Using tasks to perform multiple concurrent computations
In this recipe, we will build a simple geolocation app that receives a list of IP addresses and outputs the country where the IP is registered. We will use Elixir's Task module to spawn one process per IP address in the list. The determination of the location will be performed concurrently.
The Task module in Elixir provides a simple abstraction for the use of processes with the purpose of performing one action during their life cycle. Normally, tasks are used when there is no need to perform communication between processes, and are a very powerful tool to help parallelize computation.
Getting ready
We will generate a Mix application, add the geolix application as a dependency, and also download a free IP database and configure the application to use it. We will also create two functions to geolocate the IPs: one sequential and another concurrent.
Let's get started:
Generate a Mix application:
> mix new geolocation_with_tasks --sup *...
