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ConfiguringActorApplications.rst

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Configuring Actor Applications

CAF configures applications at startup using an actor_system_config or a user-defined subclass of that type. The config objects allow users to add custom types, to load modules, and to fine-tune the behavior of loaded modules with command line options or configuration files system-config-options.

The following code example is a minimal CAF application with a middleman middleman_ but without any custom configuration options.

void caf_main(actor_system& system) {
  // ...
}
CAF_MAIN(io::middleman)

The compiler expands this example code to the following.

void caf_main(actor_system& system) {
  // ...
}
int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  return exec_main<io::middleman>(caf_main, argc, argv);
}

The function exec_main creates a config object, loads all modules requested in CAF_MAIN and then calls caf_main. A minimal implementation for main performing all these steps manually is shown in the next example for the sake of completeness.

int main(int argc, char** argv) {
  actor_system_config cfg;
  // read CLI options
  cfg.parse(argc, argv);
  // return immediately if a help text was printed
  if (cfg.cli_helptext_printed)
    return 0;
  // load modules
  cfg.load<io::middleman>();
  // create actor system and call caf_main
  actor_system system{cfg};
  caf_main(system);
}

However, setting up config objects by hand is usually not necessary. CAF automatically selects user-defined subclasses of actor_system_config if caf_main takes a second parameter by reference, as shown in the minimal example below.

class my_config : public actor_system_config {
public:
  my_config() {
    // ...
  }
};

void caf_main(actor_system& system, const my_config& cfg) {
  // ...
}

CAF_MAIN()

Users can perform additional initialization, add custom program options, etc. simply by implementing a default constructor.

Loading Modules

The simplest way to load modules is to use the macro CAF_MAIN and to pass a list of all requested modules, as shown below.

void caf_main(actor_system& system) {
  // ...
}
CAF_MAIN(mod1, mod2, ...)

Alternatively, users can load modules in user-defined config classes.

class my_config : public actor_system_config {
public:
  my_config() {
    load<mod1>();
    load<mod2>();
    // ...
  }
};

The third option is to simply call x.load<mod1>() on a config object before initializing an actor system with it.

Command Line Options and INI Configuration Files

CAF organizes program options in categories and parses CLI arguments as well as INI files. CLI arguments override values in the INI file which override hard-coded defaults. Users can add any number of custom program options by implementing a subtype of actor_system_config. The example below adds three options to the global category.

class config : public actor_system_config {
public:
  uint16_t port = 0;
  std::string host = "localhost";
  bool server_mode = false;

  config() {
    opt_group{custom_options_, "global"}
      .add(port, "port,p", "set port")
      .add(host, "host,H", "set host (ignored in server mode)")
      .add(server_mode, "server-mode,s", "enable server mode");
  }

We create a new global category in custom_options_}. Each following call to add then appends individual options to the category. The first argument to add is the associated variable. The second argument is the name for the parameter, optionally suffixed with a comma-separated single-character short name. The short name is only considered for CLI parsing and allows users to abbreviate commonly used option names. The third and final argument to add is a help text.

The custom config class allows end users to set the port for the application to 42 with either -p 42 (short name) or --port=42 (long name). The long option name is prefixed by the category when using a different category than global''. For example, adding the port option to the category ``foo means end users have to type --foo.port=42 when using the long name. Short names are unaffected by the category, but have to be unique.

Boolean options do not require arguments. The member variable server_mode is set to true if the command line contains either --server-mode or -s.

The example uses member variables for capturing user-provided settings for simplicity. However, this is not required. For example, add<bool>(...) allows omitting the first argument entirely. All values of the configuration are accessible with get_or. Note that all global options can omit the "global." prefix.

CAF adds the program options help (with short names -h and -?) as well as long-help to the global category.

The default name for the INI file is caf-application.ini. Users can change the file name and path by passing --config-file=<path> on the command line.

