CODEWITHSUNDEEP
scalaakka
Gamlor
Gamlor

Reputation: 13238

Sending a message to a TestProbe() fails sometimes with ActorInitializationException

I've some sporadic test failures and struggle to figure out why. I have a bunch of actors which to the work which I want to test. At the beginning of the test I pass in an actor reference which I get from a TestProbe(). Later on the group of actors do some work and send the result to the given test probe actor reference. Then I check the result with the TestProbe(): 

class MyCaseSpec extends Spec with ShouldMatchers{
    describe("The Thingy"){
        it("should work"){
            val eventListener = TestProbe()

            val myStuffUnderTest = Actor.actorOf(new ComplexActor(eventListener.ref)).start();
            myStuffUnderTest ! "Start"

            val eventMessage = eventListener.receiveOne(10.seconds).asInstanceOf[SomeEventMessage]
            eventMessage.data should be ("Result")
        }

    }
}

Now once in a while the test fails. And when I look through the stack trace I see that I got a 'ActorInitializationException' when sending a message to the test probe actor. However at no point in time I stop the TestProbe actor.

Here's the exception:

[akka:event-driven:dispatcher:global-11] [LocalActorRef] Actor has not been started, you need to invoke 'actor.start()' before using it
akka.actor.ActorInitializationException: Actor has not been started, you need to invoke 'actor.start()' before using it
[Gamlor-Laptop_c15fdca0-219e-11e1-9579-001b7744104e]
at akka.actor.ScalaActorRef$class.$bang(ActorRef.scala:1399)
at akka.actor.LocalActorRef.$bang(ActorRef.scala:605)
at akka.mobile.client.RemoteMessaging$RemoteMessagingSupervision$$anonfun$receive$1.apply(RemoteMessaging.scala:125)
at akka.mobile.client.RemoteMessaging$RemoteMessagingSupervision$$anonfun$receive$1.apply(RemoteMessaging.scala:121)
at akka.actor.Actor$class.apply(Actor.scala:545)
....

I'm wondering if I'm missing something obvious or am I making a subtle mistake? Or maybe something is really going wrong inside my code and I can't see it?

I'm on Akka 1.2.

Update for Vitors-Comment. At line 125 I send a message to an actor with the !-operator. Now in the test-setup thats the TestProbe actor-reference. And I can't figure out why sometimes the TestProbe actor seems to be stopped.

   protected def receive = {
      case msg: MaximumNumberOfRestartsWithinTimeRangeReached => {
        val lastException = msg.getLastExceptionCausingRestart
        faultHandling ! ConnectionError(lastException, messages.toList, self) // < Line 125. The faultHandling is the TestProbe actor
        become({
            // Change to failure-state behavior
          }
    // Snip

Anyway, I'm trying to isolate the problem further for the time being. Thanks for any hint / idea.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 633

Answers (2)

Gamlor
Gamlor

Reputation: 13238

Ok, almost certainly found the issue =). TestProbes do have a timeout: When nothing happens after 5 seconds, they stop them self.

Now unfortunately the test takes just a little longer than 5 seconds: In that time the test-probe may stop itself all ready, which then causes the test to fail.

Fixing it is easy, increase the timeout on the TestProbe:

  val errorHandler = ignoreConnectionMsgProbe()
  errorHandler.setTestActorTimeout(20.seconds)

Upvotes: 1

Neil Essy
Neil Essy

Reputation: 3607

You are not starting your actor here. I'm not sure why your test is working some of the time. The code above needs to have the following line modified with an .start()

val myStuffUnderTest = Actor.actorOf(new ComplexActor(eventListener.ref)).start();

Upvotes: 1

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