Elixir Tips and Tricks from the Experience of Development. Each part consists of 10 Unique Tips and Tricks with clear explanation with live examples and outputs. These tips will speed up your development and saves your time in typing code as well.

You can read specific parts with following links...

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6   Part 7

This is just the other way of writing Multiple OR conditions. This is not the recommended approach because in regular approach when the condition evaluates to true , it stops executing the remaining conditions which saves time of evaluation unlike this approach which evaluates all conditions first in list. This is just bad but good for discoveries.

# Regular Approach
find = fn(x) when x>10 or x<5 or x==7 -> x end 

# Our Hack
hell = fn(x) when true in [x>10,x<5,x==7] -> x end 

Prints information about the data type of any given term. Try that in iex and see the magic.

iex> i(1..5)

Copy the content into a file and save the file as .iex.exs in your ~ home directory and see the magic. You can also download the file HERE

# IEx.configure colors: [enabled: true]
# IEx.configure colors: [ eval_result: [ :cyan, :bright ] ]
IO.puts IO.ANSI.red_background() <> IO.ANSI.white() <> " ❄❄❄ Good Luck with Elixir ❄❄❄ " <> IO.ANSI.reset
Application.put_env(:elixir, :ansi_enabled, true)
IEx.configure(
 colors: [
   eval_result: [:green, :bright] ,
   eval_error: [[:red,:bright,"Bug Bug ..!!"]],
   eval_info: [:yellow, :bright ],
 ],
 default_prompt: [
   "\e[G",    # ANSI CHA, move cursor to column 1
    :white,
    "I",
    :red,
    "❤" ,       # plain string
    :green,
    "%prefix",:white,"|",
     :blue,
     "%counter",
     :white,
     "|",
    :red,
    "▶" ,         # plain string
    :white,
    "▶▶"  ,       # plain string
      # ❤ ❤-»" ,  # plain string
    :reset
  ] |> IO.ANSI.format |> IO.chardata_to_string

)

Each x sigil call respective sigil_x definition

Defining Custom Sigils

defmodule MySigils do
  #returns the downcasing string if option l is given then returns the list of downcase letters
  def sigil_l(string,[]), do: String.downcase(string)
  def sigil_l(string,[?l]), do: String.downcase(string) |> String.graphemes
  
  #returns the upcasing string if option l is given then returns the list of downcase letters
  def sigil_u(string,[]), do: String.upcase(string)
  def sigil_u(string,[?l]), do: String.upcase(string) |> String.graphemes
end

Load the module into iex

iex> import MySigils
iex> ~l/HELLO/
"hello"
iex> ~l/HELLO/l
["h", "e", "l", "l", "o"]
iex> ~u/hello/
"HELLO"
iex> ~u/hello/l
["H", "E", "L", "L", "O"]

defmodule BugError do
   defexception message: "BUG BUG .." # message is the default
end

Usage

$ iex bug_error.ex
iex> raise BugError
** (BugError) BUG BUG ..
iex> raise BugError, message: "I am Bug.." #here passing the message dynamic
** (BugError) I am Bug..

The get_in function can be used to retrieve a nested value in nested maps using a list of keys.

nested_map = %{ name: %{ first_name: "blackode"} }     # Example of Nested Map
first_name = get_in(nested_map, [:name, :first_name])  # Retrieving the Key

# Returns nil for missing value 
nil = get_in(nested, [:name, :last_name])              # returns nil when key is not present

Read docs: Kernel.get_in/2

The special form with is used to chain a sequence of matches in order and finally return the result of do: if all the clauses match. However, if one of the clauses does not match, its result of the miss matched expression is immediately returned.

iex> with 1 <- 1 0,
          2 <- 1 1,
          do: IO.puts "all matched"
"all matched"

iex> with 1 <- 1 0,
          2 <- 3 1,
          do: IO.puts "all matched"
4
## since  2 <- 3 1 is not matched so the result of 3 1 is returned

A Protocol is a way to dispatch to a particular implementation of a function based on the type of the parameter. The macros defprotocol and defimpl are used to define Protocols and Protocol implementations respectively for different types in the following example.

defprotocol Triple do    
  def triple(input)  
end  

defimpl Triple, for: Integer do    
  def triple(int) do     
    int * 3   
  end  
end   

defimpl Triple, for: List do
  def triple(list) do
    list    list    list   
  end  
end 

Load the code into iex and execute

iex> Triple.triple(3) 
9
Triple.triple([1, 2])
[1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2]

There is no ternary operator like true ? "yes" : "no" . So, the following is suggested.

"no" = if 1 == 0, do: "yes", else: "no"

When using pipelines, sometimes we break the pipeline for or operation. For example:

result = :input
|> do_something
|> do_another_thing

# Bad
result = (result || :default_output)
|> do_something_else

Indeed, || is only a shortcut for Kernel.|| . We can use Kernel.|| in the pipeline instead to avoid breaking the pipeline.

The code above will be:

result = :input
|> do_something
|> do_another_thing
|> Kernel.||(:default_output)  #<-- This line
|> do_something_else

This above tip is from qhwa

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6   Part 7

Code grouping stands for something great. It shows you how your code is grouped when you write multiple lines of code in single line with out using braces. It will be more clear with the following example.

one 1 |> two()

If you want to see how this line of code is grouped into, you can check in the following format..

quote(do: one 1 |> two()) |> Macro.to_string |> IO.puts
one(1 |> two())

So, by using the quote and Macro.to_string you can see how our code is grouped.

