Actor's Path versus Reference
In this section, we will compare the two important components of an Akka Actor:
ActorRef
:ActorRef
is a reference of an Actor object. When we create an Actor usingActorSystem
, it returnsActorRef
but not an Actor object:
val actorRef:ActorRef = actorSystem.actorOf(Props[SimpleActor],"SimpleActor")
As the outside world cannot interact with an Actor object directly, an outside Actor or a non-Actor can interact with another Actor indirectly using this ActorRef
. When we create another Actor, ActorSystem
returns a different ActorRef
to that newly created Actor.
ActorRef
is the same for a single Actor. It does not change during an Actor lifecycle. Two different Actor objects cannot have the same ActorRef
.
ActorPath
:ActorPath
is the address of an Actor in theActorSystem
. In Akka, Actors are created in the hierarchy fashion, so each Actor in that hierarchy has a different address to reference that Actor uniquely.

As shown in the preceding diagram, Actor...