Akka.Interfaced provides the type-safe and declarative way for actor communicating on Akka.NET. This project is influenced by WCF Contract and Orleans.

For the first time, we need to design the interface of a greeting actor. Greeting actor can greet and it can count how much it say hello. Defining the interface IGreeter to show the way the actor communicate is natural for C# programmers.

public interface IGreeter : IInterfacedActor
{
    Task<string> Greet(string name);
    Task<int> GetCount();
}

After defining interface, it's time to define the class implementing IGreeter, GreetingActor. It should inherit InterfacedActor because it's an Akka.NET actor. Implementing IGreeter interface is a bit simple.

public class GreetingActor : InterfacedActor, IGreeter
{
    private int _count;

    Task<string> IGreeter.Greet(string name)
    {
        _count += 1;
        return Task.FromResult($"Hello {name}!");
    }

    Task<int> IGreeter.GetCount()
    {
        return Task.FromResult(_count);
    }
}

We designed interface and implemented the actor. Finally we can send a message to and get a reply from GreetingActor actor by using GreeterRef. GreeterRef implements IGreeter, you can get IGreeter instance from GreeterRef and use it as a regular C# interface.

async Task TestAsync(ActorSystem system)
{
    // Create GreetingActor and make a reference pointing to an actor.
    var actor = system.ActorOf<GreetingActor>();
    var greeter = new GreeterRef(actor);

    // Make some noise
    Console.WriteLine(await greeter.Greet("World")); // Output: Hello World!
    Console.WriteLine(await greeter.Greet("Actor")); // Output: Hello Actor!
    Console.WriteLine(await greeter.GetCount());     // Output: 2
}

Common projects using Akka.Interfaceds consist of at least two projects. One is an interface project defining interfaces such as previous IGreeter and the other is a main project defining the rest such as previous GreetingActor.

For an interface project:

PM> Install-Package Akka.Interfaced.Templates

For a main project:

PM> Install-Package Akka.Interfaced

For a detailed explanation, read Project configuration.

Comprehensive manual for using Akka.Interfaced: Manual