How to write a timer actor in Scala?

Question

I need an actor to send a message every minute. How do I best achieve this behaviour? I am afraid of using java.lang.Thread.sleep(long millis) as a thread can b

Answer 1

I ended up in creation of dedicated Runnable instance, which keeps sending a message to the target actor. Like

case class QueueTick()

class QueueWatcherActor extends Actor {

  override def receive = {
    case QueueTick() => // do it here
  }

}

val ref = ActorSystem("xxx")

val actor = ref.actorOf(Props[QueueWatcherActor])

val executor = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor()

executor.scheduleAtFixedRate(new Runnable {
  def run() {
    actor ! QueueTick()
  }
},1,60,TimeUnit.SECONDS)