on demand actor get or else create

Question

I can create actors with actorOf and look them with actorFor. I now want to get an actor by some id:String and if it doesnt exist, I w

Answer 1

I've not been using akka for that long, but the creator of the actors is by default their supervisor. Hence the parent can listen for their termination;

var as = Map.empty[String, ActorRef] 
def getRCActor(id: String) = as get id getOrElse {
  val c = context actorOf Props[RC]
  as += id -> c
  context watch c
  c
}

But obviously you need to watch for their Termination;

def receive = {
  case Terminated(ref) => as = as filterNot { case (_, v) => v == ref }

Is that a solution? I must say I didn't completely understand what you meant by "terminated is always true => actor name 1 is not unique!"