Introducing Elixir: Getting Started in Functional Programming

Elixir is an excellent language if you want to learn about functional programming, and with this hands-on introduction, you’ll discover just how powerful and fun Elixir can be. This language combines the robust functional programming of Erlang with a syntax similar to Ruby, and includes powerful features for metaprogramming.

This book shows you how to write simple Elixir programs by teaching one skill at a time. Once you pick up pattern matching, process-oriented programming, and other concepts, you’ll understand why Elixir makes it easier to build concurrent and resilient programs that scale up and down with ease.

• Get comfortable with IEx, Elixir’s command line interface
• Discover atoms, pattern matching, and guards: the foundations of your program structure
• Delve into the heart of Elixir with recursion, strings, lists, and higher-order functions
• Create processes, send messages among them, and apply pattern matching to incoming messages
• Store and manipulate structured data with Erlang Term Storage and the Mnesia database
• Build resilient applications with Erlang’s Open Telecom Platform
• Define macros with Elixir’s metaprogramming tools

Table of Contents

Chapter 1. Getting Comfortable
Chapter 2. Functions and Modules
Chapter 3. Atoms, Tuples, and Pattern Matching
Chapter 4. Logic and Recursion
Chapter 5. Communicating with Humans
Chapter 6. Lists
Chapter 7. Name-Value Pairs
Chapter 8. Higher-Order Functions and List Comprehensions
Chapter 9. Playing with Processes
Chapter 10. Exceptions, Errors, and Debugging
Chapter 11. Storing Structured Data
Chapter 12. Getting Started with OTP
Chapter 13. Using Macros to Extend Elixir

Appendix A. An Elixir Parts Catalog
Appendix B. Generating Documentation with ExDoc