Futures

Introduction

In the Scala Standard Library, a Future is a data structure used to retrieve the result of some concurrent operation. This result can be accessed synchronously (blocking) or asynchronously (non-blocking).

Execution Contexts

In order to execute callbacks and operations, Futures need something called an ExecutionContext, which is very similar to a java.util.concurrent.Executor. if you have an ActorSystem in scope, it will use its default dispatcher as the ExecutionContext, or you can use the factory methods provided by the ExecutionContext companion objectExecutionContexts class to wrap Executors and ExecutorServices, or even create your own.

Scala

import scala.concurrent.{ ExecutionContext, Promise }

implicit val ec = ExecutionContext.fromExecutorService(yourExecutorServiceGoesHere)

// Do stuff with your brand new shiny ExecutionContext
val f = Promise.successful("foo")

// Then shut your ExecutionContext down at some
// appropriate place in your program/application
ec.shutdown()

Java

import akka.dispatch.*;
import jdocs.AbstractJavaTest;
import scala.Function0;
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext;
import scala.concurrent.Future;
import scala.concurrent.Await;
import scala.concurrent.Promise;
import akka.util.Timeout;


ExecutionContext ec =
  ExecutionContexts.fromExecutorService(yourExecutorServiceGoesHere);

//Use ec with your Futures
Future<String> f1 = Futures.successful("foo");

// Then you shut down the ExecutorService at the end of your application.
yourExecutorServiceGoesHere.shutdown();

Within Actors

Each actor is configured to be run on a MessageDispatcher, and that dispatcher doubles as an ExecutionContext. If the nature of the Future calls invoked by the actor matches or is compatible with the activities of that actor (e.g. all CPU bound and no latency requirements), then it may be easiest to reuse the dispatcher for running the Futures by importing context.dispatchergetContext().dispatcher().

Scala

class A extends Actor {
  import context.dispatcher
  val f = Future("hello")
  def receive = {
    case _ ⇒
  }
}

Java

import akka.actor.AbstractActor;
import akka.dispatch.Futures;

public class ActorWithFuture extends AbstractActor {
  ActorWithFuture(){
    Futures.future(() -> "hello", getContext().dispatcher());
  }

  @Override
  public Receive createReceive() {
    return AbstractActor.emptyBehavior();
  }
}

Use with Actors

There are generally two ways of getting a reply from an ActorAbstractActor: the first is by a sent message (actor ! msgactorRef.tell(msg, sender)), which only works if the original sender was an ActorAbstractActor) and the second is through a Future.

Using an Actor’s ?the ActorRef’s ask method to send a message will return a Future. To wait for and retrieve the actual result the simplest method is:

Scala

import scala.concurrent.Await
import akka.pattern.ask
import akka.util.Timeout
import scala.concurrent.duration._

implicit val timeout = Timeout(5 seconds)
val future = actor ? msg // enabled by the “ask” import
val result = Await.result(future, timeout.duration).asInstanceOf[String]

Java

import akka.dispatch.*;
import jdocs.AbstractJavaTest;
import scala.Function0;
import scala.concurrent.ExecutionContext;
import scala.concurrent.Future;
import scala.concurrent.Await;
import scala.concurrent.Promise;
import akka.util.Timeout;


Timeout timeout = new Timeout(Duration.create(5, "seconds"));
Future<Object> future = Patterns.ask(actor, msg, timeout);
String result = (String) Await.result(future, timeout.duration());

This will cause the current thread to block and wait for the ActorAbstractActor to ‘complete’ the Future with its reply. Blocking is discouraged though as it will cause performance problems. The blocking operations are located in Await.result and Await.ready to make it easy to spot where blocking occurs. Alternatives to blocking are discussed further within this documentation. Also note that the Future returned by an ActorAbstractActor is a Future[Any]Future<Object> since an ActorAbstractActor is dynamic. That is why the asInstanceOfcast to String is used in the above sample.