This tip came out in discussion with the creator of Ecto MichalMuskala in the Elixir forum.

These replaces the nested complicated conditions. These are my best friends in the situations dealing with more complex comparisons. Trust me you gonna love this.

The || operator always returns the first expression which is true. Elixir doesn’t care about the remaining expressions, and won’t evaluate them after a match has been found.

false || nil || :blackode || :elixir || :jose

Here if you observe the first expression is false next nil is also false in elixir next :blackode which evaluates to true and its value is returned immediately with out evaluating the :elixir and :jose . Similarly if all the statements evaluates to false the last expression is returned.

iex> true && :true && :elixir && 5
5
iex> nil && 100
nil
iex> salary = is_login && is_admin && is_staff && 100_000

This && returns the second expression if the first expression is true or else it returns the first expression with out evaluating the second expression. In the above examples the last one is the situation where we encounter to use the && operator.

I have self experience with this . When I am novice in elixir, I just compared "5" > 4 unknowingly by an accident and to my surprise it returned with true.

In Elixir every term can compare with every other term. So one has to be careful in comparisons.

iex> x = "I am x "
"I am x "
iex> x > 34
true
iex> x > [1,2,3]
true
iex>▶ [1,2,3] < 1234567890
false

Order of Comparison

number < atom < reference < fun < port < pid < tuple < map < list < bitstring (binary)

When I see this first time, I said to my self “Elixir is Crazy”. This tip really saves time and it resembles your smartness. In Elixir every operator is a macro. So, we can use them as lambda functions.

iex> Enum.reduce([1,2,3], 0, & /2)
6
iex> Enum.reduce([1,2,3], 0, &*/2)
0
iex> Enum.reduce([1,2,3], 3, &*/2)
18
iex> Enum.reduce([1,2,3], 3, &-/2)
-1
iex> Enum.reduce([1,2,3], 3, &//2)
0.5

This is my recent discovery. I always encounter a situation like converting "$34.56" which is a string and I suppose do arithmetic operations. I usually do something like this before binary pattern matching..

iex> value = "$34.56"
iex ...      |> String.split("$")
iex ...      |> tl
iex ...      |> List.first
iex ...      |> String.to_float
34.56

This tip made my day easy. I recently used this is in one of my projects.

iex> "$" <> value = "$34.56"
"$34.56"
iex> String.to_float value  
34.56

At beginning stage, I used to press ^c ^c twice and restart shell as iex -S mix whenever I make changes to the project files. If you are doing this now, stop it right now. You can just recompile the project.

$ iex -S mix
iex> recompile

Warning: The changes in the config/config.ex are not reflected. You have to restart the shell again.

Logger is one of my favorite modules. This come in default and starts along with your application. You have to just require this module. When I am new to Elixir, I always used to write the console outputs as IO.puts "This is value of data" for code debugging but, those lines get mixed up with other lines of information and It became hard to trace those lines.

This Logger module solved my problem. It has many features but, I use three definitions very often warn info and error Each definition prints the information with different colors which is more easy to find the statement at a glance.

The best side of this module is it prints along with the time, means it also prints the time while executing your statement. So, you can know the direction of flow of execution.

Before using the Logger module one has to do require Logger so all macros will be loaded inside your working module.

iex> require Logger
Logger
iex> Logger.info "This is the info"
15:04:33.102 [info]  This is the info
:ok
iex> Logger.warn "This is warning"
15:04:56.712 [warn]  This is warning
:ok
iex> Logger.error "This is error"
15:05:19.570 [error] This is error
:ok

This tip is from Anwesh Reddy

We can check the all the applications which are started along with our application. Sometimes we have to check whether a particular application is started or not. So, it helps you in those situations.. If you are a beginner, you don’t feel of using this much. But I am pretty sure of this tip will become handy when you work with multiple applications.

iex> Application.started_applications
[{:logger, 'logger', '1.4.0'}, {:iex, 'iex', '1.4.0'},
 {:elixir, 'elixir', '1.4.0'}, {:compiler, 'ERTS  CXC 138 10', '7.0.1'},
 {:stdlib, 'ERTS  CXC 138 10', '3.0.1'}, {:kernel, 'ERTS  CXC 138 10', '5.0.1'}]

Before I let you to use this tip, I just want to remind you that :atoms are not garbage collected. Atom keys are great! If you have a fixed number of them defined statically in your code, you are in no danger. What you should not do is convert user supplied input into atoms without sanitizing them first because it can lead to out of memory. You should also be cautious if you create dynamic atoms in your code.

But , you can use the . to retrieve the data from the keys as map.key unlike the usual notation like map["key"] . That really saves the typing. But, I don’t encourage this because, as programmers we should really care about memory.

iex> map = %{name: "blackode", blog: "medium"}
%{blog: "medium", name: "blackode"}
iex> map.name
"blackode"
iex> map.blog
"medium"

Be sure that when you try to retrieve a key with . form which is not present in the map, it will raise an key error instead of returning the nil unlike the map["key"] which returns nil if key is not present in map

iex> map["age"]
nil

iex> map.age
Bug Bug ..!!** (KeyError) key :age not found in: %{blog: "medium", name: "blackode"}
Bug Bug ..!!

