Does Akka cache actor invocation? - scala

Question

I have the following code that I need to run around 100 times:
val system = ActorSystem("mySystem")
val myActorObject = system.actorOf(Props[MyActorClass], name = "myactor")
implicit val timeout = Timeout(60 seconds)
val future = myActorObject ? Request1
val result = Await.result(future, timeout.duration)
Question is: assuming the first two statements can be called just once, should I cache these variables or Akka does it?

Answer 1

Do not make the actor system creation and actor creation part of repetitive code. Once the actor is created. Using the ActorRef can be done as many times as possible.
val system = ActorSystem("mySystem")
val myActorObject = system.actorOf(Props[MyActorClass], name = "myactor")
Something like this
val futureList = for(_ <- 1 to 1000) yield {
implicit val timeout = Timeout(60 seconds)
val future = myActorObject ? Request1
}
val finalF = Future.sequence(futureList)
val result = Await.result(future, timeout.duration)

Answer 2

In play! (+2.5.x) you can get the system by injection. e.g.
#Singleton
class MyController #Inject() (system: ActorSystem) extends Controller {
val myActor = system.actorOf(MyActorClass.props, "myactor")
//...
}
Then you could have an end point to call the actor as many times as you want, for example
def sayHello(name: String) = Action.async {
(myActor ? name).map { message => Ok(message) }
}
The code inside your actor could be something like this
class MyActorClass extends Actor {
def receive = {
case name: String => sender() ! s"hello $name"
}
}
object MyActorClass {
def props: Props = Props(classOf[MyActorClass ])
}