Hi there, I'm not very familiar with the Spring framework. I spent sometime reading about it and how it would integrate into Fey (Akka).
Correct if I'm misunderstood: *@Rafael *is suggesting the complete integration of the Spring framework into Fey. Which would be a bit more complex, since Fey would have to instantiate the Spring context and the Actor System would also have to be instantiated using the Spring context. Which would imply that all the necessary configuration for the Spring framework would have to be defined upon Fey start-up (fey.conf file maybe). *@Lucas *is suggesting that we use the built-in dependency injection that Akka offers. This approach sounds simpler than the Spring integration, and would also keep the "Generic" idea of Fey, where the developer should be able to use any framework he wants to. I personally think that it would be awesome if we could work on both approaches. Here are my reasons: 1. Spring is a fairly complex framework, and having it integrated on Fey core would be a huge plus and would also offer a more sophisticated dependency injection framework. 2. Using the built-in Akka dependency injection would be cool as well, since it seems way simpler to use and understand, and developers that are not familiar with the Spring framework (like me) would not have a hard time integrating it into the performers world. For both approaches, we would have to do some research and present an Integration idea into Fey. Perhaps we could start working on the proposal for *@Lucas *suggestions first? What do you guys think? *Just as a heads-up:* Unfortunately, Fey still have some class load issues when the performer's dependencies are fairly complex. As an example, we wrote an Apache Ignite performer and we had to go to some hoops to get the Spring dependencies loaded in runtime, in fact, the final fix was to manually add the dependency to the Fey Application when starting Fey, on the run command (java -jar ...). Although it was a simple fix, it would be nice to not have to do it anymore. Looking forward to hear your thoughts. Regards, On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 12:44 PM, Lucas Berri Cristofolini < [email protected]> wrote: > I've been reading up on how Akka would handle dependency injection ( > http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/current/scala/actors.html#depe > ndency-injection), and it seems that, as far as Akka is concerned, upon > creating an Actor, we could pass a DependencyInjector and an > ApplicationContext within the actor's Props. > > So now I'm imagining that bringing this functionality to Fey would be a > simple matter of adding a few extra items (the DependencyInjector class and > the ApplicationContext) to the json that defines an orchestration, and once > the json is processed, verifying if those items are present, and adding > those to the Props before calling akka to instance the actor. > > Still, I'm curious to see what you guys think about bringing this feature > to the fey-engine. > > On Sun, Jun 4, 2017 at 1:21 PM, Rafael Weingärtner < > [email protected]> wrote: > >> We started developing our first agents (performers) using Fey, and we >> found our first “problem”. There is no integration of Fey and Spring. Or >> at least, we did not understand how to integrate Fey with Spring. >> >> We want to instantiate our agents in Spring to enjoy all of its benefits >> (e.g. dependency injection, object management, easy transaction >> configuration and so forth). Therefore, instead of telling Fey the >> performer class to instantiate, we would have to tell Fey the source as the >> application context name and the bean name; so Fey can retrieve the agent >> (object) already instantiated by Spring. >> >> This would have consequences on the performer constructor; we would need >> to add another hook to configure an agent in Fey such as a post-constructor >> method that would be intended to do the same as the constructor today. I >> mean, we maintain everything we have so far, and we add only a default >> constructor with no parameters and the post-constructor method that would >> be hooked in Fey’s performer life-cycle. >> >> Then, we would have to possibilities, first the one we already have to >> instantiate an agent: >> >> "source": { >> >> "name": *"agentJarWithDependencies.jar"*, >> >> "classPath": *"org.awesomeCompany.agentOne"*, >> >> "parameters": { >> >> } >> >> And an alternative for agent objects managed by Spring: >> >> "source": { >> >> "name": *" agentJarWithDependencies.jar"*, >> >> "applicationContextName": *"agentOneApplicationContext.xml"*, >> >> "performerBeanName": *"agentOneApplicationContext.xml"* >> >> >> This would require Fey to instantiate the Spring’s application context, >> and then look the bean up there. The idea is that application context file >> can be found in the classpath. >> >> >> >> What do you guys think about this? We can work to create this integration >> after we discussed the changes that would be applied to Fey. >> >> >> >> -- >> Rafael Weingärtner >> > > -- Barbara Gomes Computer Engineer San Jose, CA
