Defining Actors and messages
Messages can be of arbitrary type (any subtype of Object). You can send boxed primitive values (such as String, Integer, Boolean etc.) as messages as well as plain data structures like arrays and collection types.
When defining Actors and their messages, keep these recommendations in mind:
Since messages are the Actor’s public API, it is a good practice to define messages with good names and rich semantic and domain specific meaning, even if they just wrap your data type. This will make it easier to use, understand and debug actor-based systems.
Messages should be immutable, since they are shared between different threads.
It is a good practice to put an actor’s associated messages as static classes in the class of the Actor. This makes it easier to understand what type of messages the actor expects and handles.
It is also a common pattern to use a static props method in the class of the Actor that describes how to construct the Actor.
The Greeter Actor
public class Greeter extends AbstractActor {
static public Props props(String message, ActorRef printerActor) {
return Props.create(Greeter.class, () -> new Greeter(message, printerActor));
}
static public class WhoToGreet {
public final String who;
public WhoToGreet(String who) {
this.who = who;
}
}
static public class Greet {
public Greet() {
}
}
private final String message;
private final ActorRef printerActor;
private String greeting = "";
public Greeter(String message, ActorRef printerActor) {
this.message = message;
this.printerActor = printerActor;
}
@Override
public Receive createReceive() {
return receiveBuilder()
.match(WhoToGreet.class, wtg -> {
this.greeting = message + ", " + wtg.who;
})
.match(Greet.class, x -> {
printerActor.tell(new Greeting(greeting), getSelf());
})
.build();
}
}
- The Greeter class extends the akka.actor.AbstractActor class and implements the createReceive method.
- The Greeter constructor accepts two parameters: String message, which will be used when building greeting messages and ActorRef printerActor, which is a reference to the Actor handling the outputting of the greeting.
- The receiveBuilder defines the behavior; how the Actor should react to the different messages it receives. An Actor can have state. Accessing or mutating the internal state of an Actor is fully thread safe since it is protected by the Actor model. The createReceive method should handle the messages the actor expects. In the case of Greeter, it expects two types of messages: WhoToGreet and Greet. The former will update the greeting state of the Actor and the latter will trigger a sending of the greeting to the Printer Actor.
- The greeting variable contains the Actor’s state and is set to "" by default.
- The static props method creates and returns a Props instance. Props is a configuration class to specify options for the creation of actors, think of it as an immutable and thus freely shareable recipe for creating an actor that can include associated deployment information. This example simply passes the parameters that the Actor requires when being constructed. We will see the props method in action later in this tutorial.
Printer Actor
public class Printer extends AbstractActor {
static public Props props() {
return Props.create(Printer.class, () -> new Printer());
}
static public class Greeting {
public final String message;
public Greeting(String message) {
this.message = message;
}
}
private LoggingAdapter log = Logging.getLogger(getContext().getSystem(), this);
public Printer() {
}
@Override
public Receive createReceive() {
return receiveBuilder()
.match(Greeting.class, greeting -> {
log.info(greeting.message);
})
.build();
}
}
- It creates a logger via Logging.getLogger(getContext().getSystem(), this);. By doing this we can write log.info() in the Actor without any additional wiring.
- It just handles one type of message, Greeting, and logs the content of that message.
Creating the Actors
The power of location transparency
In Akka you can’t create an instance of an Actor using the new keyword. Instead, you create Actor instances using a factory. The factory does not return an actor instance, but a reference, akka.actor.ActorRef, that points to the actor instance. This level of indirection adds a lot of power and flexibility in a distributed system.
In Akka location doesn’t matter. Location transparency means that the ActorRef can, while retaining the same semantics, represent an instance of the running actor in-process or on a remote machine. If needed, the runtime can optimize the system by changing an Actor’s location or the entire application topology while it is running. This enables the “let it crash” model of failure management in which the system can heal itself by crashing faulty Actors and restarting healthy ones.
The Akka ActorSystem
The akka.actor.ActorSystem factory is, to some extent, similar to Spring’s BeanFactory. It acts as a container for Actors and manages their life-cycles. The actorOf factory method creates Actors and takes two parameters, a configuration object called Props and a name.
final ActorRef printerActor =
system.actorOf(Printer.props(), "printerActor");
final ActorRef howdyGreeter =
system.actorOf(Greeter.props("Howdy", printerActor), "howdyGreeter");
final ActorRef helloGreeter =
system.actorOf(Greeter.props("Hello", printerActor), "helloGreeter");
final ActorRef goodDayGreeter =
system.actorOf(Greeter.props("Good day", printerActor), "goodDayGreeter");
In this example, the Greeter Actors all use the same Printer instance, but we could have created multiple instances of the Printer Actor. The sample uses one to illustrate an important concept of message passing that we will cover later.
Asynchronous communication
Actors are reactive and message driven. An Actor doesn’t do anything until it receives a message. Actors communicate using asynchronous messages. This ensures that the sender does not stick around waiting for their message to be processed by the recipient. Instead, the sender puts the message in the recipient’s mailbox and is free to do other work. The Actor’s mailbox is essentially a message queue with ordering semantics. The order of multiple messages sent from the same Actor is preserved, but can be interleaved with messages sent by another Actor.
You might be wondering what the Actor is doing when it is not processing messages, i.e. doing actual work? It is in a suspended state in which it does not consume any resources apart from memory. Again, showing the lightweight, efficient nature of Actors.
Sending messages to an Actor
To put a message into an Actor’s mailbox, use the tell method on the ActorRef. For example, the main class of Hello World sends messages to the Greeter Actor like this:
howdyGreeter.tell(new WhoToGreet("Akka"), ActorRef.noSender());
howdyGreeter.tell(new Greet(), ActorRef.noSender());
howdyGreeter.tell(new WhoToGreet("Lightbend"), ActorRef.noSender());
howdyGreeter.tell(new Greet(), ActorRef.noSender());
helloGreeter.tell(new WhoToGreet("Java"), ActorRef.noSender());
helloGreeter.tell(new Greet(), ActorRef.noSender());
goodDayGreeter.tell(new WhoToGreet("Play"), ActorRef.noSender());
goodDayGreeter.tell(new Greet(), ActorRef.noSender());
The Greeter Actor also sends a message to the Printer Actor:
printerActor.tell(new Greeting(greeting), getSelf());
Testing Actors
The tests in the Hello World example illustrates use of the JUnit framework. The test coverage is not complete. It simply shows how easy it is to test actor code and provides some basic concepts. You could add to it as an exercise to increase your own knowledge.
The test class is using akka.test.javadsl.TestKit, which is a module for integration testing of actors and actor systems. This class only uses a fraction of the functionality provided by TestKit.
Ref:
https://developer.lightbend.com/guides/akka-quickstart-java/define-actors.html
