Actors and typing

On Tue, Jul 6, 2010 at 10:32 AM, Marc Weber <marco-oweber@gmx.de> wrote:

Hi, I'm still new to both: Actors and Scala.

Is my understand correct that an Actor is kind of object I can throw a
message at which may or may not send back a reply?

Well that's fine. But why can't I restrict the type of messages which I
can throw at an actor or which an Actor will return?

Eg it would be no problem to define an Actor like this, would it?

class myActor extends Actor[ExpectedInput, OutputType] {
 ..
}

You can still use [Any,Any] if you want to allow everything, can't you?

Is there something I've missed?

eg when changing the return type from String to Either[Error, String] I
want my code to break at compile time.

Do other Actor implementations exist which provide this kind of static
checking?

Lift has Actors that can be typed for message receipts.

Stambecco (built on Lift Actors) supports typed messages and typed messages with typed responses.
 

Marc Weber

--
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trait AbstractActor extends OutputChannel[Any] with CanReply[Any, Any]

... you might be able to back your own typed actors from OutputChannel / CanReply / InputChannel and such ... not sure how feasible this is, though ...

also there is in Actor

def !: Future[A]

so you can create a helper method using the resulting future's inputChannel (which is typed) to create like a typed !? method....

best, -sciss-

Am 06.07.2010 um 18:32 schrieb Marc Weber:

> Hi, I'm still new to both: Actors and Scala.
>
> Is my understand correct that an Actor is kind of object I can throw a
> message at which may or may not send back a reply?
>
> Well that's fine. But why can't I restrict the type of messages which I
> can throw at an actor or which an Actor will return?
>
> Eg it would be no problem to define an Actor like this, would it?
>
> class myActor extends Actor[ExpectedInput, OutputType] {
> ..
> }
>
> You can still use [Any,Any] if you want to allow everything, can't you?
>
> Is there something I've missed?
>
> eg when changing the return type from String to Either[Error, String] I
> want my code to break at compile time.
>
> Do other Actor implementations exist which provide this kind of static
> checking?
>
> Marc Weber

Hi Marc,

On 07/06/2010 07:32 PM, Marc Weber wrote:
> Is my understand correct that an Actor is kind of object I can throw a
> message at which may or may not send back a reply?
>
> Well that's fine. But why can't I restrict the type of messages which I
> can throw at an actor or which an Actor will return?

The following thread discusses this:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.scala/12988

The bottom line is that both the dynamically-scoped `self` as well as
`receiveWithin`/`reactWithin` cause problems with typed actors.

However, note that the `Reactor` trait (new in Scala 2.8) is
parameterized in the type of messages is accepts. Consequently,
`Reactor` neither supports `self` nor `reactWithin`.

> Do other Actor implementations exist which provide this kind of static
> checking?

You may be interested in a blog post by Josh Suereth that explains how
to use channels and partial functions to build input- and output-typed
instances of `scala.actors.Actor`:
http://suereth.blogspot.com/2010/02/actor-styles-oo-functional-or-blende...

However, in this case the behavior of an actor is defined by a partial
function that should not use `self` or `receiveWithin`.

Cheers,
Philipp