I am not sure that is what you are looking for, but there is quite a simple solution in the comet-clock sample, that you can adapt to use AKKA actors. It uses an infinite iframe instead of long polling. I have used an adapted version for a more complex application doing multiple DB calls and long computation in AKKA actors and it works fine.
def enum = Action {
//get your actor
val myActorRef = Akka.system.actorOf(Props[TestActor])
//do some query to your DB here. Promise.timeout is to simulate a blocking call
def getDatabaseItem(id: Int): Promise[String] = { Promise.timeout("test", 10 milliseconds) }
//test iterator, you will want something smarter here
val items1 = 1 to 10 toIterator
// this is a very simple enumerator that takes ints from an existing iterator (for an http request parameters for instance) and do some computations
def myEnum(it: Iterator[Int]): Enumerator[String] = Enumerator.fromCallback[String] { () =>
if (!items1.hasNext)
Promise.pure[Option[String]](None) //we are done with our computations
else {
// get the next int, query the database and compose the promise with a further query to the AKKA actor
getDatabaseItem(items1.next).flatMap { dbValue =>
implicit val timeout = new Timeout(10 milliseconds)
val future = (myActorRef ? dbValue) mapTo manifest[String]
// here we convert the AKKA actor to the right Promise[Option] output
future.map(v => Some(v)).asPromise
}
}
}
// finally we stream the result to the infinite iframe.
// console.log is the javascript callback, you will want something more interesting.
Ok.stream(myEnum(items1) &> Comet(callback = "console.log"))
}
Note that this fromCallback doesn't allow you to combine enumerators with "andThen", there is in the trunk version of play2 a generateM method that might be more appropriate if you want to use combinations.
It's not long polling, but it works fine.