INI files are organized in categories. No value is allowed outside of a category (no implicit global category). The parses uses the following syntax:

key=true is a boolean
key=1 is an integer
key=1.0 is an floating point number
key=1ms is an timespan
key='foo' is an atom
key="foo" is a string
key=[0, 1, ...] is as a list
key={a=1, b=2, ...} is a dictionary (map)

The following example INI file lists all standard options in CAF and their default value. Note that some options such as scheduler.max-threads are usually detected at runtime and thus have no hard-coded default.

; This file shows all possible parameters with defaults.
; Values enclosed in <> are detected at runtime unless defined by the user.

; when using the default scheduler
[scheduler]
; accepted alternative: 'sharing'
policy='stealing'
; configures whether the scheduler generates profiling output
enable-profiling=false
; forces a fixed number of threads if set
max-threads=<number of cores>
; maximum number of messages actors can consume in one run
max-throughput=<infinite>
; measurement resolution in milliseconds (only if profiling is enabled)
profiling-resolution=100ms
; output file for profiler data (only if profiling is enabled)
profiling-output-file="/dev/null"

; when using 'stealing' as scheduler policy
[work-stealing]
; number of zero-sleep-interval polling attempts
aggressive-poll-attempts=100
; frequency of steal attempts during aggressive polling
aggressive-steal-interval=10
; number of moderately aggressive polling attempts
moderate-poll-attempts=500
; frequency of steal attempts during moderate polling
moderate-steal-interval=5
; sleep interval between poll attempts
moderate-sleep-duration=50us
; frequency of steal attempts during relaxed polling
relaxed-steal-interval=1
; sleep interval between poll attempts
relaxed-sleep-duration=10ms

; when loading io::middleman
[middleman]
; configures whether MMs try to span a full mesh
enable-automatic-connections=false
; application identifier of this node, prevents connection to other CAF
; instances with different identifier
app-identifier=""
; maximum number of consecutive I/O reads per broker
max-consecutive-reads=50
; heartbeat message interval in ms (0 disables heartbeating)
heartbeat-interval=0ms
; configures whether the MM attaches its internal utility actors to the
; scheduler instead of dedicating individual threads (needed only for
; deterministic testing)
attach-utility-actors=false
; configures whether the MM starts a background thread for I/O activity,
; setting this to true allows fully deterministic execution in unit test and
; requires the user to trigger I/O manually
manual-multiplexing=false
; disables communication via TCP
disable-tcp=false
; enable communication via UDP
enable-udp=false
; configures how many background workers are spawned for deserialization,
; by default CAF uses 1-4 workers depending on the number of cores
workers=<min(3, number of cores / 4) + 1>

; when compiling with logging enabled
[logger]
; file name template for output log file files (empty string disables logging)
file-name="actor_log_[PID]_[TIMESTAMP]_[NODE].log"
; format for rendering individual log file entries
file-format="%r %c %p %a %t %C %M %F:%L %m%n"
; configures the minimum severity of messages that are written to the log file
; (quiet|error|warning|info|debug|trace)
file-verbosity='trace'
; mode for console log output generation (none|colored|uncolored)
console='none'
; format for printing individual log entries to the console
console-format="%m"
; configures the minimum severity of messages that are written to the console
; (quiet|error|warning|info|debug|trace)
console-verbosity='trace'
; excludes listed components from logging (list of atoms)
component-blacklist=[]

Adding Custom Message Types

CAF requires serialization support for all of its message types type-inspection_. However, CAF also needs a mapping of unique type names to user-defined types at runtime. This is required to deserialize arbitrary messages from the network.

