tlilley
Hey there - I am working with an elixir app where some of our business logic is defined in a config file. However, as time has gone on, we have noticed a lot of repetition in this file. That leads me to ask two questions. Take the following as an example snippet of what our config is like:
config :candy_app, :candy_flavors,
default: [a: 1, b: 1, c:1],
fruity: [a: 1, b: 1],
chocolate: [a: 1, b: 1, c:1, d:1],
vanilla: [a: 1, b: 1, c:1, d:1],
caramel: [a: 1, b: 1, c:1, d:1],
- Is there a way to define a constant for a given value within the config file and then just reference that constant? Something like the following (although it doesn’t appear that @ will work since the config is defined outside of a module and you cannot invoke @/1 outside a module):
@default_flavors [a: 1, b: 1, c:1]
config :candy_app, :candy_flavors,
default: @default_flavors,
fruity: @default_flavors -- [c:1],
chocolate: @default_flavors ++ [d:1],
vanilla: @default_flavors ++ [d:1],
caramel: @default_flavors ++ [d:1],
- Is there a way to define the same value for multiple keys in a keyword list without re-writing out that value multiple times? This would save a lot of space, especially since our real world config values are much longer than those in the example. I’m thinking something like this (although this doesn’t appear to work):
config :candy_app, :candy_flavors,
default: [a: 1, b: 1, c:1],
fruity: [a: 1, b: 1],
chocolate:
vanilla:
caramel:
[a: 1, b: 1, c:1, d:1]
Is there any way to achieve what I am trying to do here? Any tips on approaches to take other than the two I listed above? I’d sure appreciate it! Thanks in advance.
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kwando
Isn’t a regular variable working in the config file?
Or am I missing something here
tlilley
Oh wow. I’ll spare the reasons why I thought I had tried that and found that it didn’t work. But after your suggestion I tried the equivalent of this:
And that does indeed appear to work. Despite the temptation to remove it, I’ll leave my question up in case someone else makes the same foolish mistake in the future
moogle19
If you really want to remove items from the keyword list, maybe consider using
Keyword.delete/2orKeyword.drop/2otherwise you have to change your config in 2 places when the value of:cchanges.