Question

Let’s say I have an actor like this (Using Akka 2.1 with Scala 2.10):

class ClientActor extends Actor with ActorLogging {

  val configurationManager = context.actorOf(Props[ConfigurationManager], "ConfigurationManager")

  def disconnected: Receive = {
    case msg: Connect => 
      configurationManager ! msg
      context.become(connecting)
  }

  ..

  def recieve = disconnected
}

So now when the Client receives a Connect message, it sends it to the ConfigurationManager and also goes into a different state. That’s fine, but now I want to test this.

val clientRef = TestActorRef(new ClientActor).
clientRef ! new Connect
// ??

I can’t expectMsg() or so here since it will be sent to a different actor. What is the best practice to handle such a situation? I just want to make sure that the message gets sent, but I dont know how to do this.

Thanks,
Michael

Answer 1

Pass the dependency in as a constructor parameter:

Normal code:

val configActor = 
  system.actorOf(Props[ConfigurationManager], "configManager")

val clientActor = 
  system.actorOf(Props(new ClientActor(configActor)), "clientActor")

Test code:

val clientActor = 
  system.actorOf(Props(new ClientActor(testActor)), "clientActor")