Invoke persist inside another persist event handler - scala

I have some code that invokes persist from inside another persist event handler, something like:
persist(someClassInstance){ message =>
confirmDelivery(message.id)
//some code
start()
}
//Somewhere else in the code
def start(): Unit = {
log.info("Starting")
persist(someClassInstance){ message =>
deliver(destination, createMessage)
log.info("Started")
}
}
When I run my application I see the log message "Starting" but I never see the "Started". I am wondering if this happens because I'm invoking persist inside another persist. Is this something that shouldn't be done? The documentation is not very explicit about this case.
I'm using Akka version 2.4-M1 so I suppose this could be the source of the problem, however is seems more likely to me that this is simply something that should not be done.

Invoking persist from another persist will block the program.
The correct way is to send a message to self. And then in the code to handle that message perform the persist.

Related

Akka-http logging request identifier

I've been using akka-http for a while now, and so far I've mostly logged things using scala-logging by extending either StrictLogging or LazyLogging and then calling the:
log.info
log.debug
....
This is kinda ok, but its hard to understand which logs were generated for which request.
As solutions for this go, I've only seen:
adding an implicit logging context that gets passed around (this is kinda verbose and would force me to add this context to all method calls) + custom logger that adds the context info to the logging message.
using the MDC and a custom dispatcher; in order to implement this approach one would have to use the prepare() call which has just been deprecated.
using AspectJ
Are there any other solutions that are more straightforward and less verbose ? It would be ok to change the logging library btw..
Personally I would go with implicit context approach. I'd start with:
(path("api" / "test") & get) {
val context = generateContext
action(requestId)
}
Then I'd would make it implicit:
(path("api" / "test") & get) {
implicit val context = generateContext
action
}
Then I would make the context generation a directive, like e.g.:
val withContext: Directive1[MyContext] = Directive[Tuple1[MyContext]] {
inner => ctx => inner(Tuple1(generateContext))(ctx)
}
withContext { implicit context =>
(path("api" / "test") & get) {
action
}
}
Of course, you would have to take context as an implicit parameter to every action. But, it would have some advantages over MDC and AspectJ - it would be easier to test things, as you just need to pass value. Besides, who said you only ever need to pass request id and use it for logging? The context could as well pass data about logged in user, its entitlements and other things that you could resolve once, use even before calling action and reuse inside action.
As you probably guessed, this would not work if you want the ability to e.g. remove logging completely. In such case AspectJ would make more sense.
I would have most doubts with MDC. If I understand correctly it has build in assumption that all logic would happen in the same thread. If you are using Futures or Tasks, could you actually guarantee such thing? I would expect that at best all logging calls would happen in the same thread pool, but not necessarily the same thread.
Bottom line is, all possible posiltions would be some variant of what you already figured out, so the question is your exact use case.

Why FancordionRunner suiteSetup is not being called?

I am following MyFancordionRunner example from Fancordion v1.0.4 official documentation to test a BedSheet application, but the suiteSetup method (see below) is not being called and the server remains null, causing the fixture tests to fail with a NullPointerException.
override Void suiteSetup() {
super.suiteSetup
server = BedServer(AppModule#.pod).addModule(WebTestModule#).startup
}
Looking at FancordionRunner source code, the runFixture(Obj fixtureInstance) method should be invoking suiteSetup() the first time a Fixture is run as per this piece of code...
FixtureResult runFixture(Obj fixtureInstance) {
...
locals := Locals.instance
firstFixture := (locals.originalRunner == null)
if (firstFixture) {
locals.originalRunner = this
suiteSetup()
...
}
But for some reason in my case the condition (locals.originalRunner == null) must be returning false, causing the suiteSetup() invocation to be skipped. It seems that this piece of code uses Fantom Actors which I'm not familiar with.
I am manually invoking the suiteSetup within MyFancordionRunner like this:
override Void fixtureSetup(Obj fixtureInstance) {
if (server == null) suiteSetup
...
This workaround solves the NullPointerException issue and allows the fixtures to run successfully but I don't know if this workaround is defeating the purpose of the Actor logic, which I presume is meant to invoke suiteSetup only once.
Can anyone explain what could be going on here that is preventing the suiteSetup method from being called within runFixture(...), please?
I don't know what's going on here without seeing a lot more code.
The only part of Actor being used is Actor.locals() which is really just a pot to hold thread local variables - as it is assumed that all tests are run in the same thread.
As you shown, the logic in runFixture() is pretty simple, are you sure it is being called?

How to call a method in a catch clause on an object defined in a try clause?

I am creating a redis pubsub client in a try-catch block. In the try block, the client is initialised with a callback to forward messages to a client. If there's a problem sending the message to the client, an exception will be thrown, in which case I need to stop the redis client. Here's the code:
try {
val redisClient = RedisPubSub(
channels = Seq(currentUserId.toString),
patterns = Seq(),
onMessage = (pubSubMessage: PubSubMessage) => {
responseObserver.onValue(pubSubMessage.data)
}
)
}
catch {
case e: RuntimeException =>
// redisClient isn't defined here...
redisClient.unsubscribe(currentUserId.toString)
redisClient.stop()
messageStreamResult.complete(Try(true))
responseObserver.onCompleted()
}
The problem is that the redis client val isn't defined in the catch block because there may have been an exception creating it. I also can't move the try-catch block into the callback because there's no way (that I can find) of referring to the redisClient object from within the callback (this doesn't resolve).
To solve this I'm instantiating redisClient as a var outside the try-catch block. Then inside the try block I stop the client and assign a new redisPubSub (created as above) to the redisClient var. That's an ugly hack which is also error prone (e.g. if there genuinely is a problem creating the second client, the catch block will try to call methods on an erroneous object).
Is there a better way of writing this code so that I can correctly call stop() on the redisClient if an exception is raised when trying to send the message to the responseObserver?
Update
I've just solved this using promises. Is there a simpler way though?
That exception handler is not going to be invoked if there is a problem sending the message. It is for problems in setting up the client. This SO answer talks about handling errors when sending messages.
As for the callback referring to the client, I think you want to register the callback after creating the client rather than trying to pass the callback in when you create it. Here is some sample code from Debashish Ghosh that does this.
Presumably that callback is going to run in another thread, so if it uses redisClient you'll have to be careful about concurrency. Ideally the callback could get to the client object through some argument. If not, then perhaps using volatile would be the easiest way to deal with that, although I suspect you'd eventually get into trouble if multiple callbacks can fail at once. Perhaps use an actor to manage the client connection, as Debashish has done?

