Alias in

About Alias

The special form alias allows you to shorten or change the name by which you reference an outside module. A custom name can be specified with the :as option.

defmodule Square do
  alias Integer, as: I

  def area(a), do: I.pow(a, 2)
end

When used without any arguments, it trims down the module name to its last part, e.g.

alias MyApp.Account.User
# is the same as
alias MyApp.Account.User, as: User

Multiple aliases can be grouped together with {}:

alias MyApp.Account.{User, EmailValidation}
# is the same as
alias MyApp.Account.User
alias MyApp.Account.EmailValidation

Usually aliases are added at the beginning of the module definition, but can be added anywhere. They have lexical scope, which means an alias added inside of a function definition won't be available in another function.

Unused aliases cause compiler warnings.