🔗 State machines as business logic engines - DEV Community

Throughout my years of web development with Elixir and Phoenix, I have often struggled with how to effectively implement business logic in a way that is maintainable and easy to reason about. One solution that has begun to gain traction in the world of state management is the concept of state machines. In this article, I will explain the fundamental principles of state machines, how they can be applied in Elixir, and their benefits when designing applications.

State machines allow us to define the behavior of a system in terms of states and transitions. Each state represents a particular condition of the system, and the transitions dictate how the system moves from one state to another. By modeling our business logic as a state machine, we can clearly define and enforce valid transitions, which leads to more reliable and maintainable code.