Akka Actors
In this section, we will discuss what an Actor is, its components, and the Actor lifecycle in detail. We will also discuss the differences between ActorPath and ActorRef.
What is an Actor?
An Actor is the fundamental computation unit. As per Carl Hewitt's Actor Model, an Actor should perform one, and only one, responsibility. Actors are lightweight event-driven processes.
The Actor is the fundamental building block in the Actor Model as well as Akka-based applications. In simple words, we can say that an Actor is a computational unit of an entity. Like an OOP instance (object), it also has state and behavior.
Note
Like OOP's Object, Actor = State + Behavior.
Like an OOP's object, an Actor's state is maintained in instance variables. An Actor's behavior is a function, operation, or method to perform its job or task.
As a computational unit, it should embody the following three axioms:
Actors are completely abstract things or entities, which means they cannot share their state and behavior...
