In this lesson, you will make your own message types and use learn how to control processing flow within your actors based on your custom messages. Doing so will teach you the fundamentals of communicating in a message- and event-driven manner within your actor system.
This lesson picks up right where Lesson 1 left off, and continues extending our budding systems of console actors. In addition to defining our own messages, we'll also add some simple validation for the input we enter and take action based on the results of that validation.
Any POCO can be a message. A message can be a string, a value like int, a type, an object that implements an interface... whatever you want.
That being said, the recommended approach is to make your own custom messages into semantically named classes, and to encapsulate any state you want inside those classes (e.g. store a Reason inside a ValidationFailed class... hint, hint...).
As you saw in the first lesson, you Tell() the actor the message.
This is entirely up to you, and doesn't really have much to do with Akka.NET. You can handle (or not handle) a message as you choose within an actor.
Actors ignore messages they don't know how to handle. Whether or not this ignored message is logged as such depends on the type of actor.
With an UntypedActor, unhandled messages are not logged as unhandled unless you manually mark them as such, like so:
class MyActor : UntypedActor
{
protected override void OnReceive(object message)
{
if (message is Messages.InputError)
{
var msg = message as Messages.InputError;
Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
Console.WriteLine(msg.Reason);
}
else
{
Unhandled(message);
}
}
}However, in a ReceiveActor—which we cover in Unit 2—unhandled messages are automatically sent to Unhandled so the logging is done for you.
This is up to you - you can respond by simply processing the message, replying to the Sender, forwarding the message onto another actor, or doing nothing at all.
NOTE: Whenever your actor receives a message, it will always have the sender of the current message available via the
Senderproperty inside your actor.
In this exercise, we will introduce some basic validation into our system. We will then use custom message types to signal the results of that validation back to the user.
This is the class we'll use to define system-level messages that we can use to signal events. The pattern we'll be using is to turn events into messages. That is, when an event occurs, we will send an appropriate message class to the actor(s) that need to know about it, and then listen for / respond to that message as needed in the receiving actors.
Add three regions for different types of messages to the file. Next we'll be creating our own message classes that we'll use to signify events.
// in Messages.cs
#region Neutral/system messages
#endregion
#region Success messages
#endregion
#region Error messages
#endregionIn these regions we will define custom message types to signal these situations: - user provided blank input - user provided invalid input - user provided valid input
Define a marker message class in the Neutral/system messages region that we'll use to signal to continue processing (the "blank input" case):
// in Messages.cs
#region Neutral/system messages
/// <summary>
/// Marker class to continue processing.
/// </summary>
public class ContinueProcessing { }
#endregionDefine an InputSuccess class in the Success messages region. We'll use this to signal that the user's input was good and passed validation (the "valid input" case):
#region Success messages
// in Messages.cs
/// <summary>
/// Base class for signalling that user input was valid.
/// </summary>
public class InputSuccess
{
public InputSuccess(string reason)
{
Reason = reason;
}
public string Reason { get; private set; }
}
#endregionDefine the following InputError classes in the Error messages region. We'll use these messages to signal invalid input occurring (the "invalid input" cases):
// in Messages.cs
#region Error messages
/// <summary>
/// Base class for signalling that user input was invalid.
/// </summary>
public class InputError
{
public InputError(string reason)
{
Reason = reason;
}
public string Reason { get; private set; }
}
/// <summary>
/// User provided blank input.
/// </summary>
public class NullInputError : InputError
{
public NullInputError(string reason) : base(reason) { }
}
/// <summary>
/// User provided invalid input (currently, input w/ odd # chars)
/// </summary>
public class ValidationError : InputError
{
public ValidationError(string reason) : base(reason) { }
}
#endregionNOTE: You can compare your final
Messages.csto Messages.cs to make sure you're set up right before we go on.
Great! Now that we've got messages classes set up to wrap our events, let's use them in ConsoleReaderActor and ConsoleWriterActor.
Add the following internal message type to ConsoleReaderActor:
// in ConsoleReaderActor
public const string StartCommand = "start";Update the Main method to use ConsoleReaderActor.StartCommand:
Replace this:
// in Program.cs
// tell console reader to begin
consoleReaderActor.Tell("start");with this:
// in Program.cs
// tell console reader to begin
consoleReaderActor.Tell(ConsoleReaderActor.StartCommand);Replace the OnReceive method of ConsoleReaderActor as follows. Notice that we're now listening for our custom InputError messages, and taking action when we get an error.
