Type Checking Structs

In Elixir you can pattern match on the struct’s type so for example:

defmodule StructTest do
    defstruct name: "Foo!"
end

defmodule TestStruct do
    def takesStruct(struct = %StructTest{}) do
        IO.puts(inspect struct)
    end
end

The takesStruct function will only match for instances of the %StructTest{} structure.

You can see more information at the Typespecs page in the Documentation.
To match a Struct inside a typespec, use the normal %StructName{} syntax.

EDIT: The documentation moved to a new location.

As far as I can see Dialyzer likens structs to any general map %{}, which means you lose the specificity…

Erlang 19 introduces more advanced support from dialyzer for maps -
checking specific keys and general key types. Support for those new
features is in Elixir 1.3 as well. Here’s the PR that introduced them:
https://github.com/elixir-lang/elixir/pull/4662

oh really? this is very nice. when’s the eta? (if there is one)

1.3 rc0 was just released today.

Erlang 19-rc was released couple days ago. I’d expect final release
probably in the matter of next couple weeks.

Hello!
I am totally new to Elixir and I just found your response because I am trying to figure out this pattern matching for types

is def takesStruct(struct = %StructTest{}) do equivalent to def takesStruct(%StructTest{} = struct) do?

As I understand, def takesStruct(%StructTest{} = struct) do is checking that struct is of type StructTest, am I right? or is it explicitly requiring an empty struct? (I dont think it is even possible…)

Thank you in advance

It’s just matching on a %StructTest, empty or not, you can’t have a struct that is empty, since a struct is just a map with pre-defined fields. You can match on an empty map though, with a guard clause, def empty(%{} = variable) when variable == %{} do , or on empty struct fields directly def empty(%StructTest{some_field: nil}) do, of course if you set a default on the field it won’t work

def takesStruct(%StructTest{} = struct) do, means:

1. this function will be invoked only when you pass to it one argument which is %StructTest{} struct, otherwise it will not be invoked
2. when you invoke it with proper struct, this struct will be bound to struct variable, which you can use later in the function body.