What this book covers

Chapter 1, Command Line, introduces Interactive Elixir (IEx), which is a command line tool that allows us to execute and evaluate code. This chapter also introduces Mix, which is an Elixir tool to create and manage projects.

Chapter 2, Data Types and Structures, focuses on some concepts of the language: immutability, pattern matching, and lazy evaluation.

Chapter 3, Strings and Binaries, shows us how to manipulate strings in Elixir.

Chapter 4, Modules and Functions, focuses on the building blocks of Elixir applications, from module directives to pattern matching in function definitions.

Chapter 5, Processes and Nodes, shows you that spawning multiple processes to perform asynchronous computations or connecting multiple machines and executing code on any of them is not as hard as it seems. Elixir makes the task easier, and we explore specific examples.

Chapter 6, OTP – Open Telecom Platform, talks about OTP, which is a systematization of common programming concepts. It allows us to develop large-scale systems on a solid foundation. In this chapter, we will explore some of its constructs.

Chapter 7, Cowboy and Phoenix, is all about the Web! It discusses a range of topics, from serving static files to implementing websockets, or using a fully-featured web framework.

Chapter 8, Interactions, interacts with our host operating system and talks about external systems such as Postgresql or Redis. We will also build a Twitter feed parser.

Appendix, Installation and Further Reading, covers references for installing Elixir, Redis, and PostgreSQL, as well as for further reading.