Using protocols for better code organization

Questions / Help
1

Hello!

I am writing an application that translates JSON messages to SOAP messages. Currently I am handling 16 JSON messages and 20 SOAP messages.

I have defined embedded schemas to validate the incoming JSON messages and to build the XML SOAP message using heex templates.

I have a Parse module with a multiple clause parse function for each incoming message. I also have a Convert module with a multiple clause convert function for each JSON message. This same pattern is repeated in other modules and each module has hundreds of code lines.

I feel this is a smell for bad code organization. Am I right?

I have the idea to use protocols to reorganize my app. I would move each parse and convert function to the corresponding schema file. Is it a good idea?

Would my code be more object oriented (which I want to avoid)?

I appreciate any comments.

2

For 7.5 years with Elixir I only ever needed to implement a protocol for one thing – Jason for our own structs in the project.

Make sub-modules and have them implement behaviours – one for parsers and one for converters. Behaviours are not strictly needed but at least if you make a mistake in an implementing module’s function’s signature then your IDE + LSP will warn you.

Your central parser module still has to detect to which specialized parser module it must send the data. What you’ll gain is that the number of coding lines in it will be drastically reduced because you will only keep all the pattern-matching function heads, but now their bodies will only contain code like ParserTypeXYZ.parse(input_data) and nothing else.

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