Flow Pipelines

ExternalService.Flow runs an enumerable — or an existing Flow — through guarded ExternalService calls as a stage of a Flow pipeline. Reach for it when a guarded call is one step in a larger computation: partitioned, back-pressured processing with downstream map/filter/reduce stages.

If all you want is an ordered, bounded-concurrency parallel map, use ExternalService.call_async_stream/5 instead — it's simpler and preserves input order. Flow only earns its keep when you're building a pipeline.

Adding the dependency

The integration lives behind the optional :flow dependency. Add it to your application's deps:

{:flow, "~> 1.2"}

ExternalService.Flow is compiled only when :flow is present. Without it, the module simply doesn't exist and the rest of ExternalService is unaffected — it never references Flow.

What the helper actually does

ExternalService.Flow.map/3,4,5 is deliberately thin: it reuses ExternalService.call/3 for every element, so retries, the circuit breaker, rate limiting, telemetry, and the structured-error returns behave exactly as they do for a direct call. It is not a new engine — it's a small adapter that smooths the rough edges of wiring a guarded call into Flow by hand.

Written out by hand, a guarded Flow stage looks like this:

enum
|> Flow.from_enumerable()
|> Flow.map(fn item ->
  ExternalService.call(MyApp.Stripe, retry_opts, fn -> work(item) end)
end)

With the helper:

ExternalService.Flow.map(enum, MyApp.Stripe, retry_opts, fn item -> work(item) end)

Concretely, it buys you three small things:

1. The arity bridge. call/3 expects a zero-arity function (fn -> … end), but a Flow.map mapper receives the element (fn item -> … end). The helper does the fn item -> call(svc, fn -> fun.(item) end) end nesting for you, so you don't fumble the inner closure.

2. Enumerable or Flow in one entry point. Pass a plain enumerable and it becomes a Flow source (via Flow.from_enumerable/2); pass an existing Flow and it's used as-is. The same call works whether the guard is the source of a pipeline or a middle stage:

   ids
   |> Flow.from_enumerable()
   |> Flow.map(&build_request/1)
   |> ExternalService.Flow.map(MyApp.Stripe, &charge/1)   # middle stage
   |> Flow.filter(&match?({:ok, _}, &1))

3. A documented home for the gotchas. The non-obvious parts of mixing a guarded call with Flow (below) live in one place, so they're not folded incorrectly into hand-rolled code.

That's the whole value: convenience plus a canonical, supported integration point. The parallelism, partitioning, and back-pressure are all Flow's — the helper adds none of that, and you could inline call/3 yourself to the same effect.

A worked example

Charge a batch of orders, keeping only the successes:

orders
|> ExternalService.Flow.map(MyApp.Stripe, fn order ->
  case Stripe.charge(order) do
    {:error, %{status: s}} when s in 500..599 -> :retry   # transient: retry
    other -> other
  end
end)
|> Flow.filter(&match?({:ok, _}, &1))
|> Enum.to_list()

Each element is guarded: transient 5xx responses are retried with backoff, a sustained run of failures melts the circuit breaker, and a configured rate limit paces the whole pipeline.

Things to know

These are the behaviors worth internalizing before you lean on a guarded Flow — they're the reason a documented helper is preferable to scattered hand-rolled stages.

Errors are elements, not exceptions

The helper uses call/3 (never call!, which would crash a stage), so a failed element flows downstream as the {:error, …} tuple call/3 returns:

results = ExternalService.Flow.map(items, MyApp.Stripe, &work/1) |> Enum.to_list()

# results may contain, alongside your successful values:
#   {:error, %ExternalService.RetriesExhausted{...}}
#   {:error, %ExternalService.CircuitBreakerOpen{...}}
#   {:error, %ExternalService.ServiceNotStarted{...}}

filter, partition, or pattern-match on them downstream — they are ordinary data in the stream, not crashes.

Results are unordered

Flow partitions reorder elements, so the output order does not match the input order. If you need results in input order, use ExternalService.call_async_stream/5 instead.

Rate-limit pacing

The rate-limit bucket is global per service, so the configured limit is honored across all of Flow's parallel stages. Throttling works by sleeping the stage process, which naturally back-pressures the pipeline upstream. Because a sleeping call stalls the rest of its demand batch, a smaller :max_demand gives smoother pacing under a rate limit. See the Rate limiting guide.

Passing Flow options

The optional last argument is passed straight to Flow.from_enumerable/2 (for example :stages, :min_demand, :max_demand):

ExternalService.Flow.map(enum, MyApp.Stripe, [], &work/1, stages: 4, max_demand: 10)

These apply only when the source is an enumerable. When you pass an existing Flow, its stage configuration already governs and the options are ignored.

Flow vs. call_async_stream

Both run each element through the same guarded call, so the protection is identical; they differ only in orchestration and shape.