How to Write Guard Macros

I recently discovered that it is possible to write custom guard macros for Elixir, provided that the macro expands to expressions that are supported in guards natively.

I used this to create an is_blank guard. Elixir doesn’t come with a blank? function, so you have to do it manually. Blank values are " ", "", and nil. To check blank? in Elixir, you can check if a given value is in this array of blank values.

value in [" ", "", nil] # => true / false

You can do this in a guard:

def foo(bar) when bar in [" ", "", nil] do
  # baz ...
end

Using in directly works great if you only have to do it once. But if you find yourself wanting is_blank all over your code, you can write a macro like so:

defmacro is_blank(value) do
  quote do
    unquote(value) in [" ", "", nil]
  end
end

You can then use is_blank in your guard statement, because the in clause is supported by guards natively:

def foo(bar) when is_blank(bar) do
  # baz ...
end

You can also use is_blank like any other function in other parts of your code, outside of guards.

Gotchas

• Macros used in guards must be defined in a different module than the one where they are being used. This is due to the way Elixir compiles macros.

• You must require or import your other module in order to be able to use the Macro. If you require, you’ll have to use the macro like this: OtherModule.macro. If you use import, you can just use macro.