As an introductory example, we (again) use the following POD type foo.

struct foo {
  std::vector<int> a;
  int b;

To make foo serializable, we make it inspectable type-inspection_:

template <class Inspector>
typename Inspector::result_type inspect(Inspector& f, foo& x) {
  return f(meta::type_name("foo"), x.a, x.b);
}

Finally, we give foo a platform-neutral name and add it to the list of serializable types by using a custom config class.

class config : public actor_system_config {
public:
  config() {
  }
};

Adding Custom Error Types

Adding a custom error type to the system is a convenience feature to allow improve the string representation. Error types can be added by implementing a render function and passing it to add_error_category, as shown in custom-error_.

Adding Custom Actor Types experimental

Adding actor types to the configuration allows users to spawn actors by their name. In particular, this enables spawning of actors on a different node remote-spawn_. For our example configuration, we consider the following simple calculator actor.

using calculator = typed_actor<replies_to<add_atom, int, int>::with<int>,

Adding the calculator actor type to our config is achieved by calling add_actor_type<T>. Note that adding an actor type in this way implicitly calls add_message_type<T> for typed actors add-custom-message-type. This makes our calculator actor type serializable and also enables remote nodes to spawn calculators anywhere in the distributed actor system (assuming all nodes use the same config).

struct config : actor_system_config {
  config() {
    add_actor_type("calculator", calculator_fun);
    opt_group{custom_options_, "global"}
      .add(port, "port,p", "set port")
      .add(host, "host,H", "set node (ignored in server mode)")
      .add(server_mode, "server-mode,s", "enable server mode");
  }
  uint16_t port = 0;
  string host = "localhost";
  bool server_mode = false;

Our final example illustrates how to spawn a calculator locally by using its type name. Because the dynamic type name lookup can fail and the construction arguments passed as message can mismatch, this version of spawn returns expected<T>.

auto x = system.spawn<calculator>("calculator", make_message());
if (! x) {
  std::cerr << "*** unable to spawn calculator: "
            << system.render(x.error()) << std::endl;
  return;
}
calculator c = std::move(*x);

Adding dynamically typed actors to the config is achieved in the same way. When spawning a dynamically typed actor in this way, the template parameter is simply actor. For example, spawning an actor "foo" which requires one string is created with:

auto worker = system.spawn<actor>("foo", make_message("bar"));

Because constructor (or function) arguments for spawning the actor are stored in a message, only actors with appropriate input types are allowed. For example, pointer types are illegal. Hence users need to replace C-strings with std::string.

Log Output

Logging is disabled in CAF per default. It can be enabled by setting the --with-log-level= option of the configure script to one of error, warning, info, debug, or trace (from least output to most). Alternatively, setting the CMake variable CAF_LOG_LEVEL to one of these values has the same effect.

All logger-related configuration options listed here and in system-config-options are silently ignored if logging is disabled.

File Name

The output file is generated from the template configured by logger-file-name. This template supports the following variables.

Variable Output
[PID] The OS-specific process ID.
[TIMESTAMP] The UNIX timestamp on startup.
[NODE] The node ID of the CAF system.

Console

Console output is disabled per default. Setting logger-console to either "uncolored" or "colored" prints log events to std::clog. Using the "colored" option will print the log events in different colors depending on the severity level.

Format Strings

CAF uses log4j-like format strings for configuring printing of individual events via logger-file-format and logger-console-format. Note that format modifiers are not supported at the moment. The recognized field identifiers are:

Character Output
c The category/component.
C The full qualifier of the current function. For example, the qualifier of void ns::foo::bar() is printed as ns.foo.
d The date in ISO 8601 format, i.e., "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss".
F The file name.
L The line number.
m The user-defined log message.
M The name of the current function. For example, the name of void ns::foo::bar() is printed as bar.
n A newline.
p The priority (severity level).
r Elapsed time since starting the application in milliseconds.
t ID of the current thread.
a ID of the current actor (or actor0 when not logging inside an actor).
% A single percent sign.

Filtering

The two configuration options logger-component-filter and logger-verbosity reduce the amount of generated log events. The former is a list of excluded component names and the latter can increase the reported severity level (but not decrease it beyond the level defined at compile time).