import scala.concurrent.Future
import akka.pattern.ask

val future: Future[String] = ask(actor, msg).mapTo[String]

To send the result of a Future to an Actor, you can use the pipe construct:

scala

import akka.pattern.pipe
future pipeTo actor

java

akka.pattern.Patterns.pipe(future, system.dispatcher()).to(actor);

Use Directly

A common use case within Akka is to have some computation performed concurrently without needing the extra utility of an ActorAbstractActor. If you find yourself creating a pool of ActorsAbstractActors for the sole reason of performing a calculation in parallel, there is an easier (and faster) way:

Scala

import scala.concurrent.Await
import scala.concurrent.Future
import scala.concurrent.duration._

val future = Future {
  "Hello" + "World"
}
future foreach println

Java

import scala.concurrent.duration.Duration;
import akka.japi.Function;

import java.util.concurrent.*;

import static akka.dispatch.Futures.future;
import static java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit.SECONDS;


Future<String> f = future(new Callable<String>() {
  public String call() {
    return "Hello" + "World";
  }
}, system.dispatcher());

f.onSuccess(new PrintResult<String>(), system.dispatcher());

In the above code the block passed to Future will be executed by the default Dispatcher, with the return value of the block used to complete the Future (in this case, the result would be the string: “HelloWorld”). Unlike a Future that is returned from an ActorAbstractActor, this Future is properly typed, and we also avoid the overhead of managing an ActorAbstractActor.

You can also create already completed Futures using the Future companionFutures class, which can be either successes:

Scala

val future = Future.successful("Yay!")

Java

Future<String> future = Futures.successful("Yay!");

Or failures:

Scala

val otherFuture = Future.failed[String](new IllegalArgumentException("Bang!"))

Java

Future<String> otherFuture = Futures.failed(
  new IllegalArgumentException("Bang!"));

It is also possible to create an empty Promise, to be filled later, and obtain the corresponding Future:

Scala

val promise = Promise[String]()
val theFuture = promise.future
promise.success("hello")

Java

Promise<String> promise = Futures.promise();
Future<String> theFuture = promise.future();
promise.success("hello");

public final static class PrintResult<T> extends OnSuccess<T> {
  @Override public final void onSuccess(T t) {
    System.out.println(t);
  }
}

Functional Futures

Scala’s Future has several monadic methods that are very similar to the ones used by Scala’s collections. These allow you to create ‘pipelines’ or ‘streams’ that the result will travel through.

Future is a Monad

The first method for working with Future functionally is map. This method takes a FunctionMapper which performs some operation on the result of the Future, and returning a new result. The return value of the map method is another Future that will contain the new result:

Scala

val f1 = Future {
  "Hello" + "World"
}
val f2 = f1 map { x ⇒
  x.length
}
f2 foreach println

Java

import scala.concurrent.duration.Duration;
import akka.japi.Function;

import java.util.concurrent.*;

import static akka.dispatch.Futures.future;
import static java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit.SECONDS;


final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

Future<String> f1 = future(new Callable<String>() {
  public String call() {
    return "Hello" + "World";
  }
}, ec);

Future<Integer> f2 = f1.map(new Mapper<String, Integer>() {
  public Integer apply(String s) {
    return s.length();
  }
}, ec);

f2.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Integer>(), system.dispatcher());

In this example we are joining two strings together within a Future. Instead of waiting for thisf1 to complete, we apply our function that calculates the length of the string using the map method. Now we have a second Future, f2, that will eventually contain an IntInteger. When our original Future, f1, completes, it will also apply our function and complete the second Future with its result. When we finally get the result, it will contain the number 10. Our original Future still contains the string “HelloWorld” and is unaffected by the map.

