Question

An Akka-2 instance should remain in an infinite loop and check every 10 minutes for data to process.

How do I design the loop so that the instance calls upon itself, checks for work to do and then sleeps for an interval?

Also I see that one cannot query the mailbox-size anymore. How do you make sure that messages are ignored as long as the working-task ( in this case the dispatch function) is active?

case class Dispatch()

// Automatical start? The start function has been removed since Akka 2 ?
val dispatcher = system.actorOf(Props[MailDispatcher])

class MailDispatcher extends Actor {

  private val interval = Config.getLong("mail.check.interval")
  context.setReceiveTimeout(Duration(interval, TimeUnit.SECONDS))

  def receive = {
    case ReceiveTimeout => {
      self ! Dispatch          
    }
    case Dispatch => dispatch()
    case e: Exception => Logger.error("unexpected Error: " + e)
  }

  def dispatch() {       
      // trigger mail-dispatch       
  }
}

Answer 1

I’d suggest the following:

use: http://akka.io/docs/akka/2.0-RC2/scala/actors.html#initial-receive-timeout

Then when you get a ReceiveTimeout message, you poll for work, and send the work to your own mailbox.