Accessing AKKA Actor variables or get a returned value from an Actor

[Ryan Rasmussen]

class testActor extends Actor   {
    var test = "test2"
    def receive = {
            case "test" ⇒ 
                    test="works"
                    "works"

    }
}


 def test = Action {
    var test = "test"
    val system = ActorSystem("MySystem")
    val myActor = system.actorOf(Props[testActor.testActor], name = "testActor")

    myActor ! "test"

    test = myActor.test

Ok(views.html.test(test))
}

the line: test = myActor.test doesn't work.

I either need a way to access what is returned by the actor function, in this case "works", or a way to access a variable inside the Actor.

[Naftoli Gugenheim]

I don't know akka per se, but you need the "reply" functionality, and something besides plain !.

[Alec Zorab]

system.actorOf returns an actorRef, not a testActor.

Have a look in the akka docs how it works, but you basically need to do

import akka.pattern.ask

val test: Future[String] = (myActor ? "test").mapTo[String]

and then in the actor implementation, do sender ! "response".

As a side note, you can see that the type of receive is Any => Unit, so your return of "works" is getting discarded. I strongly recommend reading the akka documentation. They're very easy to understand and explain all of this stuff in depth.

http://akka.io/docs/