pekko/akka-docs/scala/actors.rst

.. _actors-scala:

################
 Actors (Scala)
################


.. sidebar:: Contents

   .. contents:: :local:


The `Actor Model`_ provides a higher level of abstraction for writing concurrent
and distributed systems. It alleviates the developer from having to deal with
explicit locking and thread management, making it easier to write correct
concurrent and parallel systems. Actors were defined in the 1973 paper by Carl
Hewitt but have been popularized by the Erlang language, and used for example at
Ericsson with great success to build highly concurrent and reliable telecom
systems.

The API of Akka’s Actors is similar to Scala Actors which has borrowed some of
its syntax from Erlang.

.. _Actor Model: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Actor_model


Creating Actors
===============

Actors can be created either by:

* Extending the Actor class and implementing the receive method.
* Create an anonymous actor using one of the actor methods.


Defining an Actor class
-----------------------

Actor classes are implemented by extending the Actor class and implementing the
``receive`` method. The ``receive`` method should define a series of case
statements (which has the type ``PartialFunction[Any, Unit]``) that defines
which messages your Actor can handle, using standard Scala pattern matching,
along with the implementation of how the messages should be processed.

Here is an example:

.. includecode:: code/ActorDocSpec.scala
   :include: imports,my-actor

Please note that the Akka Actor ``receive`` message loop is exhaustive, which is
different compared to Erlang and Scala Actors. This means that you need to
provide a pattern match for all messages that it can accept and if you want to
be able to handle unknown messages then you need to have a default case as in
the example above.


Creating Actors
---------------

.. includecode:: code/ActorDocSpec.scala#creating-actorOf

The call to ``actorOf`` returns an instance of ``ActorRef``. This is a handle to
the ``Actor`` instance which you can use to interact with the ``Actor``. The
``ActorRef`` is immutable and has a one to one relationship with the Actor it
represents. The ``ActorRef`` is also serializable and network-aware. This means
that you can serialize it, send it over the wire and use it on a remote host and
it will still be representing the same Actor on the original node, across the
network.


Creating Actors with non-default constructor
--------------------------------------------

If your Actor has a constructor that takes parameters then you can't create it
using ``actorOf[TYPE]``. Instead you can use a variant of ``actorOf`` that takes
a call-by-name block in which you can create the Actor in any way you like.

Here is an example:

.. includecode:: code/ActorDocSpec.scala#creating-constructor


Creating Actors using anonymous classes
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

When spawning actors for specific sub-tasks from within an actor, it may be convenient to include the code to be executed directly in place, using an anonymous class::

  def receive = {
    case m: DoIt =>
      actorOf(new Actor {
        def receive = {
          case DoIt(msg) =>
            val replyMsg = doSomeDangerousWork(msg)
            self.reply(replyMsg)
            self.stop()
        }
        def doSomeDangerousWork(msg: Message) = { ... }
      }).start() ! m
  }

.. warning::

  In this case you need to carefully avoid closing over the containing actor’s
  reference, i.e. do not call methods on the enclosing actor from within the
  anonymous Actor class. This would break the actor encapsulation and may
  introduce synchronization bugs and race conditions because the other actor’s
  code will be scheduled concurrently to the enclosing actor. Unfortunately
  there is not yet a way to detect these illegal accesses at compile time.

Running a block of code asynchronously
--------------------------------------

Here we create a light-weight actor-based thread, that can be used to spawn off
a task. Code blocks spawned up like this are always implicitly started, shut
down and made eligible for garbage collection. The actor that is created "under
the hood" is not reachable from the outside and there is no way of sending
messages to it. It being an actor is only an implementation detail. It will only
run the block in an event-based thread and exit once the block has run to
completion.

.. code-block:: scala

  spawn {
    ... // do stuff
  }


Actor Internal API
==================

The :class:`Actor` trait defines only one abstract method, the above mentioned
:meth:`receive`. In addition, it offers two convenience methods
:meth:`become`/:meth:`unbecome` for modifying the hotswap behavior stack as
described in :ref:`Actor.HotSwap` and the :obj:`self` reference to this actor’s
:class:`ActorRef` object. If the current actor behavior does not match a
received message, :meth:`unhandled` is called, which by default throws an
:class:`UnhandledMessageException`.

The remaining visible methods are user-overridable life-cycle hooks which are
described in the following::

  def preStart() {}
  def preRestart(cause: Throwable, message: Option[Any]) {}
  def postRestart(cause: Throwable) {}
  def postStop() {}

The implementations shown above are the defaults provided by the :class:`Actor`
trait.


Start Hook
----------

Right after starting the actor, its :meth:`preStart` method is invoked.

