Managing Persistent Connections Using gen_statem in Elixir

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Managing Persistent Connections Using gen_statem in Elixir
Andrea Leopardi illustrates how Elixir's gen_statem behavior can be employed to create a process that maintains a persistent TCP connection with an external database, acting as a connection manager. The process is designed to be resilient and will remain active and attempt reconnection in case the external TCP connection fails, which reflects the philosophy of Erlang and Elixir where systems are built to be fault-tolerant and self-healing. The article also explains the transition from previous implementations using the 'connection' library to gen_statem, the advantages of asynchronous connections, and introduces the concept of state machines using gen_statem. It covers the basics of implementing a connection manager that can handle transitions between connected and disconnected states, manage client requests, and handle errors. Additionally, Leopardi demonstrates how to add timeouts to implement back-offs for reconnecting after failures and concludes with advanced concepts like dynamic state and handling event functions in gen_statem.

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