fireproofsocks

fireproofsocks

This isn’t a Phoenix question per se, it’s more of a general Elixir how to, but I would like to run some extra code when I first start up my Phoenix application. Specifically, I would like to warm up the cache with entries that are persisted in the database (e.g. session data). There might also be some ad hoc things to do on startup like ping a web URL for notification purposes etc. Where is a valid place to put code like that? Should that all go inside the Application start/2 function?

Thanks for any tips!

First Post!

hauleth

hauleth

You can run them in start/2, you can define one-shot Task in default supervisor. In other words - it depends.

For example if this is a cache it doesn’t seem to be highly critical at startup (just if something will require that data before warming up cache it will last a little bit longer) then you can run GenServer/Task that will fill that data and add it to your supervisor before Endpoint, so it is highly probable that it will run before first request came.

Most Liked

fireproofsocks

fireproofsocks OP

In my case, sessions are in the database for analytics and persistence purposes, but from the point of view of the front-end, the only place that gets queried is in cache. It would be possible to have a fallback mechanism that would fall-back to a database lookup on cache miss, but I want to avoid doing that because doing that would open up some vulnerabilities to overloading the database.

Perhaps something like this would have the desired effect:

defmodule MyApp.Application do
  alias MyApp.Contexts.MyContext
  use Application

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

    :ok = MyContext.warm_up_cache()
    
    children = [
      supervisor(MyApp.Repo, []),
    ]
    
    opts = [strategy: :one_for_one, name: MyApp.Supervisor]
    Supervisor.start_link(children, opts)
  end
end
sdr

sdr

Application.start_phase looks like another option.

Docs are a little light but the Erlang docs go into greater detail.

Where Next? Top

Trending in Questions Top

RSP87
I’m working on a project that simulates the bumbl example in the programming phoenix book. It acts almost like an email client. We have a...
New
kpanic
Hi everyone, I am toying with the idea of building a “match maker” for giving personal help to people that wants to start coding. I sta...
New
nseaSeb
Hello, I know there is an approach for handling lists that allows for optimized traversal, but I can’t recall the specific method (somet...
New
brecabral
Documentation While reading the Scoped Routes section, I noticed that the documentation currently refers to a problem without explainin...
New
velrest
So my question is quite simple and i have found no conclusive answer on forum, google or AI. Should we use :erlang.float for Integer to ...
New
asweet-confluent
I recently noticed that Elixir’s Logger defaults its primary log level to :debug when no :logger, :level application configuration is pre...
New
apz
I’m new to elixir and just tried to install the elixirLS extension for VScode(ium) and it is throwing some errors that I would like help ...
New

Other Trending Topics Top

GenericJam
Edit: 2026 May 15 - This post is archived. Mob is alive!! Main docs: mob v0.7.11 — Documentation A bit of explanation for the slightly c...
New
JesseHerrick
Hey, I’m Jesse and I’m the main contributor behind Dexter, a full-featured, lightning-fast Elixir LSP optimized for large codebases. It s...
New
mudasobwa
I am happy to introduce the very α version of the new programming language compiled to BEAM. Welcome Cure. It has literally three kille...
New
marciok
Hi there! We created Gust: A task orchestrator inspired by Airflow. For those who have never heard about Aiflow, it’s a Python-based wor...
New
mhanberg
Hi everyone! The first release candidate for the Expert language server project is now available! We’ve published a press release detai...
New
jimsynz
Beam Bots (or just BB for short) is a framework for building fault-tolerant robotics applications in Elixir using familiar OTP patterns. ...
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement

Options

Thread Display Mode




Thread Preview

Skip Thread Previews