Elixir >=1.4.0 has ANSI color printing option to console. You can have great fun with colors. You can also provide background colors.

iex> import IO.ANSI
iex> IO.puts red <> "red" <> green <> " green" <> yellow <> " yellow" <> reset <> " normal"
iex> IO.puts Enum.join [red, "red", green, " green", yellow, " yellow", reset, " normal"]
red green yellow normal

The red prints in red color, green in green color, yellow in yellow color and normal in white. Have fun with colors…

For more details on color printing check Printex module which I created for fun in Elixir.

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6   Part 7

We cannot make use of the functions as guard clauses in elixir. It means, when cannot accept functions that returns Boolean values as conditions. Consider the following lines of code…

defmodule Hello do
  def hello(name, age) when is_kid(age) do
    IO.puts "Hello Kid #{name}"
  end
  def hello(name, age) when is_adult(age) do
    IO.puts "Hello Mister #{name}"
  end
  def is_kid age do
    age < 12
  end
  def is_adult age do
    age > 18
  end
end

Here we defined a module Hello and a function hello that takes two parameters of name and age. So, based on age I am trying IO.putsaccordingly. If you do so you will get an error saying….

** (CompileError) hello.ex:2: cannot invoke local is_kid/1 inside guard
    hello.ex:2: (module)

This is because when cannot accept functions as guards. We need to convert them to macros  Lets do that…

defmodule MyGuards do

  defmacro is_kid age do
    quote do: unquote(age) < 12
  end

  defmacro is_adult age do
    quote do: unquote(age) > 18
  end

end
# order of module matters here.....
defmodule Hello do

  import MyGuards

  def hello(name, age) when is_kid(age) do
    IO.puts "Hello Kid #{name}"
  end

  def hello(name, age) when is_adult(age) do
    IO.puts "Hello Mister #{name}"
  
   def hello(name, age) do
    IO.puts "Hello Youth #{name}"
  end

end

In the above lines of code, we wrapped all our guards inside a module MyGuards and make sure the module is top of the module Hello so, the macros first gets compiled. Now compile and execute you will see the following output..

iex> Hello.hello "blackode", 21
Hello Mister blackode
:ok
iex> Hello.hello "blackode", 11
Hello Kid blackode
:ok

Starting on Elixir v1.6, you can use defguard/1.

The defguard is also a macro. You can also create private guards with defguardp. Hope, you got the point here.
Consider the following example.

NOTE: The defguard and defguardp should reside inside the module like other macros. It raises a compile time error, if some thing that don't fit in the guard clause section when.

Suppose, you want to check the given number is either three or five, you can define the guard as following.

defmodule Number.Guards do
  defguard is_three_or_five(number) when (number===3) or (number===5)
end

import Number.Guards
defmodule Hello do
  def check_favorite_number(num) when is_three_or_five(num) do
    IO.puts "The given #{num} is on of my favourite numbers"
  end
  def check_favorite_number(_num), do: IO.puts "Not my favorite number"
end

You can also use them inside your code logic as they results boolean value.

iex> import Number.Guards
Number.Guards

iex> is_three_or_five(5)
true

iex> is_three_or_five(3)
true

iex> is_three_or_five(1)
false

Check the following execution screen shot.

Using =~ operator we can find whether the right sub-string present in left string or not..

iex> "blackode" =~ "kode" 
true  
iex> "blackode" =~ "medium" 
false  
iex> "blackode" =~ "" 
true

Sometimes, we have to make sure that certain module is loaded before making a call to the function. We are supposed to ensure the module is loaded.

Code.ensure_loaded? <Module>

iex> Code.ensure_loaded? :kernel
true
iex> Code.ensure_loaded :kernel
{:module, :kernel}

Similarly we are having ensure_compile to check whether the module is compiled or not…

Elixir provides a special syntax which is usually used for module names. What is called a module name is an uppercase ASCII letter followed by any number of lowercase or uppercase ASCII letters, numbers, or underscores.

This identifier is equivalent to an atom prefixed by Elixir. So in the defmodule Blackode example Blackode is equivalent to :"Elixir.Blackode"

When we use String.to_atom "Blackode" it converts it into :Blackode But actually we need something like “Blackode” to Blackode. To do that we need to use Module.concat

iex(2)> String.to_atom "Blackode"
:Blackode
iex(3)> Module.concat Elixir,"Blackode"
Blackode

In Command line applications whatever you pass they convert it into binary. So, again you suppose to do some casting operations …

We all know that = does the pattern match for left and right side. We cannot do [a, b, c] = [1, 2, 3, 4] this raise a MatchError

iex(11)> [a, b, c] = [1, 2, 3, 4]
** (MatchError) no match of right hand side value: [1, 2, 3, 4]

We can use destructure/2 to do the job.

iex(1)> destructure [a, b, c], [1, 2, 3, 4]
[1, 2, 3]
iex(2)> {a, b, c}
{1, 2, 3}

If the left side is having more entries than in right side, it assigns the nil value for remaining entries..

iex> destructure([a, b, c], [1])
iex> {a, b, c} 
{1, nil, nil}

We can decorate our output with inspect and label option. The string of label is added at the beginning of the data we are inspecting.

iex(1)> IO.inspect [1, 2, 3], label: "the list "
the list : [1, 2, 3]
[1, 2, 3]

If you closely observe this it again returns the inspected data. So, we can use them as intermediate results in |> pipe operations like following……

[1, 2, 3] 
|> IO.inspect(label: "before change") 
|> Enum.map(&(&1 * 2)) 
|> IO.inspect(label: "after change") 
|> length

You will see the following output

before change: [1, 2, 3]
after change: [2, 4, 6]
3

We can pass the anonymous functions in two ways. One is directly using &like following..

