From Erlang Community

Author

Vance Shipley

Introduction

Behaviours

Behaviour modules encapsulate some certain functionality for reuse by other modules. The definition of a behaviour includes not only it's exported functions but a list of functions which a callback module must implement. OTP includes several behaviour modules with the most common being gen_server and gen_fsm.

Using gen_fsm

Behaviour

To declare your module as a behaviour callback module you include the -behaviour attribute.

-behaviour(gen_fsm).

Exports

A module which uses the gen_fsm behaviour must export the callbacks which the gen_fsm module calls to handle events. These include handlers for common gen_fsm events as well as the handlers for your user defined states.

-export([init/1, handle_event/3, handle_sync_event/4,
         handle_info/3, terminate/3, code_change/4]).

-export([idle/2, busy/2]).

Startup

To start a process implemented in a module as a gen_fsm behaviour you may call gen_fsm:start/3. In response this function will call the init/1 callback in your module. After your init/1 function returns a result gen_fsm:start_link/3 will return the appropriate result to the calling process. Normally the result is to create a new process where the gen_fsm module is running it's internal main loop function waiting for messages to arrive.

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