Something to note when using these methods: passed work is always dispatched on the provided ExecutionContext. Even if the Future has already been completed, when one of these methods is called.

val f1 = Future {
  "Hello" + "World"
}
val f2 = Future.successful(3)
val f3 = f1 map { x ⇒
  f2 map { y ⇒
    x.length * y
  }
}
f3 foreach println

val f1 = Future {
  "Hello" + "World"
}
val f2 = Future.successful(3)
val f3 = f1 flatMap { x ⇒
  f2 map { y ⇒
    x.length * y
  }
}
f3 foreach println

val future1 = Future.successful(4)
val future2 = future1.filter(_ % 2 == 0)

future2 foreach println

val failedFilter = future1.filter(_ % 2 == 1).recover {
  // When filter fails, it will have a java.util.NoSuchElementException
  case m: NoSuchElementException ⇒ 0
}

failedFilter foreach println

val f = for {
  a ← Future(10 / 2) // 10 / 2 = 5
  b ← Future(a + 1) //  5 + 1 = 6
  c ← Future(a - 1) //  5 - 1 = 4
  if c > 3 // Future.filter
} yield b * c //  6 * 4 = 24

// Note that the execution of futures a, b, and c
// are not done in parallel.

f foreach println

Composing Futures

val f1 = ask(actor1, msg1)
val f2 = ask(actor2, msg2)

val a = Await.result(f1, 3 seconds).asInstanceOf[Int]
val b = Await.result(f2, 3 seconds).asInstanceOf[Int]

val f3 = ask(actor3, (a + b))

val result = Await.result(f3, 3 seconds).asInstanceOf[Int]

val f1 = ask(actor1, msg1)
val f2 = ask(actor2, msg2)

val f3 = for {
  a ← f1.mapTo[Int]
  b ← f2.mapTo[Int]
  c ← ask(actor3, (a + b)).mapTo[Int]
} yield c

f3 foreach println

Scala

// oddActor returns odd numbers sequentially from 1 as a List[Future[Int]]
val listOfFutures = List.fill(100)(akka.pattern.ask(oddActor, GetNext).mapTo[Int])

// now we have a Future[List[Int]]
val futureList = Future.sequence(listOfFutures)

// Find the sum of the odd numbers
val oddSum = futureList.map(_.sum)
oddSum foreach println

Java

import static akka.dispatch.Futures.sequence;


final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
//Some source generating a sequence of Future<Integer>:s
Iterable<Future<Integer>> listOfFutureInts = source;

// now we have a Future[Iterable[Integer]]
Future<Iterable<Integer>> futureListOfInts = sequence(listOfFutureInts, ec);

// Find the sum of the odd numbers
Future<Long> futureSum = futureListOfInts.map(
  new Mapper<Iterable<Integer>, Long>() {
    public Long apply(Iterable<Integer> ints) {
      long sum = 0;
      for (Integer i : ints)
        sum += i;
      return sum;
    }
  }, ec);

futureSum.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Long>(), system.dispatcher());

To better explain what happened in the example, Future.sequence is taking the List[Future[Int]]Iterable<Future<Integer>> and turning it into a Future[List[Int]]Future<Iterable<Integer>>. We can then use map to work with the List[Int]Iterable<Integer> directly, and we aggregate the sum of the ListIterable.

The traverse method is similar to sequence, but it takes a sequence of A and applies a function A => Future[B]from A to Future<B> to return a Future[T[B]] where T is again a subclass of Traversable. For example, to use traverse to sum the first 100 odd numbers: and returns a Future<Iterable<B>>, enabling parallel map over the sequence, if you use Futures.future to create the Future.