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
|> length()
|> (&(&1*&1)).()

This is the most weirdest approach. How ever, we can use the reference of the anonymous function by giving its name.

square = & &1 * &1
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
|> length()
|> square.()

The above style is much better than previous . You can also use fn to define anonymous functions.

We can use ? operator to retrieve character integer codepoints.

iex> ?a
97
iex> ?#
35

The following two tips are mostly useful for beginners…

We can perform the subtraction over lists for removing the elements in list.

iex> [1, 2, 3, 4.5] -- [1, 2]
[3, 4.5]
iex> [1, 2, 3, 4.5, 1] -- [1]  
[2, 3, 4.5, 1]
iex> [1, 2, 3, 4.5, 1] -- [1, 1]
[2, 3, 4.5]
iex> [1, 2, 3, 4.5] -- [6]
[1, 2, 3, 4.5]

We can also perform same operations on char lists too..

iex(12)> 'blackode' -- 'ode'
'black'
iex(13)> 'blackode' -- 'z'    
'blackode'

If the element to subtract is not present in the list then it simply returns the list.

When you are working with iex environment , you can see a number increment every time you evaluate an expression in the shell like iex(2)> iex(3)>

Those numbers helps us to reuse the result with v/1 function which has been loaded by default..

iex(1)> list = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
iex(2)> double_lsit = Enum.map(list, &(&1*2))
[2, 4, 6, 8, 10]
iex(3)> v 1
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
iex(4)> v(1)    v(2)
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6   Part 7

mix do deps.get,compile

You can run multiple tasks by separating them with coma ,

How ever you can also create aliases in your mix project in a file called mix.exs .

The project definition looks like the following way when you create one using a mix tool.

def project do
    [app: :project_name,
     version: "0.1.0",
     elixir: "~> 1.4-rc",
     build_embedded: Mix.env == :prod,
     start_permanent: Mix.env == :prod,
     deps: deps()]
  end

You are also allowed to add some extra fields…

Here you have to add the aliases field. 

[
 aliases: aliases()
]

Don’t forget to add , at the end when you add this in the middle of list . 

The aliases() should return the key-value list.

defp aliases do
  [
    "ecto.setup": ["ecto.create", "ecto.migrate", "ecto.seed"]
  ]
end

So, whenever you run the mix ecto.setup the three tasks ecto.create, ecto.migrate and ecto.seed will run one after the other.

You can also add them directly as following unlike I did with private function.

def project do
    [app: :project_name,
     version: "0.1.0",
     aliases: ["ecto.setup": ["ecto.create", "ecto.migrate", "ecto.seed"]]      
.....
  end

Elixir stores the documentation inside the bytecode in a memory. You access the documentation with the help of Code.get_docs/2 function . This means, the documentation accessed when it is required, but not when it is loaded in the virtual machine like iex

Suppose you defined a module in memory like ones you defined in IEx, cannot have their documentation accessed as they do not have their bytecode written to disk.

Let us check this…

Create a module with name test.ex with the following code. You can copy and paste it.

defmodule Test do
  @moduledoc """
  This is the test module docs
  """
  
  @doc """
  This is the documentation of hello function
  """
  def hello do
    IO.puts "hello"
  end
end

Now stay in the directory where your file exists and run the command

$ iex test.ex

Now you can access the function definitions but not the documentation.

iex> Test.hello
hello
:ok

That means the code is compiled but documentation is not stored in the memory. So, you cannot access the docs. Lets check that…

iex> Code.get_docs Hello, :moduledoc
nil

You will see the output as nil when you are trying to access the docs of the module you have created so far. This is because, the bytecode is not available in disk.  In simple way beam file is not present. Lets do that...

Press Ctrl C twice so you will come out of the shell and this time you run the command as

$ elixirc test.ex

After running the command, you will see a file with name Elixir.Test.beam . Now the bytecode for the module Test is available in memory. Now you can access the documentation as follows...

$ iex
iex> Code.get_docs Test, :moduledoc
{3, "This is the test module docs\n"}

The output is tuple with two elements. The first element is the line number of the documentation it starts and second element is the actual documentation in the binary form.

 You can read more about this function here

When you go with mix test it will run all the tests defined and gives you the time of testing. However, you can see more verbose output like which test you are running with the --trace option like following…

mix test --trace

It will list out the all tests with names you defined as test "test_string" here test_string is the name of the test.

defmacro gen_function(fun_name) do
  quote do 
    def unquote(:"#{fun_name}")() do
      # your code...
    end
  end
end

To be simple the name of the function should be an atom instead of binary.

System.cmd(command, args, options \\ [])

Executes the given command with args.

