actor.js

Elixir-style actors in JavaScript. Spawn "processes", then send and receive messages between them – just like you would in Elixir.

You can think of it as co, but with message passing.

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NOTE: Don't use this library. Currently, it doesn't use Web Workers or Node's child_process under the hood (and I lack the motivation to write a Web Workers / child_process implementation), so your code isn't actually run in parallel. I mostly wrote this library as an experiment in Elixir-flavored API design.

You can probably find better Web Workers helper libs on npm.

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Example

const pid = spawn(async function() {
  const msg = await this.receive(mail => {
    if (mail === 'hello') return 'world'
  })

  console.log(msg)
})

pid.send('hello')

See the included examples for more use cases.

Install

$ yarn add actorjs

API

spawn(fn | asyncFn, ...args) => PID

Spawn a "process" that will execute the passed-in function.

const pid = spawn(async function(foo, bar) {
  console.log("wee i'm in a process sorta")
}, 'foo', 'bar')

PID#send(msg)

Send a message to a PID.

pid.send(['ok', 'this is a message'])

this.receive(pattern) => Promise

Block until a received message matches the passed-in pattern function.

The pattern function takes an arbitrary message as input, and returns a result based on that message. By default, the pattern function is the identity function.

A result of undefined is not considered to be a match, and thus this.receive() will continue blocking.

const pid = spawn(async function() {
  let v = await this.receive(msg => {
    const [status, value] = msg
    if (status === 'hello') return value
    if (status === 'world') return "won't match"
  })

  v = await this.receive()
})

pid.send(['hello', 'yes this is dog'])
pid.send('anything')

PID#then(value =>), PID#catch(err =>)

The return value of spawn() is a thenable.

spawn(async function() {
  // ...
})
  .then(value => { /* ... */ })
  .catch(console.error)

License

MIT