How to wait for several Futures?

Question

Suppose I have several futures and need to wait until either any of them fails or all of them succeed.

For example: Let there are 3 futures:

Answer 1

For this purpose I would use an Akka actor. Unlike the for-comprehension, it fails as soon as any of the futures fail, so it's a bit more efficient in that sense.

class ResultCombiner(futs: Future[_]*) extends Actor {

  var origSender: ActorRef = null
  var futsRemaining: Set[Future[_]] = futs.toSet

  override def receive = {
    case () =>
      origSender = sender
      for(f <- futs)
        f.onComplete(result => self ! if(result.isSuccess) f else false)
    case false =>
      origSender ! SomethingFailed
    case f: Future[_] =>
      futsRemaining -= f
      if(futsRemaining.isEmpty) origSender ! EverythingSucceeded
  }

}

sealed trait Result
case object SomethingFailed extends Result
case object EverythingSucceeded extends Result

Then, create the actor, send a message to it (so that it will know where to send its reply to) and wait for a reply.

val actor = actorSystem.actorOf(Props(new ResultCombiner(f1, f2, f3)))
try {
  val f4: Future[Result] = actor ? ()
  implicit val timeout = new Timeout(30 seconds) // or whatever
  Await.result(f4, timeout.duration).asInstanceOf[Result] match {
    case SomethingFailed => println("Oh noes!")
    case EverythingSucceeded => println("It all worked!")
  }
} finally {
  // Avoid memory leaks: destroy the actor
  actor ! PoisonPill
}