::

  override def preStart {
    // registering with other actors
    someService ! Register(self)
  }


Restart Hooks
-------------

A supervised actor, i.e. one which is linked to another actor with a fault
handling strategy, will be restarted in case an exception is thrown while
processing a message. This restart involves four of the hooks mentioned above:

1. The old actor is informed by calling :meth:`preRestart` with the exception
   which caused the restart and the message which triggered that exception; the
   latter may be ``None`` if the restart was not caused by processing a
   message, e.g. when a supervisor does not trap the exception and is restarted
   in turn by its supervisor. This method is the best place for cleaning up,
   preparing hand-over to the fresh actor instance, etc.
2. The initial factory from the ``Actor.actorOf`` call is used
   to produce the fresh instance.
3. The new actor’s :meth:`preStart` method is invoked, just as in the normal
   start-up case.
4. The new actor’s :meth:`postRestart` method is called with the exception
   which caused the restart.


An actor restart replaces only the actual actor object; the contents of the
mailbox and the hotswap stack are unaffected by the restart, so processing of
messages will resume after the :meth:`postRestart` hook returns. Any message
sent to an actor while it is being restarted will be queued to its mailbox as
usual.

Stop Hook
---------

After stopping an actor, its :meth:`postStop` hook is called, which may be used
e.g. for deregistering this actor from other services. This hook is guaranteed
to run after message queuing has been disabled for this actor, i.e. sending
messages would fail with an :class:`IllegalActorStateException`.


Identifying Actors
==================

An actor is identified by its address. If no address is associated with an actor
then a unique identifier is used instead. The address of an actor can be
accessed using ``self.address``.


Messages and immutability
=========================

**IMPORTANT**: Messages can be any kind of object but have to be
immutable. Scala can’t enforce immutability (yet) so this has to be by
convention. Primitives like String, Int, Boolean are always immutable. Apart
from these the recommended approach is to use Scala case classes which are
immutable (if you don’t explicitly expose the state) and works great with
pattern matching at the receiver side.

Here is an example:

.. code-block:: scala

  // define the case class
  case class Register(user: User)

  // create a new case class message
  val message = Register(user)

Other good messages types are ``scala.Tuple2``, ``scala.List``, ``scala.Map``
which are all immutable and great for pattern matching.


Send messages
=============

Messages are sent to an Actor through one of the following methods.

* ``!`` means “fire-and-forget”, e.g. send a message asynchronously and return
  immediately.
* ``?`` sends a message asynchronously and returns a :class:`Future`
  representing a possible reply.

.. note::

  There used to be two more “bang” methods, which are now removed in Akka 2.0:

  * ``!!`` was similar to the current ``(actor ? msg).as[T]``; deprecation
    followed from the change of timeout handling described below.
  * ``!!![T]`` was similar to the current ``(actor ? msg).mapTo[T]``, with the
    same change in the handling of :class:`Future`’s timeout as for ``!!``, but
    additionally the old method could defer possible type cast problems into
    seemingly unrelated parts of the code base.

Message ordering is guaranteed on a per-sender basis.

Fire-forget
-----------

This is the preferred way of sending messages. No blocking waiting for a
message. This gives the best concurrency and scalability characteristics.

.. code-block:: scala

  actor ! "hello"

If invoked from within an Actor, then the sending actor reference will be
implicitly passed along with the message and available to the receiving Actor
in its ``channel: UntypedChannel`` member field. The target actor can use this
to reply to the original sender, e.g. by using the ``self.reply(message: Any)``
method.

If invoked from an instance that is **not** an Actor there will be no implicit
sender passed along with the message and you will get an
IllegalActorStateException when calling ``self.reply(...)``.

Send-And-Receive-Future
-----------------------

Using ``?`` will send a message to the receiving Actor asynchronously and
will return a :class:`Future`:

.. code-block:: scala

  val future = actor ? "hello"

The receiving actor should reply to this message, which will complete the
future with the reply message as value; if the actor throws an exception while
processing the invocation, this exception will also complete the future. If the
actor does not complete the future, it will expire after the timeout period,
which is taken from one of the following three locations in order of
precedence:

#. explicitly given timeout as in ``actor.?("hello")(timeout = 12 millis)``
#. implicit argument of type :class:`Actor.Timeout`, e.g.

   ::

     implicit val timeout = Actor.Timeout(12 millis)
     val future = actor ? "hello"

#. default timeout from ``akka.conf``

See :ref:`futures-scala` for more information on how to await or query a
future.

