Import in

About Import

The special form import allows you to use functions and macros from an outside module without using the module's name.

Importing a whole outside module might create conflicts with existing local functions. To avoid this, two options are available: :except and :only. Both expect a keyword list, where the key is the function name, and the value is the function's arity.

defmodule Square do
  import Integer, only: [pow: 2]

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

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

Unused imports cause compiler warnings.