TestKit and absolute actor path path

[Filippo De Luca]

Hi Guys,

I am wondering if is it possible to use a probe to test an actor that reference the other actor by actor path.

For example it can use actorFor("/user/foo/bar") or actorFor("../my-sibling-actor") is there a way to inject a probe inside the actor-system.

This bring to my mind another question, is it a good practice to reference an actor by the path, or is better to pass the actorRef as parameter when possible?

Thanks for your help.

--

Filippo De Luca
---------------------

WWW: http://filippodeluca.com

IM:  filosg...@gmail.com

[Edward Sargisson]

I'd love to hear the answer to this too!

I've solved the problem by injecting actorRefs but it does seem to lose the point of actor supervision.

The other technique I've tried in one spot is to use the TestActorRef to get the underlyingActor and then set the actorRef on that. This means that actor construction can do things normally - and then I override it.

Cheers,

Edward

[Filippo De Luca]

Hi Edward,

In that case it is easy: When an actor need to start a child, I'll pass a Props instance for that actor. So that the actor will be supervised by the parent but the dependencies of the constructor for the child are hidden.

ex:
class ParentActor(childProps: Props) {

   val child = context.actorOf(childProps.withRouter(...), "child")

   ...
}

object ParentActor {

  def props(childProps: Props) = Props(classOf[ParentActor], childProps)

}

class ChildActor(mailServer: MailServer, ....) {

  ....
}

object ChildActor {

  def props(mailServer: MailServer, ....) = Props(classOf[ChildActor], mailServer, ....)

}

val childProps = ChildActor.props(mailServer, ....)

....

val toTest = system.actorOf(ParentActor.props(childProps), "parent")

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[Edward Sargisson]

Well, in my case, I'm creating TestProbes and passing them into the actor under test so that I can verify what it does with them.

For example, I have one class which communicates with 3 other actors and I mock out all of them with TestProbes.

However, it does feel like a lot of work which is a clue I may be not doing this the best way.

Cheers,

Edward

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[Martynas Mickevičius]

There has been discussion about this a while ago.

Basically you need to have a way to inject either ActorRef or path for actor selection. Then you can change these in tests accordingly.

Martynas Mickevičius

Typesafe – Reactive Apps on the JVM