normally none of that stuff is an issue when you're working inside an actor
but yeah, when you want to re-use some of that state asynchronously
because our extension method that automatically supplies
Self doesn't work outside the ActorCell
Context is basically the public API of the ActorCell
and most, but not all, built-in actors
connects the mailbox to the dispatcher to the actor implementation class
it's also what allows for safe restarting of actors too
there are some built-in actor types that operate without a cell, but they're special cases
router actors are one example
typically they're actors that don't need to obey the 1 message at a time guarantee
the dispatching infrastructure in Akka.NET basically queues up groups of actors for processing
and can dispatch actors to work across an arbitrary number of threads
but one actor can only work on one thread at a time
if the actor still has unprocessed messages in its mailbox once it's finished
if you stick with what gets exposed via
ActorContext
or whatever the
Context interface is
that's all of the stable parts of the Cell API
and exposes everything you care about
most of what the
ActorCell does internally is stuff like managing child actors
and handling deathwatch
etc
albeit, it's unsafe
but it's public API
this is the
ThreadStatic variable I mentioned earlier
we have a more safe way of exposing that somewhere
I don't remember where it is off the type of my head
but if you're curious about the internals, the
ActorCell stuff is really at the heart of the actors
enjoy your stay and let us know what we can do to help you :p
