Actor support for Nimrod. An actor is implemented as a thread with a channel as its inbox. This module requires the --threads:on command line switch.
Example:
var a: TActorPool[int, void] createActorPool(a) for i in 0 .. < 300: a.spawn(i, proc (x: int) {.thread.} = echo x) a.join()
Types
TTask[TIn, TOut] = object {.pure, final.} when not TOut is void: receiver action*: proc (x: TIn): TOut {.thread.} ## action to execute; ## sometimes useful shutDown*: bool ## set to tell an actor to shut-down data*: TIn ## the data to process
- a task
PActor[TIn, TOut] = ptr TActor[TIn, TOut]
- an actor
TActorPool[TIn, TOut] = object {.pure, final.} actors: seq[PActor[TIn, TOut]] when not TOut is void: outputs
- an actor pool
Procs
proc spawn[TIn, TOut](action: proc (self: PActor[TIn, TOut]) {.thread.}): PActor[ TIn, TOut]
- creates an actor; that is a thread with an inbox. The caller MUST call join because that also frees the actor's associated resources.
proc inbox[TIn, TOut](self: PActor[TIn, TOut]): ptr TChannel[TIn]
- gets a pointer to the associated inbox of the actor self.
proc running[TIn, TOut](a: PActor[TIn, TOut]): bool
- returns true if the actor a is running.
proc ready[TIn, TOut](a: PActor[TIn, TOut]): bool
- returns true if the actor a is ready to process new messages.
proc join[TIn, TOut](a: PActor[TIn, TOut])
- joins an actor.
proc recv[TIn, TOut](a: PActor[TIn, TOut]): TTask[TIn, TOut]
- receives a task from a's inbox.
proc send[TIn, TOut, X, Y](receiver: PActor[TIn, TOut]; msg: TIn; sender: PActor[X, Y])
- sends a message to a's inbox.
proc send[TIn, TOut](receiver: PActor[TIn, TOut]; msg: TIn; sender: ptr TChannel[TOut] = nil)
- sends a message to receiver's inbox.
proc sendShutdown[TIn, TOut](receiver: PActor[TIn, TOut])
- send a shutdown message to receiver.
proc reply[TIn, TOut](t: TTask[TIn, TOut]; m: TOut)
- sends a message to io's output message box.
proc `^`[T](f: ptr TChannel[T]): T
- alias for 'recv'.
proc createActorPool[TIn, TOut](a: var TActorPool[TIn, TOut]; poolSize = 4)
- creates an actor pool.
proc sync[TIn, TOut](a: var TActorPool[TIn, TOut]; polling = 50)
- waits for every actor of a to finish with its work. Currently this is implemented as polling every polling ms and has a slight chance of failing since we check for every actor to be in ready state and not for messages still in ether. This will change in a later version, however.
proc terminate[TIn, TOut](a: var TActorPool[TIn, TOut])
- terminates each actor in the actor pool a and frees the resources attached to a.
proc join[TIn, TOut](a: var TActorPool[TIn, TOut])
- short-cut for sync and then terminate.
proc spawn[TIn, TOut](p: var TActorPool[TIn, TOut]; input: TIn; action: proc (input: TIn): TOut {.thread.}): ptr TChannel[ TOut]
- uses the actor pool to run action(input) concurrently. spawn is guaranteed to not block.
proc spawn[TIn](p: var TActorPool[TIn, void]; input: TIn; action: proc (input: TIn) {.thread.})
- uses the actor pool to run action(input) concurrently. spawn is guaranteed to not block.