The Little Elixir & OTP Guidebook

Book excerpt: 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