How to return values with if/else and if condition in function

Instead of assigning users in the if clause you assign "the result"t of the if clause to the variable.

def yourfun() do
  users = if type == "followers" do
      ....
   else
       ....
  end    

  if options != nil do
     ....
  else
     users
  end
  
end

Just to add to previous post…

If You don’t do this, You will have a scoping problem, and users disappear after the end of the block

And if you want to avoid if else clauses this can be written using more functions.

def yourfun(users, type, options) do
    users
    |> filter_users(type)
    |> transform_users(options)
end

def filter_users(users, "followers"), do: ....
def filter_users(users, "other"), do: ....
def filter_users(users, _), do: ....

def transform_users(users, nil), do: users
def transform_users(users, opts), do: ....

thanks so much @cmkarlsson, you solution help me. I am a former Ruby on Rails developer but now switch to Elixir. It still new to me but it is great in many way

No worries. It takes some practice to get used to a more functional way of thinking. something I think we all encountered when we transitioned from traditional procedural/OOP to functional languages.

If your code starts having lots of if/else clauses or other conditionals they can generally be refactored in a more functional way. Remember that in elixir everything is an expression.