Throttling of messages while sending them to an actor

There are some scenarios where you need to limit the rate at which you are sending some messages. For example, this happens when we need to use an external service. This service might have a threshold upon which you get blocked, or it becomes a pay-as-you-go utility. Akka provides a timer-based throttler as part of the akka-contrib module to achieve this kind of behavior.

In this recipe, we will revisit how to configure and use the timer-based throttler and provide an explanation of what the implications are.

Getting ready

To step through this recipe, we need to import the Hello-Akka project; all other prerequisites are the same as earlier. Also, we will define the required dependency to bring the Akka Contrib module.

How to do it…

For this recipe, we need to perform the following steps:

1. We need to bring the required dependencies.
2. Edit build.sbt file and add the Akka Stream dependency, as follows:

        libraryDependencies += "com.typesafe...