Scala

val futureList = Future.traverse((1 to 100).toList)(x ⇒ Future(x * 2 - 1))
val oddSum = futureList.map(_.sum)
oddSum foreach println

Java

import static akka.dispatch.Futures.traverse;


final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
//Just a sequence of Strings
Iterable<String> listStrings = Arrays.asList("a", "b", "c");

Future<Iterable<String>> futureResult = traverse(listStrings,
  new Function<String, Future<String>>() {
    public Future<String> apply(final String r) {
      return future(new Callable<String>() {
        public String call() {
          return r.toUpperCase();
        }
      }, ec);
    }
  }, ec);

//Returns the sequence of strings as upper case
futureResult.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Iterable<String>>(), system.dispatcher());

val futureList = Future.sequence((1 to 100).toList.map(x ⇒ Future(x * 2 - 1)))
val oddSum = futureList.map(_.sum)
oddSum foreach println

Then there’s a method that’s called fold that takes a start-value, a sequence of Futures and a function from the type of the start-value, a timeout, and the type of the futures and returns something with the same type as the start-value, and then applies the function to all elements in the sequence of futures, non-blockingly, the execution will be started when the last of the Futures is completed.

Scala

// Create a sequence of Futures
val futures = for (i ← 1 to 1000) yield Future(i * 2)
val futureSum = Future.fold(futures)(0)(_ + _)
futureSum foreach println

Java

import akka.japi.Function2;
import static akka.dispatch.Futures.fold;



final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

//A sequence of Futures, in this case Strings
Iterable<Future<String>> futures = source;

//Start value is the empty string
Future<String> resultFuture = fold("", futures,
  new Function2<String, String, String>() {
    public String apply(String r, String t) {
      return r + t; //Just concatenate
    }
  }, ec);

resultFuture.onSuccess(new PrintResult<String>(), system.dispatcher());

That’s all it takes!

If the sequence passed to fold is empty, it will return the start-value, in the case above, that will be 0. In some cases you don’t have a start-value and you’re able to use the value of the first completing Future in the sequence as the start-value, you can use reduce, it works like this:

Scala

// Create a sequence of Futures
val futures = for (i ← 1 to 1000) yield Future(i * 2)
val futureSum = Future.reduce(futures)(_ + _)
futureSum foreach println

Java

import static akka.dispatch.Futures.reduce;



final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
//A sequence of Futures, in this case Strings
Iterable<Future<String>> futures = source;

Future<Object> resultFuture = reduce(futures,
  new Function2<Object, String, Object>() {
    public Object apply(Object r, String t) {
      return r + t; //Just concatenate
    }
  }, ec);

resultFuture.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Object>(), system.dispatcher());

Same as with fold, the execution will be done asynchronously when the last of the Future is completed, you can also parallelize it by chunking your futures into sub-sequences and reduce them, and then reduce the reduced results again.

Callbacks

Sometimes you just want to listen to a Future being completed, and react to that not by creating a new Future, but by side-effecting. For this Future supports onComplete, onSuccess and onFailure, of which the last two are specializations of the first.

Scala

future onSuccess {
  case "bar"     ⇒ println("Got my bar alright!")
  case x: String ⇒ println("Got some random string: " + x)
}

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

future.onSuccess(new OnSuccess<String>() {
  public void onSuccess(String result) {
    if ("bar" == result) {
      //Do something if it resulted in "bar"
    } else {
      //Do something if it was some other String
    }
  }
}, ec);

Scala

future onFailure {
  case ise: IllegalStateException if ise.getMessage == "OHNOES" ⇒
  //OHNOES! We are in deep trouble, do something!
  case e: Exception ⇒
  //Do something else
}

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

future.onFailure(new OnFailure() {
  public void onFailure(Throwable failure) {
    if (failure instanceof IllegalStateException) {
      //Do something if it was this particular failure
    } else {
      //Do something if it was some other failure
    }
  }
}, ec);

Scala

future onComplete {
  case Success(result)  ⇒ doSomethingOnSuccess(result)
  case Failure(failure) ⇒ doSomethingOnFailure(failure)
}

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

future.onComplete(new OnComplete<String>() {
  public void onComplete(Throwable failure, String result) {
    if (failure != null) {
      //We got a failure, handle it here
    } else {
      // We got a result, do something with it
    }
  }
}, ec);

Define Ordering

Since callbacks are executed in any order and potentially in parallel, it can be tricky at the times when you need sequential ordering of operations. But there’s a solution and its name is andThen. It creates a new Future with the specified callback, a Future that will have the same result as the Future it’s called on, which allows for ordering like in the following sample:

