CODEWITHSUNDEEP
elixirerlang-otp
Venkat D.
Venkat D.

Reputation: 3029

Single application-wide process to be accessed by child processes

I'm writing an Elixir application where some of the processes that access the database will be generating unique identifiers for records that get inserted.

I'm using the CUID library which will let me generate an id in the following way:

{:ok, pid} = Cuid.start_link
Cuid.generate(pid)  # => ch72gsb320000udocl363eofy

Here is how my app is setup

Creating a new Cuid process each time feels wrong to me, especially considering that the Cuid lib maintains a counter in its state.

How can different processes within my application send Cuid.generate to the same process?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 2

Views: 336

Answers (2)

Jason Harrelson
Jason Harrelson

Reputation: 2693

You could start it up as a supervised and registered worker in your application:

defmodule MyApp do
  use Application

  def start(_type, _args) do
    import Supervisor.Spec, warn: false

    children = [
      # Start the endpoint when the application starts
      supervisor(MyApp.Endpoint, []),
      # Start the Ecto repository
      worker(MyApp.Repo, []),
      worker(Cuid, [], [name: :cuid])
    ]

    opts = [strategy: :one_for_one, name: MyApp.Supervisor]
    Supervisor.start_link(children, opts)
  end

  ...
end

And then use it in your application like:

cuid = Cuid.generate(:cuid)

Upvotes: 5

tkowal
tkowal

Reputation: 9299

You can register your process:

Process.register(pid, :cuid_process)

This way it becomes available to all processes in the entire system. Usually you can use the atom under which process is registered in all places that take regular pid, so you can try:

Cuid.generate(:cuid_process)

Upvotes: 2

Related Questions