Actors

Actors are the server-side runtime for a client definition.

An actor ties together three things:

• a durable name
• a client definition
• attachment state stored per connected client

import { Schema as S } from "effect"
import { Actor } from "liminal"
 
import { Player, TicTacToeClient } from "./TicTacToeClient.ts"
 
export class TicTacToeActor extends Actor.Service<TicTacToeActor>()("examples/TicTacToeActor", {
  client: TicTacToeClient,
  name: S.String,
  attachments: { player: Player },
}) {}

Fields

• client points at the Client definition the actor implements.
• name is a schema for the actor instance's unique identifier.
• attachments is a struct-fields record for per-connected-client state.

Use S.String for an opaque actor id, or a branded schema such as S.String.pipe(S.brand("GameId")) if you want the id type to be distinct.

Name versus attachments

Keep the split clear:

• name identifies the actor instance.
• attachments identify or describe one connected client.

For tic-tac-toe, the name is the game id and attachments record which player (X or O) the connected socket is playing as.

This lets multiple clients connect to the same actor while keeping client-specific context isolated from one another.