlang’s Open Telecom Platform Define macros with Elixir’s metaprogramming tools
Smooth, powerful, and small, Elixir is an excellent language for learning functional programming, and with this hands-on introduction, you’ll discover just how powerful Elixir can be. Authors Simon St. Laurent and J. David Eisenberg show you how Elixir combines the robust functional programming of Erlang with an approach that looks more like Ruby, and includes powerful macro features for metaprogramming. Updated to cover Elixir 1.4, the second edition of this practical book helps you write simple Elixir programs by teaching one skill at a time. Once you pick up pattern matching, process-oriented programming, and other concepts, you’ll understand why Elixir makes it easier to build concurrent and resilient programs that scale up and down with ease. Get comfortable with IEx, Elixir’s command line interface Learn Elixir’s basic structures by working with numbers Discover atoms, pattern matching, and guards: the foundations of your program structure Delve into the heart of Elixir processing with recursion, strings, lists, and higher-order functions Create Elixir processes and send messages among them Store and manipulate structured data with Erlang Term Storage and the Mnesia database Build resilient applications with the Open Telecom Platform
Summary The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook gets you started programming applications with Elixir and OTP. You begin with a quick overview of the Elixir language syntax, along with just enough functional programming to use it effectively. Then, you'll dive straight into OTP and learn how it helps you build scalable, fault-tolerant and distributed applications through several fun examples. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology Elixir is an elegant programming language that combines the expressiveness of Ruby with the concurrency and fault-tolerance of Erlang. It makes full use of Erlang's BEAM VM and OTP library, so you get two decades' worth of maturity and reliability right out of the gate. Elixir's support for functional programming makes it perfect for modern event-driven applications. About the Book The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook gets you started writing applications with Elixir and OTP. You'll begin with the immediately comfortable Elixir language syntax, along with just enough functional programming to use it effectively. Then, you'll dive straight into several lighthearted examples that teach you to take advantage of the incredible functionality built into the OTP library. What's Inside Covers Elixir 1.2 and 1.3 Introduction to functional concurrency with actors Experience the awesome power of Erlang and OTP About the Reader Written for readers comfortable with a standard programming language like Ruby, Java, or Python. FP experience is helpful but not required. About the Author Benjamin Tan Wei Hao is a software engineer at Pivotal Labs, Singapore. He is also an author, a speaker, and an early adopter of Elixir. Table of Contents GETTING STARTED WITH ELIXIR AND OTP Introduction A whirlwind tour Processes 101 Writing server applications with GenServer FAULT TOLERANCE, SUPERVISION, AND DISTRIBUTION Concurrent error-handling and fault tolerance with links, monitors, and processes Fault tolerance with Supervisors Completing the worker-pool application Distribution and load balancing Distribution and fault tolerance Dialyzer and type specifications Property-based and concurrency testing
Languages may come and go, but the relational database endures. Learn how to use Ecto, the premier database library for Elixir, to connect your Elixir and Phoenix apps to databases. Get a firm handle on Ecto fundamentals with a module-by-module tour of the critical parts of Ecto. Then move on to more advanced topics and advice on best practices with a series of recipes that provide clear, step-by-step instructions on scenarios commonly encountered by app developers. Co-authored by the creator of Ecto, this title provides all the essentials you need to use Ecto effectively. Elixir and Phoenix are taking the application development world by storm, and Ecto, the database library that ships with Phoenix, is going right along with them. There are plenty of examples that show you the basics, but to use Ecto to its full potential, you need to learn the library from the ground up. This definitive guide starts with a tour of the core features of Ecto - repos, queries, schemas, changesets, transactions - gradually building your knowledge with tasks of ever-increasing complexity. Along the way, you'll be learning by doing - a sample application handles all the boilerplate so you can focus on getting Ecto into your fingers. Build on that core knowledge with a series of recipes featuring more advanced topics. Change your pooling strategy to maximize your database's efficiency. Use nested associations to handle complex table relationships. Add streams to handle large result sets with ease. Based on questions from Ecto users, these recipes cover the most common situations developers run into. Whether you're new to Ecto, or already have an app in production, this title will give you a deeper understanding of how Ecto works, and help make your database code cleaner and more efficient. What You Need: To follow along with the book, you should have Erlang/OTP 19+ and Elixir 1.4+ installed. The book will guide you through setting up a sample application that integrates Ecto.
