What's the Scala way to implement a retry-able call like this one?

Question

Still the newbie in Scala and I\'m now looking for a way to implement the following code on it:

@Override
public void store(InputStream source, String destin         


        

Answer 1

A reusable object/method with a pause between attempts:

Retry(3, 2 seconds) { /* some code */ }

Code:

object Retry {
  def apply[A](times: Int, pause: Duration)(code: ⇒ A): A = {
    var result: Option[A] = None
    var remaining = times
    while (remaining > 0) {
      remaining -= 1
      try {
        result = Some(code)
        remaining = 0
      } catch {
        case _ if remaining > 0 ⇒ Thread.sleep(pause.toMillis)
      }
    }
    result.get
  }
}

Answer 2

There is a method in scalaz.concurrent.Task[T]: http://docs.typelevel.org/api/scalaz/nightly/#scalaz.concurrent.Task

def retry(delays: Seq[Duration], p: (Throwable) ⇒ Boolean = _.isInstanceOf[Exception]): Task[T]

Given a Task[T], you can create a new Task[T] which will retry a certain number of times, where the delay between retries is defined by the delays parameter. e.g.:

// Task.delay will lazily execute the supplied function when run
val myTask: Task[String] =
  Task.delay(???)

// Retry four times if myTask throws java.lang.Exception when run
val retryTask: Task[String] =
  myTask.retry(Seq(20.millis, 50.millis, 100.millis, 5.seconds))

// Run the Task on the current thread to get the result
val result: String = retryTask.run

Answer 3

//Here is one using Play framework

def retry[T](times:Int)(block: => Future[T])(implicit ctx: ExecutionContext):Future[T] = {

type V = Either[Throwable,T]
val i:Iterator[Future[Option[V]]] = 
  Iterator.continually(block.map(t => Right(t)).recover { case e => Left(e) }.map(t => Some(t)))
def _retry:Iteratee[V,V] = {
    def step(ctr:Int)(i:Input[V]):Iteratee[V,V] = i match {
        case Input.El(e) if (e.isRight) => Done(e,Input.EOF)
        case _ if (ctr < times) => Cont[V,V](i => step(ctr + 1)(i))
        case Input.El(e) => Done(e,Input.EOF)
    }
    Cont[V,V](i => step(0)(i))
}
Enumerator.generateM(i.next).run(_retry).flatMap { _ match {
  case Right(t) => future(t)
  case Left(e) => Future.failed(e)
}}
}

Answer 4

I ended up adapting a previous answer to allow filtering on which exceptions to retry on:

  /**
   * Attempt 'fn' up to 'attempts' times, retrying only if 'forExceptions' returns true for retry-able exceptions.
   */
  def retry[T](attempts: Int, forExceptions: (Throwable) => Boolean)(fn: => T): T =
  {
    // toStream creates a lazily evaluated list, which we map to a try/catch block resulting in an Either
    val tries = (1 to attempts).toStream map
      {
        n =>
          try
            Left(fn)
          catch
            {
              case e if forExceptions(e) => Right(e)
            }
      }

    // find the first 'Either' where left is defined and return that, or if not found, return last
    // exception thrown (stored as 'right').  The cool thing is that because of lazy evaluation, 'fn' is only
    // evaluated until it success (e.g., until Left is found)
    tries find (_ isLeft) match
    {
      case Some(Left(result)) => result
      case _ => throw tries.reverse.head.right.get
    }

  }

You can call in two ways:

val result = retry(4, _.isInstanceOf[SomeBadException])
{
   boom.doit()
}

or with partial functions (also showing version where don't care about return value)

    def pf: PartialFunction[Throwable, Boolean] =
    {
      case x: SomeOtherException => true
      case _ => false
    }

   retry(4, pf)
   {
      boom.doit()
   }

Answer 5

I'd suggest this -

def retry[T](n: Int)(code: => T) : T = { 
  var res : Option[T] = None
  var left = n 
  while(!res.isDefined) {
    left = left - 1 
    try { 
      res = Some(code) 
    } catch { 
      case t: Throwable if left > 0 => 
    }
  } 
  res.get
} 

It does:

scala> retry(3) { println("foo"); }
foo

scala> retry(4) { throw new RuntimeException("nope"); }
java.lang.RuntimeException: nope
        at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:7)
        at $anonfun$1.apply(<console>:7)
        at .retry(<console>:11)
        at .<init>(<console>:7)
        at .<clinit>(<console>)
        at RequestResult$.<init>(<console>:9)
        at RequestResult$.<clinit>(<console>)
        at RequestResult$scala_repl_result(<console>)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
        at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
        at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:597)
        at scala.tools.nsc.Interpreter$Request$$anonfun$loadAndRun$1$$anonfun$apply$17.apply(Interpreter.scala:988)
        at scala.tools.nsc.Interpreter$Request$$anonfun$loadAndRun$1$$anonfun$apply$17.apply(Interpreter....
scala> var i = 0 ;
i: Int = 0

scala> retry(3) { i = i + 1; if(i < 3) throw new RuntimeException("meh");}

scala> i
res3: Int = 3

It can probably be improved to be more idiomatic Scala, but I am not a big fan of one-liners that require the reader to know the entire standard library by heart anyways.

Answer 6

Here is one possible implementation:

def retry[T](times: Int)(fn: => T) = 
    (1 to times).view flatMap (n => try Some(fn) catch {case e: Exception => None}) headOption

You can use it like this:

retry(3) {
    getClient.putObject(request)
}

retry also returns Some[T] if body was processed successfully and None if body was only throwing exceptions.

---

Update

If you want to bobble up last exception, then you can take very similar approach but use Either instead of Option:

def retry[T](times: Int)(fn: => T) = {
    val tries = (1 to times).toStream map (n => try Left(fn) catch {case e: Exception => Right(e)}) 

    tries find (_ isLeft) match {
        case Some(Left(result)) => result
        case _ => throw tries.reverse.head.right.get
    }
}

Also, as you can see, at the end, instead of having only last exception, I have them all. So you can also wrap them in some AggregatingException if you want and then throw it. (for simplicity, I just throw last exception)