September 21, 2023

Creating and Managing Distributed Elixir Tasks on Fly.io

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Creating and Managing Distributed Elixir Tasks on Fly.io

Source: fly.io

Jason Stiebs introduces Fly.io as a platform ideally suited for running Phoenix applications globally. He explains the process of scaling applications to multiple machines distributed around the world, including how to start a machine, execute arbitrary code on it, and communicate with it as if it was local. The integration relies on Elixir and the BEAM Virtual Machine and requires only one external dependency, the HTTP Client, Req. By setting up clustering with the application on Fly.io, any node can communicate with any other node without additional configuration. Then, with an HTTP request — for which Jason provides a detailed code example — a new machine can be created and programmed to run a given task, such as processing big data, and report the results back. He emphasizes the beauty of distribution in the Elixir world, where data serialization, network encryption, and communication are handled seamlessly. Jason points out the typical components needed in other environments to achieve this, highlighting how Elixir on Fly.io simplifies the process and offers powerful features 'for free' because of the setup between BEAM and Fly.io. He also hints at an upcoming library intended to simplify this process further, akin to using Task.async in Elixir.

Understanding Set-Theoretic Types and Strong Arrows in Elixir's Gradual Typing

José Valim expands on the topic of gradual set-theoretic typing and discusses how the proposed type system will tackle gradual typing and how it relates to set-theoretic types, with the goal of providing an introduction to the ideas presented in their paper.

Sep 20, 2023

Improving Elixir Test Suites with Custom Tricks

Testing in Elixir is pretty great. ExUnit, combined with the functional nature of Elixir, makes it very easy to test almost everything in your codebase. However, it is very easy for boilerplate to creep into your tests. Common setup patterns, similar assertions, and more can quickly make your test suite feel cumbersome.

Jun 21, 2023

Exploring Elixir's Process Restart Strategies

Herminio Torres explains the importance of process restart strategies in Elixir and how they ensure system reliability and resilience.

Sep 19, 2023