Summary Revised and updated for Elixir 1.7, Elixir in Action, Second Edition teaches you how to apply Elixir to practical problems associated with scalability, fault tolerance, and high availability. Along the way, you'll develop an appreciation for, and considerable skill in, a functional and concurrent style of programming. Purchase of the print book includes a free eBook in PDF, Kindle, and ePub formats from Manning Publications. About the Technology When you're building mission-critical software, fault tolerance matters. The Elixir programming language delivers fast, reliable applications, whether you're building a large-scale distributed system, a set of backend services, or a simple web app. And Elixir's elegant syntax and functional programming mindset make your software easy to write, read, and maintain. About the Book Elixir in Action, Second Edition teaches you how to build production-quality distributed applications using the Elixir programming language. Author Saša Jurić introduces this powerful language using examples that highlight the benefits of Elixir's functional and concurrent programming. You'll discover how the OTP framework can radically reduce tedious low-level coding tasks. You'll also explore practical approaches to concurrency as you learn to distribute a production system over multiple machines. What's inside Updated for Elixir 1.7 Functional and concurrent programming Introduction to distributed system design Creating deployable releases About the Reader You'll need intermediate skills with client/server applications and a language like Java, C#, or Ruby. No previous experience with Elixir required. About the Author Saša Jurić is a developer with extensive experience using Elixir and Erlang in complex server-side systems. Table of Contents First steps Building blocks Control flow Data abstractions Concurrency primitives Generic server processes Building a concurrent system Fault-tolerance basics Isolating error effects Beyond GenServer Working with components Building a distributed system Running the system
Elixir and Phoenix are generating tremendous excitement as an unbeatable platform for building modern web applications. For decades OTP has helped developers create incredibly robust, scalable applications with unparalleled uptime. Make the most of them as you build a stateful web app with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix. Model domain entities without an ORM or a database. Manage server state and keep your code clean with OTP Behaviours. Layer on a Phoenix web interface without coupling it to the business logic. Open doors to powerful new techniques that will get you thinking about web development in fundamentally new ways. Elixir and OTP provide exceptional tools to build rock-solid back-end applications that scale. In this book, you'll build a web application in a radically different way, with a back end that holds application state. You'll use persistent Phoenix Channel connections instead of HTTP's request-response, and create the full application in distinct, decoupled layers. In Part 1, start by building the business logic as a separate application, without Phoenix. Model the application domain with Elixir functions and simple data structures. By keeping state in memory instead of a database, you can reduce latency and simplify your code. In Part 2, add in the GenServer Behaviour to make managing in-memory state a breeze. Create a supervision tree to boost fault tolerance while separating error handling from business logic. Phoenix is a modern web framework you can layer on top of business logic while keeping the two completely decoupled. In Part 3, you'll do exactly that as you build a web interface with Phoenix. Bring in the application from Part 2 as a dependency to a new Phoenix project. Then use ultra-scalable Phoenix Channels to establish persistent connections between the stateful server and a stateful front-end client. You're going to love this way of building web apps! What You Need: You'll need a computer that can run Elixir version 1.5 or higher and Phoenix 1.3 or higher. Some familiarity with Elixir and Phoenix is recommended.
Learn different ways of writing concurrent code in Elixir and increase your application's performance, without sacrificing scalability or fault-tolerance. Most projects benefit from running background tasks and processing data concurrently, but the world of OTP and various libraries can be challenging. Which Supervisor and what strategy to use? What about GenServer? Maybe you need back-pressure, but is GenStage, Flow, or Broadway a better choice? You will learn everything you need to know to answer these questions, start building highly concurrent applications in no time, and write code that's not only fast, but also resilient to errors and easy to scale. Whether you are building a high-frequency stock trading application or a consumer web app, you need to know how to leverage concurrency to build applications that are fast and efficient. Elixir and the OTP offer a range of powerful tools, and this guide will show you how to choose the best tool for each job, and use it effectively to quickly start building highly concurrent applications. Learn about Tasks, supervision trees, and the different types of Supervisors available to you. Understand why processes and process linking are the building blocks of concurrency in Elixir. Get comfortable with the OTP and use the GenServer behaviour to maintain process state for long-running jobs. Easily scale the number of running processes using the Registry. Handle large volumes of data and traffic spikes with GenStage, using back-pressure to your advantage. Create your first multi-stage data processing pipeline using producer, consumer, and producer-consumer stages. Process large collections with Flow, using MapReduce and more in parallel. Thanks to Broadway, you will see how easy it is to integrate with popular message broker systems, or even existing GenStage producers. Start building the high-performance and fault-tolerant applications Elixir is famous for today. What You Need: You'll need Elixir 1.9+ and Erlang/OTP 22+ installed on a Mac OS X, Linux, or Windows machine.