Send-And-Receive-Eventually
---------------------------

The future returned from the ``?`` method can conveniently be passed around or
chained with further processing steps, but sometimes you just need the value,
even if that entails waiting for it (but keep in mind that waiting inside an
actor is prone to dead-locks, e.g. if obtaining the result depends on
processing another message on this actor).

For this purpose, there is the method :meth:`Future.as[T]` which waits until
either the future is completed or its timeout expires, whichever comes first.
The result is then inspected and returned as :class:`Some[T]` if it was
normally completed and the answer’s runtime type matches the desired type; if
the future contains an exception or the value cannot be cast to the desired
type, it will throw the exception or a :class:`ClassCastException` (if you want
to get :obj:`None` in the latter case, use :meth:`Future.asSilently[T]`). In
case of a timeout, :obj:`None` is returned.

.. code-block:: scala

  (actor ? msg).as[String] match {
    case Some(answer) => ...
    case None         => ...
  }

  val resultOption = (actor ? msg).as[String]
  if (resultOption.isDefined) ... else ...

  for (x <- (actor ? msg).as[Int]) yield { 2 * x }

Forward message
---------------

You can forward a message from one actor to another. This means that the
original sender address/reference is maintained even though the message is going
through a 'mediator'. This can be useful when writing actors that work as
routers, load-balancers, replicators etc.

.. code-block:: scala

  actor.forward(message)


Receive messages
================

An Actor has to implement the ``receive`` method to receive messages:

.. code-block:: scala

  protected def receive: PartialFunction[Any, Unit]

Note: Akka has an alias to the ``PartialFunction[Any, Unit]`` type called
``Receive`` (``akka.actor.Actor.Receive``), so you can use this type instead for
clarity. But most often you don't need to spell it out.

This method should return a ``PartialFunction``, e.g. a ‘match/case’ clause in
which the message can be matched against the different case clauses using Scala
pattern matching. Here is an example:

.. code-block:: scala

  class MyActor extends Actor {
    def receive = {
      case "Hello" =>
        log.info("Received 'Hello'")

      case _ =>
        throw new RuntimeException("unknown message")
    }
  }


Reply to messages
=================

Reply using the sender
----------------------

If you want to have a handle for replying to a message, you can use
``sender``, which gives you an ActorRef. You can reply by sending to
that ActorRef with ``sender ! Message``. You can also store the ActorRef
for replying later, or passing on to other actors. If there is no sender (a
message was sent without an actor or future context) then the sender
defaults to a 'dead-letter' actor ref.

.. code-block:: scala

  case request =>
      val result = process(request)
      sender ! result       // will have dead-letter actor as default

Initial receive timeout
=======================

A timeout mechanism can be used to receive a message when no initial message is
received within a certain time. To receive this timeout you have to set the
``receiveTimeout`` property and declare a case handing the ReceiveTimeout
object.

.. code-block:: scala

  context.receiveTimeout = Some(30000L) // 30 seconds

  def receive = {
    case "Hello" =>
      log.info("Received 'Hello'")
    case ReceiveTimeout =>
        throw new RuntimeException("received timeout")
  }

This mechanism also work for hotswapped receive functions. Every time a
``HotSwap`` is sent, the receive timeout is reset and rescheduled.


Starting actors
===============

Actors are created & started by invoking the ``actorOf`` method.

.. code-block:: scala

  val actor = actorOf[MyActor]
  actor

When you create the ``Actor`` then it will automatically call the ``def
preStart`` callback method on the ``Actor`` trait. This is an excellent place to
add initialization code for the actor.

.. code-block:: scala

  override def preStart() = {
    ... // initialization code
  }


Stopping actors
===============

Actors are stopped by invoking the ``stop`` method.

.. code-block:: scala

  actor.stop()

When stop is called then a call to the ``def postStop`` callback method will
take place. The ``Actor`` can use this callback to implement shutdown behavior.

.. code-block:: scala

  override def postStop() = {
    ... // clean up resources
  }


PoisonPill
==========

You can also send an actor the ``akka.actor.PoisonPill`` message, which will
stop the actor when the message is processed.

If the sender is a ``Future`` (e.g. the message is sent with ``?``), the
``Future`` will be completed with an
``akka.actor.ActorKilledException("PoisonPill")``.


.. _Actor.HotSwap:

HotSwap
=======

Upgrade
-------

Akka supports hotswapping the Actor’s message loop (e.g. its implementation) at
runtime. There are two ways you can do that:

* Send a ``HotSwap`` message to the Actor.
* Invoke the ``become`` method from within the Actor.

Both of these takes a ``ActorRef => PartialFunction[Any, Unit]`` that implements
the new message handler. The hotswapped code is kept in a Stack which can be
pushed and popped.