• command is expected to be an executable available in PATH unless an absolute path is given.
• args must be a list of binaries which the executable will receive as its arguments as is. This means that:

iex> System.cmd "echo", ["hello"]
    {"hello\n", 0}

iex> System.cmd "echo", ["hello"], into: []
    {["hello\n"], 0}

Get help from iex with h System.cmd 

Checkout the documentation about System for more information and  also check Erlang os Module.

You know that when the list contains all the numbers as ASCII values, it will list out those values instead of the original numbers. Lets check that…

iex> IO.inspect [97, 98]
'ab'
'ab'

The code point of a is 97 and b is 98 hence it is listing out them as char_list. However you can tell the IO.inspect to list them as list itself with option char_lists: :as_list .

iex> IO.inspect [97, 98], charlists: :as_lists
[97, 98]
'ab'

Open iex and type h Inspect.Opts, you will see that Elixir does this kind of thing with other values as well, specifically structs and binaries.

defmacro __ENV__()

This macro gives the current environment information. You can get the information like current filename line function and others…

iex(4)> __ENV__.file
"iex"

iex(5)> __ENV__.line
5

You can create the pid manually in Elixir with pid function. This comes with two flavors.

Creates the pid from the string.

iex> pid("0.21.32")
#PID<0.21.32>

Creates a PID with 3 non negative integers passed as arguments to the function.

iex> pid(0, 21, 32)
#PID<0.21.32>

Suppose you are writing a library and you want to test one of your functions for the type pid, then you can create one and test over it.

You cannot create the pid like assigning pid = #PID<0.21.32> because # is considered as comment here.

iex(6)> pid = #PID<0.21.32>
...(6)>

When you do like above, iex shell just wait for more input as #PID<0.21.32> is treated as comment. 

Now you enter another data to complete the expression. The entered value is the value of the pid. Lets check that…

iex(6)> pid = #PID<0.21.32>      # here expression is not complete
...(6)> 23    # here we are giving the value 23
23            # expression is complete
iex(7)> pid
23            

The String.replace function will replace the given the pattern with replacing pattern. By default, it replaces all the occurrences of the pattern.  Lets check that…

iex(1)> str = "[email protected], [email protected]"    
"[email protected], [email protected]"

iex(2)> String.replace str,"@","#"
"hello#hi.com, blackode#medium.com

The  String.replace str, "@", "#"is same as  String.replace str, "@", "#", global: true

But, if you want to replace only the first occurrence of the pattern, you need to pass the option global: false . So, it replaces only the first occurrence of @ . Lets check that…

iex(3)> String.replace str, "@", "#", global: false
"hello#hi.com, [email protected]"

Here only first @ is replaced with #.

You can check the memory usage (in bytes) with :erlang.memory 

iex(1)> :erlang.memory
[total: 16221568, processes: 4366128, processes_used: 4364992, system: 11855440,
 atom: 264529, atom_used: 250685, binary: 151192, code: 5845369, ets: 331768]

However, you can pass option like :erlang.memory :atom to get the memory usage of atoms.

iex(2)> :erlang.memory :atom
264529

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6  Part 7

iex> Mix.compilers

Returns the default compilers used by Mix. The output will look something similar to [:yecc, :leex, :erlang, :elixir, :xref, :app] .
It can be used in your mix.exs to prepend or append new compilers to Mix:

#mix.exs
def project do
 [compilers: Mix.compilers    [:gettext]
end

We all know that a proper list is a combination of head and tail like [head | tail] . We can use the same principle for picking out the elements in the list like the following way…

iex> [first | [second | [third | [ fourth | _rest ]]]] = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]
iex> first
1
iex> {second, third, fourth}
{2, 3, 4}
iex(5)>

We all know that the get_in function is used to extract the key which is deeper inside the map by providing the list with keys like a following way…

iex> user = %{"name" => {"first_name" => "blackode", "last_name" => "john" }}
%{"name" => %{"first_name" => "blackode", "last_name" => "john"}}
iex > get_in user, ["name", "first_name"]
"blackode"

But, if there is a list of maps [maps] where you have to extract first_name of the each map, generally we go for enum . We can also achieve this by using the get_in and Access.all()

iex> users=[%{"user" => %{"first_name" => "john", "age" => 23}},
            %{"user" => %{"first_name" => "hari", "age" => 22}},
            %{"user" => %{"first_name" => "mahesh", "age" => 21}}]
# that is a list of maps 
iex> get_in users, [Access.all(), "user", "age"]
[23, 22, 21]
iex> get_in users, [Access.all(), "user", "first_name"]
["john", "hari", "mahesh"]

Note: If the key is not present in map, then it returns nil Warning: When you use the get_in along with Access.all() , as the first value in the list of keys like above, the users datatype should be list. If you pass the map, it returns the error.

iex(17)> list = [%{name: "john"}, %{name: "mary"}, %{age: 34}]
[%{name: "john"}, %{name: "mary"}, %{age: 34}]
iex(18)> get_in(list, [Access.all(), :name])
["john", "mary", nil]

In the above lines of code returns the nil for key which is not in the map.

iex(19)> get_in(%{name: "blackode"}, [Access.all(), :name])
** (RuntimeError) Access.all/0 expected a list, got: %{name: "blackode"}
    (elixir) lib/access.ex:567: Access.all/3

In the above lines of code returns the error for passing map .

However, you can change the position of the Access.all() in the list. But the before key should return the list. Check the following lines of code.

