Programming Ecto

Adding Helper Functions

Adding imports and aliases is a good start, but remember that .iex.exs is just a regular Elixir file, so you can define modules and functions as well. Consider the example we were just discussing: making a change to a record in the database. Normally, this process requires a few steps, but you can create a helper function that will handle most of the boilerplate for you.

We usually like to put our IEx helper functions into a single module. And, to help promote the laziness we’re trying to achieve, we like to give the module a very short name so it’s easy to type. We tend to use like names H or EH for “helper” or “Ecto helper”, respectively. Normally, these would be poor choices for module names, as they’re not descriptive ...