A really small library (just a few classes) which lets you trace your actors messages transparently propagating a common context together with your messages and adding the specified values to the MDC of the underling logging framework.

Download the latest release and copy it into your project's lib folder (I promise to publish it in a repository soon) Also you will need to add the Typesafe Snapshots Repository since it depends on new stuff available in Akka 2.3-M2

resolvers += "Typesafe Snapshot Repository" at "http://repo.typesafe.com/typesafe/snapshots/"

libraryDependencies ++= Seq(
    "com.typesafe.akka" %% "akka-actor" % "2.3-M2",
    "com.typesafe.akka"   %% "akka-slf4j"       % "2.3-M2",
    "ch.qos.logback"      % "logback-classic"  % "1.0.13"
)

In order to enable tracing within an Actor you just need to mixin with TracingActor You will now have the contextualized operations analogous to the regular ActorRef operations

• tellWithCxt or !+
• forwardWithCxt or >+

Any message you tell or forward from a TracingActor to another TracingActor with be wrapped with the current message context implicitly picked up and unwrapped for processing it in the target actor.

class MyTracedActor extends Actor with TracingActor {
  ...
    anotherTracingActorRef !+ SomeMessage
    anotherTracingActorRef >+ ForwardedMessage
  ...
}

It is also possible to enable tracing outside actors (a Web Controller or Main object for instance), you need to import com.github.ktonga.akka.contextual.actor.Implicits._ and the ActorRefs will get contextualized operations. Then you have to create an implicit context which will be picked up.

class MyController {
  import Implicits._
  ...
  def processRequest(params: Params) = {
    implicit val ctx: Option[MsgCtx] = Some(MsgCtx(Map("requestId" -> params.reqId)))
    businessTracingActorRef !+ StartRequest
  }
}

In a similar way to regular operations, you have the contextualized version for the common Akka patterns. You can import ask or pipe from package com.github.ktonga.akka.contextual.pattern, and you will have the following pattern operators:

• askWithCxt or ?+
• pipeWithCxt or |+

You will be able to propagate the message context to collaborating actors using the already known patterns.

Finally you will need to configure SLF4J logging

Add the dependency

"com.typesafe.akka"   %% "akka-slf4j"       % "2.3-M2",

Add the logger in your application.config

akka {
    loggers = ["akka.event.slf4j.Slf4jLogger"]
}

Now you can include message context attributes in your appender pattern

<pattern>%X{akkaTimestamp} [%X{sourceThread}] [%X{requestId}] %-5level %X{akkaSource} - %msg%n</pattern>

See Akka logging documentations for further information http://doc.akka.io/docs/akka/snapshot/scala/logging.html#SLF4J

Try it out with the sample application