How can I have an Akka actor executed every 5 min?

Question

I\'d like to know if there are any mechanism in Akka that can have an actor executed periodically?

Answer 1

You don't really need an actor to do this in Akka 1.3.1 you can schedule a function to be called every 5 minutes like this:

Scheduler.schedule(() => println("Do something"), 0L, 5L, TimeUnit.MINUTES)

However, if you do want it to be an actor for other reasons you would call it like this

case class Message()

val actor = actorOf(new Actor {
  def receive = {
    case Message() => println("Do something in actor")
  }
}).start()

Scheduler.schedule(actor, Message(), 0L, 5L, TimeUnit.MINUTES)

If you're using Akka 2.0 then it would be done like this

val system = ActorSystem("MySystem")
system.scheduler.schedule(0 seconds, 5 minutes)(println("do something"))

Or send a message to an actor every 5 minutes like this

case class Message()
class MyActor extends Actor {
  def receive = { case Message() => println("Do something in actor") }
}

val system = ActorSystem("MySystem")
val actor = system.actorOf(Props(new MyActor), name = "actor")
system.scheduler.schedule(0 seconds, 5 minutes, actor, Message())