Don't accept the compromise between fast and beautiful: you can have it all. Phoenix creator Chris McCord, Elixir creator Jose Valim, and award-winning author Bruce Tate walk you through building an application that's fast and reliable. At every step, you'll learn from the Phoenix creators not just what to do, but why. Packed with insider insights, this definitive guide will be your constant companion in your journey from Phoenix novice to expert, as you build the next generation of web applications. Phoenix is the long-awaited web framework based on Elixir, the highly concurrent language that combines a beautiful syntax with rich metaprogramming. The authors, who developed the earliest production Phoenix applications, will show you how to create code that's easier to write, test, understand, and maintain. The best way to learn Phoenix is to code, and you'll get to attack some interesting problems. Start working with controllers, views, and templates within the first few pages. Build an in-memory repository, and then back it with an Ecto database layer. Learn to use change sets and constraints that keep readers informed and your database integrity intact. Craft your own interactive application based on the channels API for the real-time, high-performance applications that this ecosystem made famous. Write your own authentication components called plugs, and even learn to use the OTP layer for monitored, reliable services. Organize your code with umbrella projects so you can keep your applications modular and easy to maintain. This is a book by developers and for developers, and we know how to help you ramp up quickly. Any book can tell you what to do. When you've finished this one, you'll also know why to do it. What You Need: To work through this book, you will need a computer capable of running Erlang 17 or better, Elixir 1.1, or better, Phoenix 1.0 or better, and Ecto 1.0 or better. A rudimentary knowledge of Elixir is also highly recommended.
Erlang is the language of choice for programmers who want to write robust, concurrent applications, but its strange syntax and functional design can intimidate the uninitiated. Luckily, there’s a new weapon in the battle against Erlang-phobia: Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! Erlang maestro Fred Hébert starts slow and eases you into the basics: You’ll learn about Erlang’s unorthodox syntax, its data structures, its type system (or lack thereof!), and basic functional programming techniques. Once you’ve wrapped your head around the simple stuff, you’ll tackle the real meat-and-potatoes of the language: concurrency, distributed computing, hot code loading, and all the other dark magic that makes Erlang such a hot topic among today’s savvy developers. As you dive into Erlang’s functional fantasy world, you’ll learn about: –Testing your applications with EUnit and Common Test –Building and releasing your applications with the OTP framework –Passing messages, raising errors, and starting/stopping processes over many nodes –Storing and retrieving data using Mnesia and ETS –Network programming with TCP, UDP, and the inet module –The simple joys and potential pitfalls of writing distributed, concurrent applications Packed with lighthearted illustrations and just the right mix of offbeat and practical example programs, Learn You Some Erlang for Great Good! is the perfect entry point into the sometimes-crazy, always-thrilling world of Erlang.
Unveil many hidden gems of programming functionally by taking the foundational steps with Elixir About This Book Explore the functional paradigms of programming with Elixir through use of helpful examples Concise step-by-step instructions to teach you difficult technical concepts Bridge the gap between functional programming and Elixir Who This Book Is For This book targets developers new to Elixir, as well as Erlang, in order to make them feel comfortable in functional programming with Elixir, thus enabling them to develop more scalable and fault-tolerant applications. Although no knowledge of Elixir is assumed, some programming experience with mainstream Object-Oriented programming languages such a Ruby, Python, Java, C# would be beneficial. What You Will Learn Explore Elixir to create resilient, scalable applications Create fault-tolerant applications Become better acquainted with Elixir code and see how it is structured to build and develop functional programs Learn the basics of functional programming Gain an understanding of effective OTP principles Design program-distributed applications and systems Write and create branching statements in Elixir Learn to do more with less using Elixir's metaprogramming Be familiar with the facilities Elixir provides for metaprogramming, macros, and extending the Elixir language In Detail 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. Style and approach An exploration of functional programming and Elixir with easy to follow examples using Elixir and the functional style. All the topics, concepts, and principles covered are clearly and concisely explained with either code examples or in depth discussions, or both!
