How to create an Akka Actor given the class name

Question

I would like to create an Akka actor by using the class name, as shown. I've tried many variations of system.actorOf(new Props(theProcessor.getClass), name = "Test"), but I just cannot get this to work. Any idea in creating an Actor from the class loader ``` package com.test import akka.actor.{Props, Actor, ActorRef, ActorSystem} object Main { def main(args: Array[String]) { ActorFromString("Test") } } object ActorFromString { implicit val system = ActorSystem("Test") def apply(name: String): ActorRef = { val className = "com.test." + name + "Processor" val theProcessor: Actor = Class.forName(className).newInstance().asInstanceOf[Actor] system.actorOf(new Props(theProcessor.getClass), name = "Test") } } class TestProcessor extends Actor { def receive = { case data => println("processing data") } } Exception in thread "main" akka.actor.ActorInitializationException: You cannot create an instance of [com.test.TestProcessor] explicitly using the constructor (new). You have to use one of t…

Accepted Answer

You could use the Java API (just for the Props instantiation):

```
val myActor = system.actorOf( 
  new Props( Class.forName( "myActorClassName" ).asInstanceOf[Class[Actor]] ) 
)
```

The important part is the `new` keyword. If you ommit it, you will use the Scala API instead, which does not allow instantiation by class.

How to create an Akka Actor given the class name

Solution

Problem