liebus

liebus

Help add "message history" & "participants" to simple Chat Room with GenServer

Hi. I am learning Elixir recently, decided to make a small simple pet project “Chat Room” to learn some OTP.
The general points:
Need to create a gen_server which will have a state which

  • store last 100 messages
  • have a list of chat room participants (using join/leave functions)
  • Send message which stores in last 100 messages history AND broadcasts message to a chat room members (using PID, of course)
  • Add a monitor by chat room on participants PID to handle room leave when client process dies.

I used the via_tuple example I found. At this point, I can create a chatroom and messages in it. Now the main problem for me, due to lack of experience, is how to create a structure to store message history, members and replace this inside the GenServer so that I can do join/leave inside the room.

I would like at least some example of implementation and I will pick up from there.

This is my code for now:
server.ex

Summary
defmodule Chat.Server do
  use GenServer

  # Client API
  def start_link(name) do 
    GenServer.start_link(__MODULE__, [], name: via_tuple(name))
  end

  def add_message(room_name, message) do 
    GenServer.cast(via_tuple(room_name), {:add_message, message})
  end
  def get_messages(room_name) do 
    GenServer.call(via_tuple(room_name), :get_messages)
  end

  defp via_tuple (room_name) do
    {:via, Chat.Registry, {:chat_room, room_name}}
  end

  # SERVER
  @impl true
  def init(messages) do 
    {:ok, messages} 
  end

  @impl true
  def handle_cast({:add_message, new_message}, messages) do 
    {:noreply, [new_message | messages]} 
  end

  @impl true
  def handle_call(:get_messages, _from, messages) do 
    {:reply, messages, messages} 
  end
end

supervisor.ex

Summary
defmodule Chat.Supervisor do
  use DynamicSupervisor

  def start_link do
    DynamicSupervisor.start_link(__MODULE__, [], name: :chat_supervisor)
  end

  def start_room(name) do
    spec = %{id: Chat.Server, start: {Chat.Server, :start_link, [name]}}
    DynamicSupervisor.start_child(:chat_supervisor, spec)
  end

  def init(_) do
    DynamicSupervisor.init(
      strategy: :one_for_one,
      extra_arguments: []
    )
  end
end

registry.ex

Summary
defmodule Chat.Registry do

  use GenServer

  # API

  def start_link do
    # register our registry, with a simple name,
    # just so to reference it in the other functions.
    GenServer.start_link(__MODULE__, nil, name: :registry)
  end

  def whereis_name(room_name) do
    GenServer.call(:registry, {:whereis_name, room_name})
  end

  def register_name(room_name, pid) do
    GenServer.call(:registry, {:register_name, room_name, pid})
  end

  def unregister_name(room_name) do
    GenServer.cast(:registry, {:unregister_name, room_name})
  end

  def send(room_name, message) do
    # If we try to send a message to a process
    # that is not registered, we return a tuple in the format
    # {:badarg, {process_name, error_message}}.
    # Otherwise, we just forward the message to the pid of this room.
    case whereis_name(room_name) do
      :undefined ->
        {:badarg, {room_name, message}}

      pid ->
        Kernel.send(pid, message)
        pid
    end
  end

  # SERVER

  def init(_) do
    {:ok, Map.new}
  end

  def handle_call({:whereis_name, room_name}, _from, state) do
    {:reply, Map.get(state, room_name, :undefined), state}
  end

  def handle_call({:register_name, room_name, pid}, _from, state) do
    case Map.get(state, room_name) do
      nil ->
        # When a new process is registered, we start monitoring it
        Process.monitor(pid)
        {:reply, :yes, Map.put(state, room_name, pid)}

      _ ->
        {:reply, :no, state}
    end
  end

  def handle_info({:DOWN, _, :process, pid, _}, state) do
    # When a monitored process dies, we will receive a `:DOWN` message
    # that we can use to remove the dead pid from our registry
    {:noreply, remove_pid(state, pid)}
  end

  def remove_pid(state, pid_to_remove) do
    # And here we just filter out the dead pid
    remove = fn {_key, pid} -> pid  != pid_to_remove end
    Enum.filter(state, remove) |> Enum.into(%{})
  end
end

Where Next?

Popular in Questions Top

bsollish-terakeet
Credo is smart enough to check for (something like) this: assert length(the_list) == 0 with this response: Checking if an enum is empt...
New
JorisKok
I have a server on AWS, and was running a load test using artillery. When looking at the Phoenix dashboard I see the Ports going to 100% ...
New
jerry
Good day to you all. I have been struggling to get a query involving like and ilike to work. Can anyone assist me on this, please? pro...
New
polypush135
As many of you may have realized by now (sorry for all the posts here) I’ve been working on a db problem where I’m trying to aggregate a ...
New
freewebwithme
Using vs code and installed ElixirLS: support and debugger. And I got an error popped up on start up says Failed to run ‘elixir’ comma...
New
chensan
I have a User schema with a :from_id field set to type :string: defmodule TweetBot.Repo.Migrations.CreateUsers do use Ecto.Migration ...
New
chewm
Hi guys, nice to meet you to the whole forum, I’m new here, I’m trying to configure visual studio code for elixir, right now the intellis...
New
belgoros
I’m not a pro in using Regex and can’t figure out why the following behaviour happens, especially if we take into account the difference ...
New
jc00ke
Expanding on this topic: https://forum.elixirforum.net/t/map-typespec-question/19217 Let’s say I have a map with required and optional k...
New
lanycrost
Hi everyone! I need implement if…else if…else condition from my elixir code, and anymore of this control flow structures not work proper...
New

Other popular topics Top

aalberti333
As the title describes, I’m trying to run Enum.map() over a list of key/value pairs, where the value is a map. My data looks like this: ...
New
sergio_101
I am VERY much an elixir newbie. I have taken one elixir course and one phoenix course on Udemy. During that course, I saw the instructor...
New
nsuchy
Hi. I’ve noticed that Windows Powershell has it’s own IEX command and you cannot access Elixir’s IEX due to the conflict. This isn’t a cr...
New
stefanchrobot
What’s the safe way to decode a JSON string into a struct? I want to avoid calling String.to_atom. Jason.decode can give me a map with st...
New
chrismccord
As promised, the first release candidate of Phoenix 1.3.0 is out! This release focuses on code generators with improved project structure...
New
aadeshere1
I have a another noob question about loop. Since elixir is immutable, while loop is not directly possible. total = 10 while total != 0 ...
New
rms.mrcs
Hi, I need to transform a list of numbers into a map where the keys are the indexes and the values are the original values of the list....
New
skosch
To my knowledge, put_in, Map.update etc. all have the one limitation of not automatically creating intermediate keys when needed (for exa...
New
lucidguppy
I have a super simple question about elixir - how would I take a file like this foo bar baz and output a new file that enumerates th...
New
AstonJ
We’ve put together this wiki for Phoenix LiveView - please feel free to add any info you feel is worth including. What is Phoenix LiveV...
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement