Scheduler (Scala)
Sometimes the need for making things happen in the future arises, and where do you go look then? Look no further than ActorSystem! There you find the scheduler method that returns an instance of akka.actor.Scheduler, this instance is unique per ActorSystem and is used internally for scheduling things to happen at specific points in time. Please note that the scheduled tasks are executed by the default MessageDispatcher of the ActorSystem.
You can schedule sending of messages to actors and execution of tasks (functions or Runnable). You will get a Cancellable back that you can call cancel on to cancel the execution of the scheduled operation.
Warning
The default implementation of Scheduler used by Akka is based on the Netty HashedWheelTimer. It does not execute tasks at the exact time, but on every tick, it will run everything that is overdue. The accuracy of the default Scheduler can be modified by the "ticks-per-wheel" and "tick-duration" configuration properties. For more information, see: HashedWheelTimers.
Some examples
import akka.actor.Actor
import akka.actor.Props
import akka.util.duration._
//Schedules to send the "foo"-message to the testActor after 50ms
system.scheduler.scheduleOnce(50 milliseconds, testActor, "foo")
//Schedules a function to be executed (send the current time) to the testActor after 50ms
system.scheduler.scheduleOnce(50 milliseconds) {
testActor ! System.currentTimeMillis
}
val Tick = "tick"
val tickActor = system.actorOf(Props(new Actor {
def receive = {
case Tick ⇒ //Do something
}
}))
//This will schedule to send the Tick-message
//to the tickActor after 0ms repeating every 50ms
val cancellable =
system.scheduler.schedule(0 milliseconds,
50 milliseconds,
tickActor,
Tick)
//This cancels further Ticks to be sent
cancellable.cancel()
From akka.actor.ActorSystem
/**
* Light-weight scheduler for running asynchronous tasks after some deadline
* in the future. Not terribly precise but cheap.
*/
def scheduler: Scheduler
The Scheduler interface
/**
* An Akka scheduler service. This one needs one special behavior: if
* Closeable, it MUST execute all outstanding tasks upon .close() in order
* to properly shutdown all dispatchers.
*
* Furthermore, this timer service MUST throw IllegalStateException if it
* cannot schedule a task. Once scheduled, the task MUST be executed. If
* executed upon close(), the task may execute before its timeout.
*/
trait Scheduler {
/**
* Schedules a message to be sent repeatedly with an initial delay and
* frequency. E.g. if you would like a message to be sent immediately and
* thereafter every 500ms you would set delay=Duration.Zero and
* frequency=Duration(500, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
*
* Java & Scala API
*/
def schedule(
initialDelay: Duration,
frequency: Duration,
receiver: ActorRef,
message: Any): Cancellable
/**
* Schedules a function to be run repeatedly with an initial delay and a
* frequency. E.g. if you would like the function to be run after 2 seconds
* and thereafter every 100ms you would set delay = Duration(2, TimeUnit.SECONDS)
* and frequency = Duration(100, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
*
* Scala API
*/
def schedule(
initialDelay: Duration, frequency: Duration)(f: ⇒ Unit): Cancellable
/**
* Schedules a function to be run repeatedly with an initial delay and
* a frequency. E.g. if you would like the function to be run after 2
* seconds and thereafter every 100ms you would set delay = Duration(2,
* TimeUnit.SECONDS) and frequency = Duration(100, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
*
* Java API
*/
def schedule(
initialDelay: Duration, frequency: Duration, runnable: Runnable): Cancellable
/**
* Schedules a Runnable to be run once with a delay, i.e. a time period that
* has to pass before the runnable is executed.
*
* Java & Scala API
*/
def scheduleOnce(delay: Duration, runnable: Runnable): Cancellable
/**
* Schedules a message to be sent once with a delay, i.e. a time period that has
* to pass before the message is sent.
*
* Java & Scala API
*/
def scheduleOnce(delay: Duration, receiver: ActorRef, message: Any): Cancellable
/**
* Schedules a function to be run once with a delay, i.e. a time period that has
* to pass before the function is run.
*
* Scala API
*/
def scheduleOnce(delay: Duration)(f: ⇒ Unit): Cancellable
}
The Cancellable interface
This allows you to cancel something that has been scheduled for execution.
Warning
This does not abort the execution of the task, if it had already been started.
/**
* Signifies something that can be cancelled
* There is no strict guarantee that the implementation is thread-safe,
* but it should be good practice to make it so.
*/
trait Cancellable {
/**
* Cancels this Cancellable
*
* Java & Scala API
*/
def cancel(): Unit
/**
* Returns whether this Cancellable has been cancelled
*
* Java & Scala API
*/
def isCancelled: Boolean
}
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