Proxies

Instances of ActorProxy override doesNotUnderstand:, perform: and perform:withArguments: in order to provide a convenient way of sending requests to Actors.

Methods that go through doesNotUnderstand: etc. return ActorPromise instances, which can be used to pick up replies.

Switching between an Actor and its ActorProxy

Every Actor has exactly one ActorProxy, and every ActorProxy is associated with exactly one Actor.

Strictly speaking, ActorProcesses also have proxies: see the comment on ActorProcess >> #proxy.

Both Actor and ActorProxy have methods actor and proxy. Calling actor always returns the Actor of a matched pair; calling proxy always returns the ActorProxy.

           anActor actor == anActor.
     anActor proxy actor == anActor.
      anActorProxy proxy == anActorProxy.
anActorProxy actor proxy == anActorProxy.

ActorProxy and dependents

Each proxy implements addDependent: and removeDependent: by asynchronously forwarding them to its backing actor. Similarly, each proxy forwards calls to update: and update:with: to its backing actor.

Transient proxies

ActorProxy instances are intended to be long lived—at least as long lived as their backing actor.

For this reason, ActorProxy inherits from Object, including all the behavior of Object. This causes quite a bit of clutter in the interface of ActorProxy!

For example, consider calling windowTitle on an ActorProxy.

myProxy windowTitle.

The intention here is for the request to be forwarded on to the backing actor’s behavior object. Unfortunately, Object implements windowTitle. The request will thus be answered locally at the proxy, without ever being sent on to its actor.

To avoid this problem, proxy objects allow creation of transient proxy objects which have a much smaller interface and can therefore easily forward more requests than an ordinary proxy can:

myProxy async windowTitle.
myProxy sync windowTitle.
myProxy blocking windowTitle.

The three variants, async, sync, and blocking are discussed below.

Think twice before storing a TransientActorProxy instance in a variable!

The class TransientActorProxy inherits from ProtoObject, not Object. While the interface of ProtoObject is small, it is so small that transient proxies do not play nicely with the inspector, the explorer and other tools in the development environment. This is why they should be considered “transient” or temporary.

Interaction patterns

TransientActorProxy hierarchy The three methods async, sync and blocking on an ActorProxy instance each return instances of a distinct subclass of TransientActorProxy.

Each allows a distinct interaction pattern:

  • AsyncTransientActorProxy offers asynchronous (one-way) messaging;
  • SyncTransientActorProxy offers request/reply/error messaging, using Promises to mediate between caller and callee; and
  • BlockingTransientActorProxy is like SyncTransientActorProxy, but hides the promises away, waiting for a reply at the time the call is made.

Asynchronous calls

someProxy async notifyOfSomeEvent: details

The result of ActorProxy >> #async is an AsyncTransientActorProxy. Messages sent this way do not allocate any promises, and always return nil immediately.

Synchronous RPC

(someProxy sync doSomethingWith: anArgument)
  >>= [:result | self handleResult: result] bindActor.
self whileWeWaitDoSomethingElse.

The result of ActorProxy >> #sync is a SyncTransientActorProxy. Like messages sent to a plain old ActorProxy, messages sent this way allocate and immediately return ActorPromise instances.

These promises are eventually resolved or rejected according to the code executing at the remote actor.

Use >>= and bindActor to attach a continuation to a returned promise. See here for details of >>=, and here for information on why bindActor is so important.

Blocking RPC

result := someProxy blocking doSomethingWith: anArgument.
self handleResult: result.
self nowDoSomethingElse.

The result of ActorProxy >> #blocking is a BlockingTransientActorProxy. Messages sent this way internally allocate an ActorPromise, but do not expose it: instead, they immediately wait for the promise to be resolved or rejected. These messages eventually either return a value or signal BrokenPromise.

There are circumstances where a blocking call will not return, such as when the callee “detaches”, but never replies to, the request it receives.