Elixir, your Monolith and You

Elixir is great, so clearly we'll all rewrite our applications in Elixir. Mostly, you can't and shouldn't do that. This presentation will show you another path. You’ll see how at Liefery, we started with small steps instead of rewriting everything. This allowed us to reap the benefits earlier and get comfortable before getting deeper into it. We’ll examine in detail the tactics we used to create two Elixir apps for new requirements, and how we integrated them with our existing Rails code base.

Join us on our tale of adopting Elixir and Phoenix and see what we learned, what we loved, and what bumps we hit along the road

Transcript

1. Who wants to go and
   build a system in Elixir?
   

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5. Can't go out and
   rewrite it all
   

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6. You shouldn’t
   

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7. Elixir, your Monolith and You
   (alpha-1)
   Tobias Pfeiffer
   @PragTob
   pragtob.info
   

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8. Your Monolith and You
   

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10. Your Monolith now?
    

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11. Your Monolith?
    

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12. Tear it all down and
    rewrite it
    

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14. Sooooon!
    

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15. “We rewrote it all in
    Language x, now it’s 10
    times faster and only
    50% of the code!”
    Someone
    

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16. “Language x, is 10 times
    faster and requires 50% of
    the code of language Y!”
    Someone
    Often implies...
    

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17. What nobody tells you...
    

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18. Business Value?
    

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19. Sooooon!
    

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20. Replace it step by step
    

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21. We have a bedroom,
    for the bathroom please
    check out legacy!
    

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22. Terraform allows you to
    incrementally transform an
    older API into one powered by
    Phoenix - one endpoint at a
    time.
    poteto/terraform
    

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23. defmodule MyApp.Terraformers.Foo do
    alias MyApp.Clients.Foo
    use Plug.Router
    plug :match
    plug :dispatch
    get "/v1/hello-world", do: send_resp(conn, 200, "Hi")
    get _ do
    res = Foo.get!(conn)
    send_response({:ok, conn, res})
    end
    end
    poteto/terraform
    

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24. Replace a critical
    component
    

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25. Check out our sweet new
    heating system!
    

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26. Write a new component
    

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27. Check it out we built a
    brand new high tech
    entertainment facility!
    

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28. Write a new component
    Obvious in microservices
    

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29. “Is the technology I’m
    choosing the right fit for
    the problem I’m trying to
    solve?”
    Everyone, hopefully
    

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30. Reasonably separate and
    limited problem
    

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31. Requirement that poses a
    problem for the current
    stack
    

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32. Spark of Enthusiasm
    

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33. Courier Tracking
    

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34. Courier Tracking
    

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35. Courier Tracking
    

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36. Courier Tracking
    Websockets
    

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37. Courier Tracking
    Websockets
    Basic Knowledge
    

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38. How to make them talk?
    

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39. Monolith
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB
    

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40. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    

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41. Connect them?
    

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42. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    

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43. JSON
    Web
    Token
    

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44. Header
    Payload
    Signature
    

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45. {
    "role": "admin",
    "courier_ids": [1337, 55],
    "id": 42,
    "exp": 1520469475
    }
    

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46. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    Shared Secret
    

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47. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    JWT
    JWT
    Shared Secret
    

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48. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    JWT
    JWT
    JWT
    Shared Secret
    JWT
    

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49. def connect(%{"token" => token}, socket) do
    token
    |> JWT.verify_token
    |> respond_based_on_token_contents(socket)
    end
    Socket
    

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50. defp login_user(%{"role" => role, ...}, socket) do
    {:ok, assign(socket, :user, %{role: role, ...})}
    end
    Socket
    

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51. def join("courier:" <> courier_id, _, %
    {assigns: %{user: user}}) do
    if authorized?(courier_id, user) do
    # login
    else
    # unauthorizd
    end
    end
    Channel
    

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52. defp authorized?("", _), do: false
    defp authorized?(courier_id, %{courier_ids: ids}) do
    Enum.member?(ids, String.to_integer(courier_id))
    end
    defp authorized?(_, _), do: false
    Channel
    

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53. Monolith
    Tracking
    Frontend
    Courier
    DB DB
    Locations
    Locations
    Most of the time
    

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54. Fulfillment
    

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55. Fulfillment
    CRUD
    

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56. Fulfillment
    CRUD
    Experience
    

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57. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    

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58. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    Own UI
    

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59. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    OAuth
    OAuth
    

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60. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    /current_user
    Who?
    

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61. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    Products
    

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62. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    Order
    Valid?
    Order
    

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63. Monolith
    Fulfillment
    DB DB
    Packaging
    Create
    

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64. Rail-way oriented
    programming!
    

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65. Railway Oriented Programming
    

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66. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    

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67. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    Validate internally
    

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68. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    Validate externally
    

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69. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    Save
    

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70. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    Done
    

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71. defmodule Fulfillment.OrderCreation do
    def create(params, customer, auth) do
    with {:ok, order} <- validate_order(params, customer),
    {:ok, order} <- validate_in_backend(order, auth),
    {:ok, order} <- Repo.insert(order) do
    {:ok, order}
    else
    {:error, changeset} -> {:error, changeset}
    end
    end
    end
    Error
    

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72. No Kafka/Message Queue?
    

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73. Be careful with new
    technologies!
    

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74. Microservices!
    

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75. Microservices!
    ”Macroapplications”
    

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76. All challenges are
    clearly technical
    

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77. All challenges are
    clearly technical
    

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78. Stakeholders
    

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79. Your team
    

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80. First Major Version
    

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81. Get the others on board
    

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82. Workshops
    

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83. To know it,
    you got to build it
    

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85. Pair Adopter with Alchemist
    

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86. Pair Adopter with Alchemist
    Alchemist doesn’t touch keyboard
    

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87. Knowledge
    

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88. Knowledge
    

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89. “We are still using this
    like Rails – we should
    use GenServers!”
    Someone on your team
    

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90. You don’t need to kill
    your Monolith,
    Complement it
    

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91. Your Apps
    

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92. Enjoy using Elixir effectively to help
    your company
    Tobias Pfeiffer
    @PragTob
    pragtob.info
    

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