dart js-interop FunctionProxy callback relationship to js.context

I have a Dart js-interop callback that in turn takes a javascript callback as an argument. The dart callback implementation looks like this:
void callBackToDartCode(String query, js.FunctionProxy completionCallback) {
js.context.completionCallback = completionCallback;
doSomethingAscyn(query).then(
(result) {
// hand the query result back to the javascript code
js.context.completionCallback(js.map(result));
});
This works. The key to making this work is to save the FunctionProxy in the js.context so that it is available when it comes time to execute it in the async "then" method. This line of code is important:
js.context.completionCallback = completionCallback;
If that's not done then the completeCallback is not retained and hence cannot be called when the async operation completes.
I have not seen examples like this and I am not sure I have really done this properly.
It raises questions:
How do I disassociate "completeCallback" from js.context after I've called it? Does it remain associated with js.context forever?
It appears there will be conflicting use of the name "completionCallback" within js.context if multiple async operations are in progress at the same time. That strikes me as a common problem. Does js-interop have a way to deal with that or is it my job to manage that?
With js-interop all proxies are scoped to prevent memory leaks. This means that Proxy will lost its JS object reference at the end of its associated scope. If scoped((){}) function is not use explicitely a lazy scope is initialized the first time an interop operation is done and the scope is automatically closed at the end of the current event loop. If you want to make a Proxy to live longer than its associated scope, you have to retain it. This can be done with js.retain(proxy). Once your proxy is no longer needed, you can release it with js.release(proxy).
Thus your code should be :
void callBackToDartCode(String query, js.FunctionProxy completionCallback) {
js.retain(completionCallback);
doSomethingAscyn(query).then(
(result) {
// hand the query result back to the javascript code
completionCallback(js.map(result));
// completionCallback is no longer used
js.release(completionCallback);
});
}
About your question about disassociate "completeCallback" from js.context you could have done it with js.deleteProperty(js.context, "completeCallback")

Any way of appending to the act method in scala?

First off, I am new to Scala:
I am writing a logging facility in Scala that will simply be a class that extends the Actor class. This way a user can just extend this class and the logging features will be available. Basically, I want to write to a log file every time an actor that extends this class sends or receives a message. For clarification every actor will have its own log file which can be collated later. I am taking a Lamport clocks style approach to ordering the events by having each Actor (who extends this class) have their own time variable that gets updated on a message send-receive and the actor will compare the current time variable (simply a positive integer) with the sender's and update its time variable with the greater of the two.
For now I chose to make it a simple method like
sendMessage(recipient, message)
For sending messages. This will just log to the file that the actor is going to send a message to X.
Now, the part that I am stumped on is doing logging when receiving messages. When an actor gets a message I simply want to log this event in a format like
myLogFile.writeLine(self.ToString+": Got a message from "+X+" at time: "+messageSendTime+", processed the message at" +Math.max(myCurrTime+1, messageSendTime+1))
However I need to know who sent this message, unless I force upon the user to include this info (namely the sender's name, time variable, etc) in the messages themselves, it gets hard(er). Is there any way to get the reference of the actual sender? I want this to work with remote actors as well. The only way I can think of is if I append to the act method that the user defines in his/her class with some extra case statements like:
def act {
case => // the user's case statements
...
//somehow I append these statements to the end for the Logger class's use
case (LoggerClassRegisterInboundMessage, message, timeStamp)
InboundMessagesMap.put(timeStamp, message)
}
By having this functionality I can do all the logging "behind the scenes" with these hidden messages being sent whenever the user sends a message. However this only works if the sender also uses the Logging facility. So a more general question is: is there a way in Scala to get the name/toString of a sender in Scala regardless of the sender's class?
I'm actually OK with going with the assumption that every class that sends messages will extend the Logger class. So if anyone knows how to append to the act like or something similar to the above example I will be equally grateful!
As it was said in the comments, Akka is the way to go. It's so much more powerful than the current Scala Actor API which will become deprecated with 2.10 anyway.
But, to attack your specific problem, you could create a trait for actors which support logging, in a way similar to this (I don't know if this actually works, but you can try it):
trait LoggingActor extends Actor {
override def receive[R](pf: PartialFunction[Any, R]): R = {
//we are appending to the partial function pf a case to handle messages with logging:
val loggingPf = pf orElse {
case (LoggerClassRegisterInboundMessage, message, timeStamp) => {
//do somthing with this log message.
message //returning the unwrapped result afterwards
}
}
super.receive(loggingPf)
}
//overriding the send as well
override def !(msg: Any): Unit {
//Wrap it in a logging message
super ! (LoggerClassRegisterInboundMessage, msg, getTimestamp())
}
}
And you would create your actors with something like this:
val myActor = new MyActor with LoggingActor
Hope it helps !