Gain insights into building scalable backend applications with Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix. Learn about persistent connections via Phoenix Channels, and explore distinct, decoupled application layers.

Functional Web Development with  Elixir, OTP and Phoenix by The Pragmatic Programmer_ .png

elixir_islands_test.tar.gz

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Elixir and OTP provide exceptional tools to build rock-solid backend applications that scale. In this course, you’ll build a web application in a radically different way, with a backend 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, you’ll start by building the business logic as a separate application, without Phoenix. You’ll model the application domain with Elixir functions and simple data structures.

In Part 2, you’ll add in the GenServer Behaviour to make managing in-memory state a breeze. 

In Part 3, you’ll build a web interface with Phoenix where you’ll use Phoenix Channels to establish persistent connections between the stateful server and a stateful front-end client.

Needless to say, you’re going to love this way of building web apps!

Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP and Phoenix

`GenServers` are everywhere in the Elixir code. Becoming proficient with `GenServer` is one of the best things you can do to level up as an Elixir developer. It will require some work on our part. We’ll need to learn how client functions, module functions, and callbacks work and interact.

In general, however, implementing a `GenServer` is pretty straightforward. We’ll get lots of practice, so we'll come out of it knowing our way around.

# `GenServer` module

Let’s begin with a new file in the lib directory called `lib/islands_engine/game.ex`. This defines a new module that will become our `GenServer`.



Let's define a public interface for the game server process.

Getting Started with GenServer

Introduction

Mapping Our Route

Model Data and Behavior

Working of State Machines

Add OTP for Concurrency and Fault Tolerance

Process Supervision for Recovery

Generate a New Web Interface with Phoenix

Create Persistent Connections with Phoenix Channels

Appendix

Getting Started with GenServer