// in ConsoleReaderActor
protected override void OnReceive(object message)
{
if (message.Equals(StartCommand))
{
DoPrintInstructions();
}
else if (message is Messages.InputError)
{
_consoleWriterActor.Tell(message as Messages.InputError);
}
GetAndValidateInput();
}While we're at it, let's add DoPrintInstructions(), GetAndValidateInput(), IsValid() to ConsoleReaderActor. These are internal methods that our ConsoleReaderActor will use to get input from the console and determine if it is valid. (Currently, "valid" just means that the input had an even number of characters. It's an arbitrary placeholder.)
// in ConsoleReaderActor, after OnReceive()
#region Internal methods
private void DoPrintInstructions()
{
Console.WriteLine("Write whatever you want into the console!");
Console.WriteLine("Some entries will pass validation, and some won't...\n\n");
Console.WriteLine("Type 'exit' to quit this application at any time.\n");
}
/// <summary>
/// Reads input from console, validates it, then signals appropriate response
/// (continue processing, error, success, etc.).
/// </summary>
private void GetAndValidateInput()
{
var message = Console.ReadLine();
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(message))
{
// signal that the user needs to supply an input, as previously
// received input was blank
Self.Tell(new Messages.NullInputError("No input received."));
}
else if (String.Equals(message, ExitCommand, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
{
// shut down the entire actor system (allows the process to exit)
Context.System.Shutdown();
}
else
{
var valid = IsValid(message);
if (valid)
{
_consoleWriterActor.Tell(new Messages.InputSuccess("Thank you! Message was valid."));
// continue reading messages from console
Self.Tell(new Messages.ContinueProcessing());
}
else
{
Self.Tell(new Messages.ValidationError("Invalid: input had odd number of characters."));
}
}
}
/// <summary>
/// Validates <see cref="message"/>.
/// Currently says messages are valid if contain even number of characters.
/// </summary>
/// <param name="message"></param>
/// <returns></returns>
private static bool IsValid(string message)
{
var valid = message.Length % 2 == 0;
return valid;
}
#endregionFirst, remove the definition and call to PrintInstructions() from Program.cs.
Now that ConsoleReaderActor has its own well-defined StartCommand, let's go ahead and use that instead of hardcoding the string "start" into the message.
As a quick checkpoint, your Main() should now look like this:
static void Main(string[] args)
{
// initialize MyActorSystem
MyActorSystem = ActorSystem.Create("MyActorSystem");
var consoleWriterActor = MyActorSystem.ActorOf(Props.Create(() => new ConsoleWriterActor()));
var consoleReaderActor = MyActorSystem.ActorOf(Props.Create(() => new ConsoleReaderActor(consoleWriterActor)));
// tell console reader to begin
consoleReaderActor.Tell(ConsoleReaderActor.StartCommand);
// blocks the main thread from exiting until the actor system is shut down
MyActorSystem.AwaitTermination();
}Not much has changed here, just a bit of cleanup.
Now, let's get ConsoleWriterActor to handle these new types of messages.
Change the OnReceive method of ConsoleWriterActor as follows:
// in ConsoleWriterActor.cs
protected override void OnReceive(object message)
{
if (message is Messages.InputError)
{
var msg = message as Messages.InputError;
Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Red;
Console.WriteLine(msg.Reason);
}
else if (message is Messages.InputSuccess)
{
var msg = message as Messages.InputSuccess;
Console.ForegroundColor = ConsoleColor.Green;
Console.WriteLine(msg.Reason);
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine(message);
}
Console.ResetColor();
}As you can see here, we are making ConsoleWriterActor pattern match against the type of message it receives, and take different actions according to what type of message it receives.
You should now have everything you need in place to be able to build and run. Give it a try!
If everything is working as it should, you should see an output like this:
Compare your code to the solution in the Completed folder to see what the instructors included in their samples.
Awesome work! Well done on completing this lesson.
Let's move onto Lesson 3 - Props and IActorRefs.
Don't be afraid to ask questions :).
Come ask any questions you have, big or small, in this ongoing Bootcamp chat with the Petabridge & Akka.NET teams.
If there is a problem with the code running, or something else that needs to be fixed in this lesson, please create an issue and we'll get right on it. This will benefit everyone going through Bootcamp.