To hotswap the Actor body using the ``HotSwap`` message:

.. code-block:: scala

  actor ! HotSwap( context => {
    case message => context reply "hotswapped body"
  })

To hotswap the Actor using ``become``:

.. code-block:: scala

  def angry: Receive = {
    case "foo" => context reply "I am already angry?"
    case "bar" => become(happy)
  }

  def happy: Receive = {
    case "bar" => context reply "I am already happy :-)"
    case "foo" => become(angry)
  }

  def receive = {
    case "foo" => become(angry)
    case "bar" => become(happy)
  }

The ``become`` method is useful for many different things, but a particular nice
example of it is in example where it is used to implement a Finite State Machine
(FSM): `Dining Hakkers`_.

.. _Dining Hakkers: http://github.com/jboner/akka/blob/master/akka-samples/akka-sample-fsm/src/main/scala/DiningHakkersOnBecome.scala

Here is another little cute example of ``become`` and ``unbecome`` in action:

.. code-block:: scala

  case object Swap
  class Swapper extends Actor {
   def receive = {
     case Swap =>
       println("Hi")
       become {
         case Swap =>
           println("Ho")
           unbecome() // resets the latest 'become' (just for fun)
       }
   }
  }

  val swap = actorOf[Swapper]

  swap ! Swap // prints Hi
  swap ! Swap // prints Ho
  swap ! Swap // prints Hi
  swap ! Swap // prints Ho
  swap ! Swap // prints Hi
  swap ! Swap // prints Ho


Encoding Scala Actors nested receives without accidentally leaking memory
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

See this `Unnested receive example <https://gist.github.com/797035>`_.


Downgrade
---------

Since the hotswapped code is pushed to a Stack you can downgrade the code as
well. There are two ways you can do that:

* Send the Actor a ``RevertHotswap`` message
* Invoke the ``unbecome`` method from within the Actor.

Both of these will pop the Stack and replace the Actor's implementation with the
``PartialFunction[Any, Unit]`` that is at the top of the Stack.

Revert the Actor body using the ``RevertHotSwap`` message:

.. code-block:: scala

  actor ! RevertHotSwap

Revert the Actor body using the ``unbecome`` method:

.. code-block:: scala

  def receive: Receive = {
    case "revert" => unbecome()
  }


Killing an Actor
================

You can kill an actor by sending a ``Kill`` message. This will restart the actor
through regular supervisor semantics.

Use it like this:

.. code-block:: scala

  // kill the actor called 'victim'
  victim ! Kill


Actors and exceptions
=====================

It can happen that while a message is being processed by an actor, that some
kind of exception is thrown, e.g. a database exception.

What happens to the Message
---------------------------

If an exception is thrown while a message is being processed (so taken of his
mailbox and handed over the the receive), then this message will be lost. It is
important to understand that it is not put back on the mailbox. So if you want
to retry processing of a message, you need to deal with it yourself by catching
the exception and retry your flow. Make sure that you put a bound on the number
of retries since you don't want a system to livelock (so consuming a lot of cpu
cycles without making progress).

What happens to the mailbox
---------------------------

If an exception is thrown while a message is being processed, nothing happens to
the mailbox. If the actor is restarted, the same mailbox will be there. So all
messages on that mailbox, will be there as well.

What happens to the actor
-------------------------

If an exception is thrown and the actor is supervised, the actor object itself
is discarded and a new instance is created. This new instance will now be used
in the actor references to this actor (so this is done invisible to the
developer).

If the actor is _not_ supervised, but its lifeCycle is set to Permanent
(default), it will just keep on processing messages as if nothing had happened.

If the actor is _not_ supervised, but its lifeCycle is set to Temporary, it will
be stopped immediately.


Extending Actors using PartialFunction chaining
===============================================

A bit advanced but very useful way of defining a base message handler and then
extend that, either through inheritance or delegation, is to use
``PartialFunction.orElse`` chaining.

In generic base Actor:

.. code-block:: scala

  import akka.actor.Actor.Receive

  abstract class GenericActor extends Actor {
    // to be defined in subclassing actor
    def specificMessageHandler: Receive

    // generic message handler
    def genericMessageHandler: Receive = {
      case event => printf("generic: %s\n", event)
    }

    def receive = specificMessageHandler orElse genericMessageHandler
  }

In subclassing Actor:

.. code-block:: scala

  class SpecificActor extends GenericActor {
    def specificMessageHandler = {
      case event: MyMsg  => printf("specific: %s\n", event.subject)
    }
  }

  case class MyMsg(subject: String)