We can also use the Access.all() with functions like update_in, get_and_update_in, etc..
For instance, given a user with a list of books, here is how to deeply traverse the map and convert all book names to uppercase:

iex> user = %{name: "john", books: [%{name: "my soul", type: "tragedy"}, %{name: "my heart", type: "romantic"}, %{name: "my enemy", type: "horror"}]}
iex> update_in user, [:books, Access.all(), :name], &String.upcase/1
%{books: [%{name: "MY SOUL", type: "tragedy"}, %{name: "MY HEART", type: "romantic"}, %{name: "MY ENEMY", type: "horror"}], name: "john"}
iex> get_in user, [:books, Access.all(), :name]
["my soul", "my heart", "my enemy"]

Here, user is not a list unlike in the previous examples where we passed the users as a list. But, we changed the position of Access.all() and inside the list of keys [:books, Access.all(), :name], the value of the key :books should return the list, other wise it raises an error.

We achieve the data comprehension through for x <- [1, 2, 3], do: x 1 . But we can also add the comprehension along with filter.

iex> for x <- [1, 2, 3, 4], do: x   1
[2, 3, 4, 5]
# that is how we use in general lets think out of the box

Here I am using two lists of numbers and cross product over the lists and filtering out the product which is a odd number.

iex> for x <- [1, 2, 3, 4], y <- [5, 6, 7, 8], rem(x * y, 2) == 0, do: {x, y, x * y}
[{1, 5, 5}, {1, 7, 7}, {3, 5, 15}, {3, 7, 21}]
#here rem(x * y, 2) is acting as a filter.

Comprehension with binary is little different. You supposed to wrap inside <<>>

Lets check that…

iex> b_string = <<"blackode">>
"blackode"
iex> for << x <- b_string >>, do: x   1
'cmbdlpef'
#here it is printing out the letter after every letter in the "blackode"

Did you observe that x <- b_string is just changed something like << x <- b_string >> to make the sense.

Here we are taking the elixir comprehension to the next level.
We read the input from the keyboard and convert that to upcase and after that it should wait for another entry.

for x <- IO.stream(:stdio, :line), into: IO.stream(:stdio, :line), do: String.upcase(x)

Basically IO.stream(:stdio, :line) will the read a line input from the keyboard.

iex> for x <- IO.stream(:stdio, :line), into: IO.stream(:stdio, :line), do: String.upcase(x)
hello
HELLO
hi
HI
who are you?
WHO ARE YOU?
blackode
BLACKODE
^c ^c # to break

We can also alias multiple modules in one line:

alias Hello.{One,Two,Three}
#The above line is same as the following 
alias Hello.One
alias Hello.Two
alias Hello.Three

By default the functions with _ are not imported. However, you can do that by importing them with :only explicitly.

import File.Stream, only: [__build__: 3]

There is no direct sub_str like function in elixir. However you can achieve that by String.slice/2

iex> String.slice("blackode", 1..-1)
"lackode"
iex> String.slice("blackode", 0..-4)
"black"

We can do the string concatenation in two ways.

iex> str1 = "hello"
iex> str2 = "blackode"

I am taking above lines of code for example…

iex> mystring = "#{str1}#{str2}"
helloblackode

iex> mystring = str1 <> str2
helloblackode

This is the best style and recommended one.

If you are having the list of strings ["hello", "blackode"] then use Enum.join

iex> mystrings = ["hello", "blackode"]
["hello", "blackode"]
iex> Enum.join(mystrings)
"helloblackode"

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6     Part 7

Elixir version 1.5.1 & Erlang otp version 20

Mix.Project.config[:version] # returns the version
Mix.Project.config[:app] # returns app name

You have to be inside the mix project when you are trying.  See this in action…

This is a common trick in elixir . You have to concatenate the null byte <<0>> to a string that you want to see its inner binary representation like in the following way…

iex> “hello” <> <<0>>
<<104, 101, 108, 108, 111, 0>>

iex> x = y = z = 5
5
iex> x
5
iex> y
5
iex> z
5

See this in action here...

This is much like adding a not null constraint to the structs. When you try to define the struct with the absence of that key in the struct, it should raise an exception. Lets do that…
You have to use @enforce_keys [<keys>] while defining the struct…

# Defining struct
defmodule Employee do
   @enforce_keys [:salary]
   defstruct name: nil, salary: nil
end
# Execution 
iex> employee = %Employee{name: "blackode"} # Error 
iex> employee = %Employee{name: "blackode",salary: 12345}
%Employee{name: "john", salary: 12345}

See this in action...

Warning Keep in mind @enforce_keys is a simple compile-time guarantee to aid developers when building structs. It is not enforced on updates and it does not provide any sort of value-validation. The above warning is from the ORIGINAL DOCUMENTATION

Elixir provides function_exported?/3 to achieve this…

# Defining the module with one exported function and private one
defmodule Hello do
  def hello name do
   IO.puts name
  end
  defp hellop name do
    IO.puts name 
  end
end
# Execution Copy and paste above lines of code in iex> 
iex> function_exported? Hello, :hello,1
true
iex> function_exported? Hello, :hellop, 1
false

See this in action...

We all know how to split a string with String.split/2 function. But you can also pass a pattern to match that over and over and splitting the string whenever it matches the pattern.

