Elixir Mix is a weekly show focused on the Elixir programming community. Our panel discusses topics around functional programming, the Elixir ecosystem, and building real world apps with Elixir based tools and frameworks.
Episode 32: EMx 032: Using Ecto with Edgar Pino
Panel:
- Mark Ericksen
- Josh Adams
Special Guest: Edgar Pino
In this episode of Elixir Mix, the panel talks with Edgar Pino who talks with the panel about the latest version of Ecto! They discuss Ecto’s new features and how easy of a transition it was to go from the previous to the newest version. Edgar Pino is a software engineer who currently resides in Utah! Check out today’s episode!
Show Topics:
0:00 – Advertisement: Get A Coder Job!
1:04 – Mark: Hello! Please give us your background?
1:16 – Guest: I have been in Elixir for the past year or two and I have been living in Utah.
1:48 – Mark: I love the nature and state parks. Winter is coming, so I hope you are ready!
1:58 – Guest: Winter...hopefully it will be great!
2:20 – Panelists and guest go back-and-forth.
2:30 – Mark: Let’s talk about your blog posts about Ecto. What are your new announcements?
2:52 – Guest: Our new version was released a few weeks ago.
3:32 – Panel.
3:38 – The guest talks about the old and new versions of Ecto.
4:03 – Panel: What is new and how is this going to affect me (the new version)?
4:11 – Panel: The transition was pretty painless for me. The only change was the breaking-up of the adapter ad also the timestamp bit. That was it.
4:34 – Panel: Yeah that micro-timestamp surprised me for a second, but it wasn’t that bad after all.
4:52 – Guest: Yeah it was painless for me, too.
5:19 – Panel: Edgar can you talk about the change and what they did with the timestamps?
5:32 – The guest answers the question.
5:54 – Panel: Elm opted to use the micro-millisecond, too. Time zones aren’t a thing.
6:24 – Mark.
7:08 – Panel: My tests are the only reason why I care about the millisecond.
7:21 – Mark: With the upgrade don’t do what I did.
Mark talks about how he updated and the issues he had.
8:47 – Guest: Pattern matching?
8:53 – Mark: Yep that sort of stuff. I didn’t need to do it and it was a learning experience. Edgar, please give us an introduction to the blog posts? Why did you want to document it?
9:18 – Guest: I always used Ecto with Phoenix but started learning Ecto by itself. I jotted down notes that I thought was interesting. That’s how it started.
10:17 – Mark: See links in the show notes. Using a gen to use the repo – this is one thing that I didn’t know was an option.
10:46 – Guest.
11:01 – Mark asks a question.
11:10 – Guest: Not really PHP applications but listening to web messages and hot topics but you are doing the database and serving data...
11:40 – Guest talks about Ecto and the different versions and features.
12:09 – Mark chimes-in.
12:23 – Panel: Yep – it’s under the hood and it’s for business logic and doesn’t have a web piece. Stop writing tings for the web – it’s a fad.
12:50 – Mark: It’s an umbrella and saw this through the Phoenix generators.
13:54 – Guest talks about web applications.
14:06 – Mark: Let’s talk about schema and databases?
14:23 – Panelist chimes-in.
14:51 – Panelists and guest talk about schemas, apps, and more. Check it out here.
16:13 – Guest: You will get the data and pass it in as a structure and...
16:23 – Mark: Here is a map of what I’d like you to do on my behalf. It goes to a chain set and I will turn it into a string and this is why it’s failed.
17:25 – Panel.
17:31 – Mark: It’s not hard and it’s pretty easy. Let’s talk about blog posts.
18:10 – Panel.
18:22 – Mark: I use Absinthe in the library in Elixir to support GraphQL.
18:50 – Panel.
19:06 – Guest: The total number of results and only once did I need a more complicated thing.
19:34 – Mark: I haven’t had a need for those.
20:01 – Panelists and guests talk about the hypothetical situations where and how they would use certain features for said situations.
20:23 – Guest: You don’t have to understand right out-of-the-box.
20:40 – Panel: Have you used stored functions as meta-columns in an Ecto schema?
20:48 – Panelist explains.
21:24 – Guest: I have used them in the past and now I don’t. For me it was hard to debug – maybe it’s just me.
21:43 – Panel: I was introduced to them through a colleague of mine.
21:53 – Mark chimes-in and talks about him being a DOT NET developer.
22:18 – Panelist chime-in, too!
22:50 – Mark.
23:16 – Panel: It was an awful time and not a good idea. 70 pages! Debugging it was hard.
23:35 – Mark: That experience was apart of that burn that I had before. I wanted to stay far away from it as far as I could.
24:00 – Panel: When I was doing it in DOT NET we didn’t have migrations.
24:12 – Panelist continues.
24:32 – Guest: I wonder if...
24:37 – Panel: It’s just a sequel – it’s not just an Ecto specific feature.
24:48 – Guest.
24:53 – FreshBooks!
26:01 – Mark: Edgar you were interested also in HOW Ecto was built. What experience did you have?
26:21 – Guest answers the question.
28:22 – Panel: No you typed REPO there.
28:30 – Guest: Whenever you save or make an update it’s a method. Unlike Ecto you have to all it something else.
28:47 – Panel: Hey let me get those article posted and someone did it in Loop and that is a lot of queries.
29:03 – Guest: Yeah that’s a good point.
29:45 – Mark: Something I’ve noticed is that they talk about performance improvements and better memory usage. Go read about it- it’s great. They talk about HOW Ecto is working and what is behind the scenes.
31:15 – Mark: Another feature that I have seen is UPSERTS.
31:50 – Guest talks about UPSERTS, too.
32:34 – Mark: Say I have a system that has 3 servers and it’s rolling updates (it will take down one and put up the new code, etc. and it will cycle) one thing they added was a lock on the migration table. I don’t know if you’ve had this – once it hits production data it is slow.
Mark continues.
33:20 – Panel: I think it was just luck of the draw.
33:30 – Mark continues.
33:57 – The guest talks about his experience with the above-mentioned scenario.
34:20 – Mark: I like that you both have had goo experiences with your upgrades. I want people to be excited and know that there are great features out there.
34:49 – Guest: Yes, I have found that the blog post is helpful. It’s good to get adapted to the new changes.
35:17 – Panel: Yeah I normally don’t have teasers up to the actual upgrade.
35:28 – Panel: The community is nice and people made a good effort to communicate and help people. They did a GOOD job of helping people to feel comfortable within the transition from one version to the next!
41:37 – Ad: Lootcrate.com
END – CacheFly!
Links:
- Ruby
- Elixir
- Elixir: GenServer
- GenServers
- Elm
- JavaScript
- Visual Studio Code
- React
- Edgar Pino
- A sneak peek at Ecto 3
- Ecto
- Active Record Pattern
- Repository
Sponsors:
Picks:
Mark
Josh
Guest
- Ecto Documentation!
- Edgar Pino – My blog!