joshvar88 / elixir_style_guide

A community driven style guide for Elixir

Prelude

Liquid architecture. It's like jazz - you improvise, you work together, you play off each other, you make something, they make something.
-- Frank Gehry

Style matters. Elixir has plenty of style but like all languages it can be stifled. Don't stifle the style.

NOTE: From here on out, you get a PR merged, you get added as a collaborator. People who have PRs merged have been added as collaborators.

The Elixir Style Guide

This is my attempt at starting a community style guide for Elixir. Please feel free to make pull requests and contribute. I really want Elixir to have as vibrant of a community as any language that's been around five times as long.

If you're looking for other projects to contribute to please see Elixir's list of projects

Table of Contents

• Source Code Layout
• Syntax
• Naming
• Comments
  • Comment Annotations
• Exceptions
• Collections
• Strings
• Regular Expressions
• Metaprogramming
• Misc
• Tools

Source Code Layout

• Use two spaces per indentation level. No hard tabs.

# not preferred - four spaces
def some_function do
    do_something
end

# preferred
def some_function do
  do_something
end

• Use Unix-style line endings. (*BSD/Solaris/Linux/OSX users are covered by default, Windows users have to be extra careful.)

  • If you're using Git you might want to add the following configuration setting to protect your project from Windows line endings creeping in:

$ git config --global core.autocrlf true

• Use spaces around operators, after commas, colons and semicolons. Do not put spaces around matched pairs like brackets, parenthesis, etc. Whitespace might be (mostly) irrelevant to the Elixir runtime, but its proper use is the key to writing easily readable code.

sum = 1 + 2
{a, b} = {2, 3}
Enum.map(["one", <<"two">>, "three"], fn num -> IO.puts num end)

• Use empty lines between defs and to break up a function into logical paragraphs.

def some_function(some_data) do
  altered_data = Module.Function(data)
end

def some_function do
  result
end

def some_other_function do
  another_result
end

• ...but run different clauses that match for the same function together.

def some_function([]) do
  :ok
end
def some_function([first|rest]) do
  some_function(rest)
end

• Use the pipeline operator ( |> ) to chain functions together

# not preferred
String.strip(String.downcase(some_string))

# preferred
some_string |> String.downcase |> String.strip

# Multiline pipelines use a single level of indentation.
some_string
|> String.downcase
|> String.strip

While this is the preferred method, take into account that copy pasting multiline pipelines into IEX might result in a syntax error as IEX will evaluate the first line without realizing that the next line has a pipeline.

• Use bare variables in the first part of a function chain

# THE WORST!
# This actually parses as String.strip( "nope" |> String.downcase ).
String.strip "nope" |> String.downcase

# not preferred
String.strip(some_string) |> String.downcase |> String.codepoints

# preferred
some_string |> String.strip |> String.downcase |> String.codepoints

• Avoid trailing whitespace.

Syntax

• Use parens when you have arguments, no parens when you don't

# not preferred
def some_function arg1, arg2 do
  # body omitted
end

def some_function() do
  # body omitted
end

# preferred
def some_function(arg1, arg2) do
  #body omitted
end

def some_function do
  # body omitted
end

• Never use do: for multi-line if/unless.

# not preferred
if some_condition, do:
  # a line of code
  # another line of code
  # note no end in this block

# preferred
if some_condition do
  # some
  # lines
  # of code
end

• Use do: for single line if/unless statements

# preferred
if some_condition, do: # some_stuff

• Never use unless with else. Rewrite these with the positive case first.

# not preferred
unless success? do
  IO.puts 'failure'
else
  IO.puts 'success'
end

# preferred
if success? do
  IO.puts 'success'
else
  IO.puts 'failure'
end

• Never put a space between a function name and the opening parenthesis.

# not preferred
f (3 + 2) + 1

# preferred
f(3 + 2) + 1

• Use parentheses in function calls, especially inside a pipeline.

# not preferred
f 3

# preferred
f(3)

# not preferred and parses as f(3 |> g), which is not what you want
f 3 |> g

# preferred
f(3) |> g()

• Omit parentheses in macro calls when a do block is passed.

# not preferred
quote(do
  foo
end)

# preferred
quote do
  foo
end

• Optionally omit parentheses in function calls (outside a pipeline) when the last argument is a function expression.

# preferred
Enum.reduce(1..10, 0, fn x, acc ->
  x + acc
end)

# also preferred
Enum.reduce 1..10, 0, fn x, acc ->
  x + acc
end

Naming

• Use snake_case for atoms, functions and variables.

# not preferred
:"some atom"
:SomeAtom
:someAtom

someVar = 5

def someFunction do
  ...
end

def SomeFunction do
 ...
end

# preferred
:some_atom

some_var = 5

def some_function do
  ...
end

• Use CamelCase for modules. (Keep acronyms like HTTP, RFC, XML uppercase.)

# not preferred
defmodule Somemodule do
  ...
end

defmodule Some_Module do
  ...
end

defmodule SomeXml do
  ...
end

# preferred
defmodule SomeModule do
  ...
end

defmodule SomeXML do
  ...
end

• The names of predicate functions (a function that return a boolean value) should end in a question mark.

def is_string?(var) do
  # check if var is string
end

Comments

• Write self-documenting code and ignore the rest of this section. Seriously!
• Use one space between the leading # character of the comment and the text of the comment.
• Comments longer than a word are capitalized and use punctuation. Use one space after periods.

# not preferred
String.upcase(some_string) # Capitalize string.

• Keep existing comments up-to-date. An outdated comment is worse than no comment at all.

• Avoid writing comments to explain bad code. Refactor the code to make it self-explanatory. (Do or do not - there is no try. --Yoda)

Comment Annotations

• Annotations should usually be written on the line immediately above the relevant code.

• The annotation keyword is followed by a colon and a space, then a note describing the problem.

• If multiple lines are required to describe the problem, subsequent lines should be indented two spaces after the #.

• In cases where the problem is so obvious that any documentation would be redundant, annotations may be left at the end of the offending line with no note. This usage should be the exception and not the rule.

• Use TODO to note missing features or functionality that should be added at a later date.

• Use FIXME to note broken code that needs to be fixed.

• Use OPTIMIZE to note slow or inefficient code that may cause performance problems.

• Use HACK to note code smells where questionable coding practices were used and should be refactored away.

• Use REVIEW to note anything that should be looked at to confirm it is working as intended. For example: REVIEW: Are we sure this is how the client does X currently?

• Use other custom annotation keywords if it feels appropriate, but be sure to document them in your project's README or similar.

Modules

• Use one module per file unless the module is only used internally by another module (such as a test.)
• Use underscored file names for CamelCase module names.

# file is called some_module.ex

defmodule SomeModule do
end

• Represent each level of nesting within a module name as a directory.

# file is called parser/core/xml_parser.ex

defmodule Parser.Core.XMLParser do
end

Exceptions

Collections

Strings

Regular Expressions

Metaprogramming

• Avoid needless metaprogramming.

Misc

Tools

Contributing

It's my hope that this will become a central hub for community discussion on best practices in Elixir. Feel free to open tickets or send pull requests with improvements. Thanks in advance for your help!

License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License

Attribution

The structure of this guide, bits of example code, and many of the initial points made in this document were borrowed from the Ruby community style guide. A lot of things were applicable to Elixir and allowed me to get some document out quicker to start the conversation.

Spread the Word

A community style guide is meaningless without the community's support. Please Tweet, star, and let any Elixir programmer know about this guide so they can contribute.