ActorCompanion pattern

readme.md

• http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/2.3.9/scala/actors.html

Recommended Practices It is a good idea to provide factory methods on the companion object of each Actor which help keeping the creation of suitable Props as close to the actor definition as possible. This also avoids the pitfalls associated with using the Props.apply(...) method which takes a by-name argument, since within a companion object the given code block will not retain a reference to its enclosing scope:

ActorCompanion.scala

package example

import akka.actor._

abstract class ActorCompanion[A <: Actor](implicit A: reflect.ClassTag[A]) {

  /** constructor parameter type for `A` */
  type B

  def props(param: B): Props =
    Props(A.runtimeClass, param)

  def create(name: String, param: B)(implicit context: ActorRefFactory): ActorRef =
    context.actorOf(props(param), name)
}

build.sbt

libraryDependencies += "com.typesafe.akka" %% "akka-actor" % "2.3.9"

scalaVersion := "2.11.6"

MyActor.scala

package example

import akka.actor.Actor

object MyActor extends ActorCompanion[MyActor] {

  final case class Param(param1: Int, param2: Boolean, param3: List[String])

  override type B = Param

}

class MyActor(param: MyActor.Param) extends Actor {
  override def receive = {
    case message =>
      println(message)
  }
}