Programming Elixir 1.3

Naming Nodes

So far we haven’t needed to give our node a name—we’ve had only one. If we ask Elixir what the current node is called, it’ll give us a made-up name:

iex> Node.self
:nonode@nohost

We can set the name of a node when we start it. With iex, use either the --name or --sname option. The former sets a fully qualified name:

$ iex --name [e-mail]
iex([e-mail])> Node.self
:"[e-mail]"

The latter sets a short name.

The name that’s returned is an atom—it’s in quotes because it contains characters not allowed in a literal atom.

$ iex --sname wobble
iex(wobble@light-boy)> Node.self
:"wobble@light-boy"

Note that in both cases the iex prompt contains the node’s name along ...