Who Should Take this Course and Why?

Learning objectives

In this course, we’ll learn:

• How to use a layer-based approach in designing Elixir applications.

• How to make Elixir mix projects.

• The different datatypes used in Elixir and their pros and cons. This will aid us in making important decisions later on.

• How to use OTP GenServers.

• Good coding practices that will make it easier for us to create and use our project.

• Testing techniques that will be used to test some of the layers of our project.

Contents

We’ll go through the following phases in order:

• Look at an overview of the six layers we’ll be using to build our main project.

• Create a small mix project which demonstrates the behavior of a simple counter. It will contain only three of the six layers to give us an idea of how different layers work.

• Discuss the following datatypes used in Elixir:

  • Primitive types

  • List

  • Stream

  • Map and Struct

  • String

  • Tuple

  • Function

• Learn about the data layer and the properties of functional languages.

• Create our second mix project, which will simulate the behavior of a user giving online quizzes.

• Identify the main data that will track the user giving the quiz, and use structs to store this data in the project.

• Create the functional core layer of this project which consists of functions to utilize the data defined previously in the data layer.

• Learn the following techniques when writing functions:

  • How to use appropriate names for our functions.

  • How to break down our code into several small functions which perform one specific task.

  • Learn about abstractions in code.

• Test our functional core using ExUnit, a unit testing library in Elixir.

• Create a boundary layer to make our two GenserServers for storing and taking quizzes.

• Create a lifecycle layer that will use dynamic supervisors to create and handle processes in our quiz. This will allow multiple users to give the quiz concurrently, each with a different process.

• Learn how to use dependencies, concurrency, and how to pool resources together. These techniques can aid in creating our worker layer.

• Build a third GenServer, which makes our quizzes timed.

• Learn how to make a poncho project to manage different dependencies.

• Create a Postgres table to store the user’s responses.

• Get some insight on how to integrate our application into existing frameworks, including:

  • Phoenix Channels

  • LiveView

  • Scenic projects

• Test our boundary layer using the same ExUnit library.

Prerequisites

This course requires a working knowledge of Elixir, including the following concepts:

• mix projects

• OTP GenServers

• Supervisors and processes

Requirements

The mix projects we’ll build in the application use the following:

• Elixir: 1.12.2

• Postgresql database

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