Scala

val result = Future { loadPage(url) } andThen {
  case Failure(exception) ⇒ log(exception)
} andThen {
  case _ ⇒ watchSomeTV()
}
result foreach println

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
Future<String> future1 = Futures.successful("value").andThen(
  new OnComplete<String>() {
    public void onComplete(Throwable failure, String result) {
      if (failure != null)
        sendToIssueTracker(failure);
    }
  }, ec).andThen(new OnComplete<String>() {
  public void onComplete(Throwable failure, String result) {
    if (result != null)
      sendToTheInternetz(result);
  }
}, ec);

Auxiliary Methods

Future fallbackTo combines 2 Futures into a new Future, and will hold the successful value of the second Future if the first Future fails.

Scala

val future4 = future1 fallbackTo future2 fallbackTo future3
future4 foreach println

Java

Future<String> future1 = Futures.failed(new IllegalStateException("OHNOES1"));
Future<String> future2 = Futures.failed(new IllegalStateException("OHNOES2"));
Future<String> future3 = Futures.successful("bar");
// Will have "bar" in this case
Future<String> future4 = future1.fallbackTo(future2).fallbackTo(future3);
future4.onSuccess(new PrintResult<String>(), system.dispatcher());

You can also combine two Futures into a new Future that will hold a tuple of the two Futures successful results, using the zip operation.

Scala

val future3 = future1 zip future2 map { case (a, b) ⇒ a + " " + b }
future3 foreach println

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
Future<String> future1 = Futures.successful("foo");
Future<String> future2 = Futures.successful("bar");
Future<String> future3 = future1.zip(future2).map(
  new Mapper<scala.Tuple2<String, String>, String>() {
    public String apply(scala.Tuple2<String, String> zipped) {
      return zipped._1() + " " + zipped._2();
    }
  }, ec);

future3.onSuccess(new PrintResult<String>(), system.dispatcher());

Exceptions

Since the result of a Future is created concurrently to the rest of the program, exceptions must be handled differently. It doesn’t matter if an ActorAbstractActor or the dispatcher is completing the Future, if an Exception is caught the Future will contain it instead of a valid result. If a Future does contain an Exception, calling Await.result will cause it to be thrown again so it can be handled properly.

It is also possible to handle an Exception by returning a different result. This is done with the recover method. For example:

Scala

val future = akka.pattern.ask(actor, msg1) recover {
  case e: ArithmeticException ⇒ 0
}
future foreach println

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

Future<Integer> future = future(new Callable<Integer>() {
  public Integer call() {
    return 1 / 0;
  }
}, ec).recover(new Recover<Integer>() {
  public Integer recover(Throwable problem) throws Throwable {
    if (problem instanceof ArithmeticException)
      return 0;
    else
      throw problem;
  }
}, ec);

future.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Integer>(), system.dispatcher());

In this example, if the actor replied with a akka.actor.Status.Failure containing the ArithmeticException, our Future would have a result of 0. The recover method works very similarly to the standard try/catch blocks, so multiple Exceptions can be handled in this manner, and if an Exception is not handled this way it will behave as if we hadn’t used the recover method.

You can also use the recoverWith method, which has the same relationship to recover as flatMap has to map, and is use like this:

Scala

val future = akka.pattern.ask(actor, msg1) recoverWith {
  case e: ArithmeticException ⇒ Future.successful(0)
  case foo: IllegalArgumentException ⇒
    Future.failed[Int](new IllegalStateException("All br0ken!"))
}
future foreach println

Java

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();

Future<Integer> future = future(new Callable<Integer>() {
  public Integer call() {
    return 1 / 0;
  }
}, ec).recoverWith(new Recover<Future<Integer>>() {
  public Future<Integer> recover(Throwable problem) throws Throwable {
    if (problem instanceof ArithmeticException) {
      return future(new Callable<Integer>() {
        public Integer call() {
          return 0;
        }
      }, ec);
    } else
      throw problem;
  }
}, ec);

future.onSuccess(new PrintResult<Integer>(), system.dispatcher());

After

akka.pattern.after makes it easy to complete a Future with a value or exception after a timeout.

