Using futures inside actors

We will learn how to use a future inside an actor to schedule an operation asynchronously to another thread.

Getting ready

All the prerequisites are the same as earlier; just import the Hello-Akka project in the IDE.

How to do it...

The following are the steps to use future inside the actor:

1. Create a scala file, say FutureInsideActor.scala, in the com.packt.chapter4 package.
2. Add the following import to the top of the file:

        import akka.actor.{Props, ActorSystem, Actor} 
        import scala.concurrent.{Await, Future} 
        import scala.concurrent.duration._ 

 

3. Create an actor that uses a future inside, as shown in the following code snippet:

        class FutureActor extends Actor { 
          import context.dispatcher 
          def receive = { 
            case (a:Int, b:Int) => val f = Future(a+b) 
            (Await.result(f, 10 seconds)) 
          } 
        } 

4. Create a test application, as follows:

        object FutureInsideActor extends App { 
     ...