Investigating various ways of publishing and subscribing to events:
- Using gproc
- Using phoenix_pubsub
Using Elixir 1.4's upcoming Process registry- Using Elixir's built-in Process registry
Each version is implemented in its own module, under lib/pubsub_spike. The particular flavour may be deduced from the file/module name. There is a corresponding test in test/pubusb_spike.
Each module is a GenServer implementation, and contains the following methods:
start_link(topic) - start GenServer that will listen to a particular "topic". Returns {:ok, pid}.
broadcast(topic, message) - broadcasts message to all in the topic.
messages_received(pid) - returns all messages received by the listening GenServer.
See the corresponding test for usage.
For your convenience, a PubsubSpike.PhoenixPubsub worker is started by the application. It is named :phoenix_pubsub and is listening on "topic:phoenix_pubsub". You can experiment with broadcasting across connected nodes.
In this root directory (having cloned the repository, obvs.) open a terminal:
iex --sname mel@localhost -S mix
In another terminal, in the same directory:
iex --sname sue@localhost -S mix
Node.connect(:"mel@localhost") # -> true
PubsubSpike.PhoenixPubsub.broadcast("topic:phoenix_pubsub", "Hello distributed Mel and Sue!") # -> :ok
PubsubSpike.PhoenixPubsub.messages_received(:phoenix_pubsub) # -> ["Hello distributed Mel and Sue!"]
Switch to the original node, "mel@localhost"
PubsubSpike.PhoenixPubsub.messages_received(:phoenix_pubsub) # -> ["Hello distributed Mel and Sue!"]
\o/