Synchronizing Asynchronous Operations in GenServer with Elixir

The article discusses how to synchronize asynchronous operations in Elixir, especially when using GenServer. It starts with a brief introduction to Elixir’s message-passing model, emphasizing how most communication occurs asynchronously. The author provides an example with a WebSocket library, illustrating how to create a GenServer that manages this asynchronous process. The initial function, Coordinator.greet/2, simply sends a message and returns :ok, which does not align with the expected synchronous behavior. To resolve this, the author introduces GenServer.reply/2, showing how to store the caller's information and use it to reply once the asynchronous message is received, allowing for a more synchronous interaction. This makes the caller unaware of the underlying asynchronous complexity, providing a smoother API experience.