Nested conditionals

In principle, there is nothing wrong with if statements. However, you could probably leverage pattern matching to simplify your code.

If you only have a handful of protocols, you could do something like this:

def full_route("http://" <> url), do: "http://" <> url
def full_route("https://" <> url), do: "https://" <> url
def full_route("/" <> path), do: do_full_route(path)
def full_route(path), do: do_full_route(path)

defp do_full_route(path), do: Application.get_env(:my_app, :url) <> "/" <> str

Alternatively, something like the following would also work:

def full_route(url), do: do_full_route(url, has_protocol?(url)

defp do_full_route(url, has_protocol?)
defp do_full_route(url, true), do: url
defp do_full_route(path, _) do
  Application.get_env(:my_app, :url)
  |> URI.merge(path)
  |> URI.to_string()
end

As you see, the possibilities are endless

Wow, I didn’t think pattern matching could be a solution here. Now I see. Thanks for the help

Your example as cond:

def full_route(str) do
  cond do
    has_protocol?(str) -> str
    String.starts_with?(str, "/") -> Application.get_env(:my_app, :url) <> str
    true -> Application.get_env(:my_app, :url) <> "/" <> str
  end
end

Although this pattern breaks down a bit when you have many branches ‘inside’ of many branches. ^.^;

Also see this thread:

Thanks for the help. cond seems to fit better in this example. I’ll definetly read the thread, thanks

Just to make sure we are using the correct terminology. There are no statements in elixir, only expressions.

The important difference is, that a statement does not return anything while the expression does.