"Hello Blackode! Medium-is-5*"

If you observe the above string, it comprises of two blank spaces , one exclamation mark ! , two minus — symbols - and a asterisk * symbol. Now we are going to split that string with all of those.

string = "Hello Blackode! Medium-is-5*"
String.split string, [" ", "!", "-", "*"]
#output
["Hello", "Blackode", "", "Medium", "is", "5", ""]

The pattern is generated at run time. You can still validate with :binary.compiled

You can find the distance between the two strings using String.jaro_distance/2. This gives a float value in the range 0..1 Taking the 0 for no close and 1 is for exact closeness.

iex> String.jaro_distance "ping", "pong"
0.8333333333333334
iex> String.jaro_distance "color", "colour"
0.9444444444444445
iex> String.jaro_distance "foo", "foo"
1.0

For the FUN, you can find your closeness with your name and your partner or lover in case if aren’t married. Hey… ! I am just kidding…. It is just an algorithm which is predefined where our love is undefined. Cheers …….. :)

We know that first and last for lists gets you the element first and last respectively in the given list. Similarly, the strings give you the first and last graphemes in the given string.

iex> string = "blackode medium"
"blackode medium"
iex> String.first string
"b"
iex> String.last string
"m"

See this in action…

Elixir provides @on_load which accepts atom as function name in the same module or a tuple with function_name and its arity like {function_name, 0}.

#Hello module 
defmodule Hello do
@on_load :onload     # this executes after module gets loaded 
  def onload do
    IO.puts "#{__MODULE__} is loaded successfully"
  end
end
# Execution .... Just copy and paste the code in the iex terminal
# You will see the output something like this ....
Elixir.Hello is loaded successfully  
{:module, Hello,
 <<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 4, 72, 66, 69, 65, 77, 65, 116, 85, 56, 0, 0, 0, 130,
   0, 0, 0, 12, 12, 69, 108, 105, 120, 105, 114, 46, 72, 101, 108, 108, 111, 8,
   95, 95, 105, 110, 102, 111, 95, 95, 9, ...>>, {:onload, 0}}

You can see this in live here…

This is about multiple guards in the same clause and writing or conditions with out using or We all know that or is used as a conjunction for two conditions resulting true if either one of them is true. Many of us writing the or conditions in the guard as following way…

def print_me(thing) when is_integer(thing) or is_float(thing) or is_nil(thing), do: "I am a number"

You can also do this in bit more clear format as the following way…

def print_me(thing)
  when is_integer(thing)
  when is_float(thing)
  when is_nil(thing) do
 "I am a number "
end

See this in action…

See also Elixir Style Guide

Part 1   Part 2       Part 3       Part 4         Part 5     Part 6     Part 7

In general, when you pass the quote expression to Macro.to_string , it returns the actual code in a string format and we all knew this.

The weird thing is, it gives the output in a single line along with **\n **characters inside the string.

Check it down

    iex(2)> q = quote do
    ...(2)> 1 2
    ...(2)> name = "blackode"
    ...(2)> end

    {:__block__, [],
     [
       {: , [context: Elixir, import: Kernel], [1, 2]},
       {:=, [], [{:name, [], Elixir}, "blackode"]}
     ]}

    iex(3)> Macro.to_string q
    "(\n  1   2\n  name = \"blackode\"\n)"

To print the new lines, you pipe the string output from Macro.to_string to IO.puts like in the following code snippet. It gives the clean output by printing in new line.

    iex(4)> Macro.to_string(q) |> IO.puts
    (
      1   2
      name = "blackode"
    )
    :ok
    

1. Finding the loaded files

In elixir, we are having a definition loaded_files in the module Code used to find the loaded files.

Let’s see this.

Run the command iex inside your terminal and call the function Code.loaded_files .

It gives an empty list [] as output because we haven’t loaded any files so far.

    $ iex
    iex> Code.loaded_files
    []
    

Let’s create a file hello.ex with a single function definition hello which just prints a string **“Welcome to the world” **for the demo purpose.

    # hello.ex

    defmodule Hello do
      def hello do
        IO.puts "Welcome to the world"
      end
    end
    

Save the file after editing.

Now, make sure you are in the same directory of where the file exists and run the command

    $ iex hello.ex    
    

It opens the Elixir interactive shell by loading the hello.ex file as well.

Now, you can see the loaded file by calling Code.loaded_files . It outputs the path to the file.

    iex> Code.loaded_files
    ["/home/john/hello.ex"]
    

That is one way of loading files. You can also load them on-fly in iex session

Code.load_file/1

Unlike loading files with iex hello.ex , you can load them on-fly in iex session with the help of Code.load_file "path/to/file" .

Let us assume that we have a file hello.ex in our current directory and open iex session from the same directory.

    $ iex

    iex> Code.load_file "hello.ex"
    [
      {Hello,
       <<70, 79, 82, 49, 0, 0, 4, 72, 66, 69, 65, 77, 65, 116, 85, 56, 0, 0, 0, 140,
         0, 0, 0, 15, 12, 69, 108, 105, 120, 105, 114, 46, 72, 101, 108, 108, 111,
         8, 95, 95, 105, 110, 102, 111, 95, 95, 9, ...>>}
    ]
    

@deprecated

You might be noticed the warnings of using deprecated functions in a library along with some useful hint text. Today, we build this from scratch.

