jaeyson

jaeyson

When to use async and sync code in Elixir?

Sorry for the very vague noob question, I really want to ask this:

When do we use async or sync code in the context of Elixir? AFAIK genserver call is synchronous which is blocking code. Do you have a real example or when do you decide which one to use? I’ve read these article When should I use asynchronous code in JavaScript? – Nico Zerpa, Your JavaScript Friend, but I haven’t found a good example when it is better to use sync over async and vice versa. Any help/enlightenment is greatly appreciated :pray:.

Most Liked

Maartz

Maartz

Hey! That’s a very good question.
I’ve found this post from elixirforum very interesting.

If it doesn’t answer your question, it should give you some clues to decide whether when you should use sync or async.
Hope it will help.

dewetblomerus

dewetblomerus

Great question @jaeyson

Sync Example

Imagine you want to read data from a source data store and write it to a destination data store. The requirements are not real-time. As long as the data arrives within 24 hours, everyone is happy.

Imagine the source data store will happily let you read 100,000 records per second.

Imagine the source data is bursty. Once per hour 1000,000 records show up in a few seconds and then nothing for the rest of the hour. And imagine the destination data store slows down when you make concurrent writes and it can’t handle batches larger than 1000 without spending much more money and re-architecture.

You can have a single Genserver responsible for writing to the destination.

Your code that consumes from the source data does not need to know anything about rate limiting or slowing down because it will receive back-pressure from the Genserver every time it tries to use call, which will block the process until it is done writing the batch to the destination.

Async example

Imagine you need to make 5 API requests and present a combination of all the data to the user. You could use Task.async to make all 5 requests, and after that, Task.await all of them.

If the Sync example is too slow

If you started with the sync example and you realize that you need to process faster, Elixir has a very deep toolbox for speeding things up by using an unbounded or configurable number of processes.

OvermindDL1

OvermindDL1

Something more simple:

Call a sync function when you want to wait on the result before doing more.

Call an async function when you want to do the call, do other stuff, then handle the result later, or if you don’t care about the result at all.

Where Next?

Popular Backend topics Top

New
AstonJ
Which server-side languages are you most interested in right now? Anything new or relatively new that’s caught your eye? Maybe an older l...
New
AstonJ
Currently a hot topic in the BEAM world, let’s start a thread for it (as suggested by @crowdhailer here) :smiley: What are your current...
New
New
New
New
mafinar
So I was thinking of trying out Crystal, I had tried it multiple times but left it midway. Now that there’s a book on it and it’s version...
New
AstonJ
And the blog: Rails has been unapologetically full stack since the beginning. We’ve continuously sought to include ever-more default an...
New
jaeyson
Hi all!, anybody tried this Elixir quiz from @Tetiana? She’s the one who made Elixircards.
New
apoorv-2204
I’m experimenting with Hexagonal / Clean Architecture in Elixir. The classic Behaviour + Impl split works great for mocking and isolating...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
What chair do you have while working… and why? Is there a ‘best’ type of chair or working position for developers?
New
Exadra37
I am asking for any distro that only has the bare-bones to be able to get a shell in the server and then just install the packages as we ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Learn different ways of writing concurrent code in Elixir and increase your application's performance, without sacrificing scalability or...
New
New
AstonJ
If you get Can't find emacs in your PATH when trying to install Doom Emacs on your Mac you… just… need to install Emacs first! :lol: bre...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight: VM Brasseur @vmbrasseur We have a treat for you today! We turn the spotlight onto Open Source as we sit down with V...
New
New
sir.laksmana_wenk
I’m able to do the “artistic” part of game-development; character designing/modeling, music, environment modeling, etc. However, I don’t...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Get the comprehensive, insider information you need for Rails 8 with the new edition of this award-winning classic. Sam Ruby @rubys ...
New