Modules and methods¶

When generating a project, there will be a module generated, that is located in lib directory. It will contain something like this.

defmodule Cards do
end

This file defines a single module in the code, using the defmodule keyword, it is called Cards. Nearly all code in elixir is organized in various modules.

You can add a method using following syntax:

def hello do
    "hi there!"
end

The def keyword defines a new method called hello that returns hi there! string.

The elixir has a thing called implicit return which means that whenever a function runs, whatever the last value is - it will get returned, so the keyword return is not used.

You can run the method by going into your terminal and running:

iex -S mix
Cards.hello

The iex is called Interactive Elixir Shell where you can interactively work with elixir.