Scala

// import akka.pattern.after

val delayed = akka.pattern.after(200 millis, using = system.scheduler)(Future.failed(
  new IllegalStateException("OHNOES")))
val future = Future { Thread.sleep(1000); "foo" }
val result = Future firstCompletedOf Seq(future, delayed)

Java

import static akka.pattern.Patterns.after;


import java.util.Arrays;
final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
Future<String> failExc = Futures.failed(new IllegalStateException("OHNOES1"));
Future<String> delayed = Patterns.after(Duration.create(200, "millis"),
  system.scheduler(), ec,  failExc);
Future<String> future = future(new Callable<String>() {
  public String call() throws InterruptedException {
    Thread.sleep(1000);
    return "foo";
  }
}, ec);
Future<String> result = Futures.firstCompletedOf(
  Arrays.<Future<String>>asList(future, delayed), ec);

Retry

akka.pattern.retry will retry a Future classCompletionStage class some number of times with a delay between each attempt.

Scala

implicit val scheduler = system.scheduler
//Given some future that will succeed eventually
@volatile var failCount = 0
def attempt() = {
  if (failCount < 5) {
    failCount += 1
    Future.failed(new IllegalStateException(failCount.toString))
  } else Future.successful(5)
}
//Return a new future that will retry up to 10 times
val retried = akka.pattern.retry(
  attempt,
  10,
  100 milliseconds)

Java

import static akka.pattern.PatternsCS.retry;

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
Callable<CompletionStage<String>> attempt = () -> CompletableFuture.completedFuture("test");
CompletionStage<String> retriedFuture = retry(attempt, 3, java.time.Duration.ofMillis(200), system.scheduler(), ec);

final ExecutionContext ec = system.dispatcher();
final CountDownLatch countDownLatch = new CountDownLatch(1);

Future<String> scalaFuture = Futures.future(() -> {
  assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("akka.actor.default-dispatcher"));
  countDownLatch.await(); // do not complete yet
  return "hello";
}, ec);

CompletionStage<String> fromScalaFuture = FutureConverters.toJava(scalaFuture)
  .thenApply(s -> { // 1
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  })
  .thenApply(s -> { // 2
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  })
  .thenApply(s -> { // 3
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  });

countDownLatch.countDown(); // complete scalaFuture

Future<String> scalaFuture = Futures.future(() -> {
  assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("akka.actor.default-dispatcher"));
  return "hello";
}, ec);

CompletionStage<String> completedStage = FutureConverters.toJava(scalaFuture)
  .thenApply(s -> { // 1
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  });

completedStage.toCompletableFuture().get(2, SECONDS); // complete current CompletionStage
final String currentThread = Thread.currentThread().getName();

CompletionStage<String> stage2 = completedStage
  .thenApply(s -> { // 2
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), is(currentThread));
    return s;
  })
  .thenApply(s -> { // 3
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), is(currentThread));
    return s;
  });

CompletionStage<String> fromScalaFuture = FutureConverters.toJava(scalaFuture)
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> { // 1
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  })
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> { // 2
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  })
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> { // 3
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("ForkJoinPool.commonPool"));
    return s;
  });

final Executor ex = system.dispatcher();

CompletionStage<String> fromScalaFuture = FutureConverters.toJava(scalaFuture)
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> {
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("akka.actor.default-dispatcher"));
    return s;
  }, ex)
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> {
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("akka.actor.default-dispatcher"));
    return s;
  }, ex)
  .thenApplyAsync(s -> {
    assertThat(Thread.currentThread().getName(), containsString("akka.actor.default-dispatcher"));
    return s;
  }, ex);