Latest Blog Posts

• Using Recursive Functions for Ecto Query Building

  Composability is the name of the game when it comes to writing Ecto queries. With such a beautifully designed DSL given to us, we should make full use of its design to build our queries. A Brief on Recursive Functions Recursive functions are functions that call themselves. There is the risk of functions becoming infinite loops if they are not given exit conditions. Here's an example: def eat(food) when food == "biscuits" do eat(food, "water") end def eat(food) do eat(food, nil) end # return the final digestable result def eat(food, drink) do {food, drink} end In the example, we keep calling the eat function until we end up with a digestable form of input, a food input and drink.

  Sep 16, 2020 Read more...

• Doing Bulk Insertions with Embedded Schemas with Ecto.Repo.insert_all

  You can perform bulk insertions for records that contain embedded schemas by doing the following: alias MyApp.MyEmbed alias MyApp.MyMainSchema # multiple_attrs is a list of map attrs that we want to insert def bulk_create(multiple_attrs) do multiple_attrs = Enum.map(multiple_attrs, fn attrs -> attrs # put timestamps, since they are not auto-generated for us |> Map.put(:inserted_at, NaiveDateTime.utc_now() |> NaiveDateTime.truncate(:second)) |> Map.put(:updated_at, NaiveDateTime.utc_now() |> NaiveDateTime.truncate(:second)) # This will pipe the attributes into the anonymous function # we will do embed-specific operations here |> (fn attrs -> # This creates a struct of MyEmbed on the key :my_embed %{attrs | my_embed: struct(MyEmbed, attrs.

  May 31, 2020 Read more...

• Using Python's Invoke for Simple GitFlow Release Automation

  While developing PillowSkin, I have become used to the habit of creating small releases. This resulted in me always having to repetitively write the commands git checkout master, then git merge develop, then git tag… It does get old after a while when your total release count gets into the hundreds (PillowSkin is at ~180 versions at this point in writing). However, with the power of Python scripting, we can do a little bit of scripting to save us countless cumulative hours of googling for the right commands to type.

  May 18, 2020 Read more...