HomeCoursesFunctional Web Development with Elixir, OTP and Phoenix

4.6

Intermediate

48h

Updated 1 month ago

Functional Web Development with Elixir, OTP and Phoenix

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.

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Overview

Content

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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!

Elixir and OTP provide exceptional tools to build rock-solid backend applications that scale. In this course, you’ll build a web...Show More

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

Learn to build an Elixir web application with a purely functional finite state machine.

Master OTP Behaviours and get the confidence to use OTP in any application.

Learn to use OTP to provide concurrency, parallelism, and fault tolerance.

Learn to create and track stateful, persistent connections using Phoenix channels and Presence.

Learn to build a web interface with Phoenix.

Learn to build an Elixir web application with a purely functional finite state machine.

Content

90 Lessons6 Quizzes

Introduction

2 Lessons

Get familiar with leveraging Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix for elegant, maintainable web development.

Background

About This Course

Mapping Our Route

2 Lessons

Solve challenges with Elixir’s concurrency and Phoenix Channels for stateful web applications.

Explore the Route

What Lies Ahead?

Model Data and Behavior

12 Lessons

Master the steps to model game logic and domain entities in Elixir application development.

Define the Functional Core in Elixir

Start the Game

Discover the Entities and Model the Domain

Working of State Machines

12 Lessons

Break down the steps to managing state with state machines in Elixir applications.

Manage the State with a State Machine

A History of State

A Different Path

A Functional State Machine for Islands

Module and Functions

The Initialized State

Add OTP for Concurrency and Fault Tolerance

17 Lessons

Take a closer look at using GenServer and OTP for efficient concurrency and fault tolerance.

Wrap It Up in a GenServer

A Look at Microservices

OTP Solutions

GenServer and Application

Getting Started with GenServer

The GenServer Pattern

Passing Messages

Introduce Calls and Casts

Initialize the GenServer State

Customize GenServer Behavior

Name GenServer Processes

Wrapping Up

Quiz

Process Supervision for Recovery

18 Lessons

Focus on process supervision's role in error recovery and system reliability in Elixir.

Introduction

Linking Processes in Supervision

Long-running Processes

Link Processes

Introduce the Supervisor's Behavior

Conditions of Child Processes in Supervision

The Child Specification

Build a Supervisor for the Game

Start the Supervision Tree

Start and Stop Child Processes

Set Timeouts

Put the Pieces Together

Recover the State After a Crash

Get Started with ETS

Store and Retrieve the Game State

Cleaning Up After a Game

Wrapping Up

Quiz

Generate a New Web Interface with Phoenix

10 Lessons

Practice using Phoenix to create modular web interfaces with decoupled business logic.

Add a Web Interface with Phoenix

Phoenix Is Not Your Application

Applications

Manage Dependencies

Start and Stop Applications

Generate a New Phoenix Application

Add a New Dependency

Call the Logic from the Interface

Wrapping Up

Quiz

Create Persistent Connections with Phoenix Channels

16 Lessons

Learn how to use Phoenix Channels for real-time, scalable communication in web applications.

Phoenix Channels

The Moving Parts of a Channel

Let’s Build It

Define a New Module

Establish a Client Connection

Converse Over a Channel

Communication Between Players

Connect the Channel to the Game

Add a Second Player

Position the Islands

Set the Islands

Guess the Coordinates

Visualizing Live Streaming Data with Elixir, Kafka, and Chart.js

Project

Appendix

1 Lessons

Get started with installing essential system dependencies for Elixir, OTP, and Phoenix development.

Install the System Dependencies

Certificate of Completion

Showcase your accomplishment by sharing your certificate of completion.

Course Author:

The Pragmatic Programmers

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