An Elixir library that implements prototype inheritance for dynamic function calling over a chain of modules. These prototypes can be user-defined struct modules or any other modules.

To specify a module's prototype module, implement the __prototype__/0 function like so:

defmodule YourModule do
 def __prototype__, do: AnyOtherModule
end

Then to call functions wherever they are found up the prototype chain you might:

case Prototype.apply(YourModule, :function_name, ["argument", "list"]) do
 {:ok, return_value, _meta} -> return_value,
 {:missing_fun, _function_name, _args, _meta} -> {:error, "function not found"}
end

Where _meta contains tracing metadata about the call chain that executed. As you might suspect, if the function cannot be found in any of the modules then the result is a :missing_fun tuple because it's not very fun to have multiple attempts to call a function fail!

This package can be installed by adding prototype to your list of dependencies in mix.exs:

def deps do
 [
 {:prototype, "~> 1.0.0-alpha"}
 ]
end

If you use this library and have suggestions for how to make it better, please file an issue.