Concurrent Data Processing in Elixir

Starting Tasks and Retrieving Results

Before jumping into the Task module, let’s see how things work at the moment. Let’s call the send_email/1 function from IEx, and pass a fictional email address as an argument. Don’t forget to run the recompile() command first if you’ve been running IEx already:

iex> recompile()
Compiling 1 file (.ex)
:ok

iex> Sender.send_email("[e-mail]")
Email to [e-mail] sent
{:ok, "email_sent"}

Did you notice the delay? We had to wait three seconds until we saw the printed output and result. In fact, even the iex> prompt was not showing. Let’s add another function, notify_all/1:

sender/lib/sender.ex

def notify_all(emails) do
  Enum.each(emails, &send_email/1)
end

The notify_all/1 ...