# Babel - Data transformations made easy

**URL:** <https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/babel-data-transformations-made-easy/63571>\
**Category:** Announcing\
**Tags:** library, pipeline\
**Created:** [May 15, 2024, 1:11pm UTC](https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/babel-data-transformations-made-easy/63571 "2024-05-15T13:11:41Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 5

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**Author:** ![wolf4earth](https://forum.elixirforum.com/user_avatar/forum.elixirforum.com/wolf4earth/32/40066_2.png) [@wolf4earth](https://forum.elixirforum.com/u/wolf4earth)\
**Post date:** [May 17, 2024, 1:43pm UTC](https://forum.elixirforum.com/t/babel-data-transformations-made-easy/63571/5 "2024-05-17T13:43:36Z")

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I agree, the simple example I laid out can all be done easily with builtin functions.

But `Babel` isn’t meant to be used to simple data transformations. It’s meant to be used for non-trivial transformations. But putting that in a code example would make it a lot harder to grok and fail in it’s task to clarify the basic usage. `Babel`’s strength is in its composability, combining many simple elements into something that’s no longer simple but still understandable.

Doing these non-trivial transformations with standard library mechanisms is feasible but if you don’t want to raise and instead collect errors and be able to explain them, it becomes very complex - and also very hard to read - very quickly.

I’m planning to add a LiveBook which showcases how to use `Babel` to transform responses from GitHub’s GraphQL, which will lay out how the library shines for these non-trivial transformations.

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