How to get Akka actor by name as an ActorRef?

Question

In Akka I can create an actor as follows.

Akka.system(app).actorOf(Props(classOf[UnzipActor]), name="somename") 

Then I am in a different class, how can I get this actor?

I can get an ActorSelection

lazy val unzip: ActorSelection =   Akka.system.actorSelection("user/" + "somename") 

However, a ActorSelection is not what I want; I want an ActorRef. How can I get a ActorRef?

I want to have an ActorRef since I wish to schedule a call to an ActorRef using the scheduler.

Akka.system(app).scheduler.schedule(   5 seconds, 60 seconds, mustBeActorRef, MessageCaseClass()) 

Answer 1

You can use the method resolveOne on an ActorSelection to get an ActorRef asynchronously.

implicit val timeout = Timeout(FiniteDuration(1, TimeUnit.SECONDS)) Akka.system.actorSelection("user/" + "somename").resolveOne().onComplete {   case Success(actorRef) => // logic with the actorRef   case Failure(ex) => Logger.warn("user/" + "somename" + " does not exist") } 

ref : http://doc.akka.io/api/akka/2.3.6/index.html#akka.actor.ActorSelection