fireproofsocks

fireproofsocks

I’m working to document a large Elixir project and I’ve noticed that the Ecto schemas do not provide detailed types for their structs.

The best I’ve come up with is to include

@type t :: %__MODULE__{}

inside my Ecto schema modules. This at least causes the shape of the struct to show up in the docs, but it’s not what I would consider “polished”. In the generated ExDoc pages, the type includes the __meta__ attribute (which is confusing to any onlooker unfamiliar with Elixir) and all the values are represented with the term() catch-all:

@type t() :: %MyEctoSchema{
  __meta__: term(),
  foo: term(),
  bar: term(),
  # ...

The source-code says “Generating typespecs for schemas is out of the scope of Ecto.Schema” and that “t/0 has to be defined manually”… but when I tried manually adding my struct fields (in the way I would if this were a normal non-Ecto struct), my definitions all seem to be ignored regardless – it seems that no matter what I define, the output is the same default (with the __meta__ field and every field type as term()).

I did some noodling when I put together the inspecto package, but I don’t think it helps here since I don’t think you can dynamically assemble a type definition (or maybe you can in a macro?).

I think I’m probably missing something so I thought I’d do a sanity check here in the forum. Thanks for any insights!

Showing Posts 1 to 4

LostKobrakai

LostKobrakai

A ecto schema has a __meta__ field if you want it or not. It’s used to store metadata (see Ecto.get_meta). Doing %MyEctoSchema{} will make sure all keys of the schema are part of the typespec no matter if you explicitly type them or not.

vrod

vrod

What seems to be a bug is that the fields are listed explicitly, the documentation for the type do not update.

LostKobrakai

LostKobrakai

I just tried it out in a project of mine and the docs update just fine for explicitly listed keys.

fireproofsocks

fireproofsocks OP

Ah, I see it now – even if you force the fields in your own type definition, all the other fields are still filled in (with the default term() catch-alls)

— All posts loaded —

Where Next? Top

Trending in Questions Top

katta
I having some trouble figuring out if I have set myself too strict of standards for my production server. Currently I can handle 75% of r...
New
brecabral
Documentation While reading the Scoped Routes section, I noticed that the documentation currently refers to a problem without explainin...
New
achenet
Hello, I’m trying to build a basic Phoenix web-app, and I’d like to use Tailwind. However, when I launch mix phx.server, I get an error...
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
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
Cxx-mlr
I’m working on a small exercise involving update_in/3, and I came up with this solution: data = %{ name: "Periodic Table", category:...
New
ChrisAmelia
I’ve got trouble wrapping my head around the order in which functions are called in this snippet (from Phoenix’s authentication): toke...
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
garrison
Hobbes is a low-level distributed database for the Elixir programming language. Hobbes provides a simple, safe, and scalable storage lay...
New
budgie
A little off-topic, but I feel like people here have a good head on their shoulders. I used to be quite good at making software. Was luc...
New
KristerV
Hey. Is there anyone here who creates agents in their apps? Not talking about using agents, but creating them. I’m finding it pretty diff...
New

We're in Beta

About us Mission Statement

Options

Thread Display Mode




Thread Preview

Skip Thread Previews