Suppose, you have written a library and want to update the name of one function in your next build release and if the user tried to access the old function then you have to warn him of using deprecated function instead of updated one.

To see this in action, you need to create new mix project.

Let’s do that.

    mix new hello

Next change the directory to the project created.

    cd hello

Now, edit the file lib/hello.ex in the project with the following code

    #lib/hello.ex

    defmodule Hello do
      def hello do 
        Printee.print()
      end
    end

    defmodule Printee do

      @deprecated "print/0 is deprecated use show/0" 
      def print do
        IO.puts "hello blackode"
      end

      def show do
        IO.puts "hello blackode"
      end

    end
    

File Scrennshot Vim Editor

This file comprises of two modules Hello and Printee . The Printee module comprises of two functions print/0 and show/0 . Here purposely, print/0 is considered as a deprecated function used inside the Hello module.

The mix compiler automatically looks for calls to deprecated modules and emit warnings during compilation.

So, when you compile the project mix compile, it gives a warning saying

“print/0 is deprecated use show/0”

like in the following screenshot.

Deprecated Function Warning

As we all know defmodule is used to create a module. In similar, Module.create/3 is also used to create a module.

The only difference in defining a module with Module.create/3 is the definition inside the module is quoted expression.

However, we can use the help of quote to create a quoted expression.

We have to pass three parameters to Moduel.create .

The first one is name of the module. The second one is module definition in quoted expression. The third one is location. The location is given in keyword list like [file: String.t, line: Integer ] or else you can just take the help of Macro.Env.location(__ENV__) which returns the same.

location of loc

    iex> module_definition = quote do: def hello, do: IO.puts "hello"

The above line of code gives the context of the module definition and collected in module_definition . We can use this module_defintion to pass as second parameter to Module.create/3 function.

module definition context

Let’s put all together and see the magic

    iex(8)> Module.create Hello, module_definition, [file: "iex", line: 8 ]

Creating another module Foo with same module function

    iex(10)> Module.create Foo, module_definition, Macro.Env.location(__ENV__)

    iex> binding
    []
    iex> name = "blackode"
    "blackode"
    iex> blog = "medium"
    "medium"
    iex> binding
    [blog: "medium", name: "blackode"]

This is used in debugging purpose inside the function.

It is also very common to use IO.inspect/2 with binding(), which returns all variable names and their values:

def fun(a, b) do
  IO.inspect binding()
  ...
end

When fun/2 is invoked with :laughing, "time" it prints:

[a: :laughing, b: "time"]

You can also give context to the binding

If the given context is **nil ***(by default it is), *the binding for the current
context is returned.

    iex> var!(x, :foo) = 1
    1
    iex> binding(:foo)
    [x: 1]

We can convert any integer to charlist using Integer.char_list . It can be used in two ways either passing the base the base value or not passing.

Let’s try with base and with out base.

    iex> Integer.to_charlist(882681651)
    '882681651'

    iex> Integer.to_charlist(882681651, 36)
    'ELIXIR'

Try your own names as well and find your value with base

    iex> List.to_integer 'BLACKODE', 36
    908344015970

    iex> Integer.to_charlist(908344015970, 36)
    'BLACKODE'

With the help of Process.info , we can extract the process information like linked processes etc…

It is used in two different ways.

**Note: **We get the information if and only if process is alive

Here, we try to create a process and linking it to the current process using spawn_link and will try to extract only linked processes. With no surprise, it should give the self output pid which is the current process in our case.

    iex> pid = spawn_link fn -> receive do :name -> IO.puts "Hello Medium" end end
    #PID<0.210.0>
    iex> Process.info pid, :links                                                 
    {:links, [#PID<0.85.0>]}
    iex> self
    #PID<0.85.0>

    iex> Process.info pid

Consider that you need to pass a **map **to a function and you have to ensure certain **keys **in the map then allow it to use the function body.

You can achieve this using structs with @enforce_keys attribute. But, you can still use the pattern matching to the keys of a map.

    defmodule Hello do
      def hello(%{name: _name, blog: _blog} = map) do
        IO.inspect map
      end
    end

Here, we don’t care how many keys present inside the map but we need atleast two keys name, blog to be present inside the map with any values.

If you observer the screenshot, we tried to access the function by sending a map with single key parameter where it is not allowed then with two keys map and the keys are exactly pattern matched where it is allowed to use the function then evenutally tried with more keys still it worked.

Thanks to pattern matching.

Code formatting is easy now with the help of mix task mix format . It will take care of all you care about cleaning and refactoring as well. It can assure a clean code base or simply universal code base which maintains some useful standards. This really saves a lot of time.

    mix format filename

To know more about the codebase formatting, check out my recent article on

1.6](https://medium.com/blackode/code-formatter-the-big-feature-in-elixir-v1-6-0-f6572061a4ba)

which explains all about using mix format task and its configuration in detail with screen shots of vivid examples.

    alias Mod.{One, Two, Three}

is same as following

    alias Mod.One
    alias Mod.Two
    alias Mod.Three

In similar fashion, you can alias your current module like

    defmodule User.Authentication do
      defstruct [:key, :token]

      alias __MODULE__, as: Auth

      .....
    end

In general, with out using alias __MODULE__ , we have to type full module name like %User.Authentication{key: "key", token: ".."} to define the struct but now simply %Auth{key: "key", token: ".."} will be the better approach.