Akka Futures in the Swing Event Dispatch Thread

swingfutures.scala

// © 2012 Viktor Klang

import akka.dispatch.ExecutionContext
import javax.swing.SwingUtilities
import java.util.concurrent.Executor

//
object SwingExecutionContext {
  implicit val swingExecutionContext: ExecutionContext = ExecutionContext.fromExecutor(new Executor {
    def execute(command: Runnable): Unit = SwingUtilities invokeLater command
  })
}

// Now all you need to do is to use it
  import SwingExecutionContext._
  Future {
    …
  }

// Enjoy!

Thanks, Viktor!

I was looking exactly for something like this.

Would be so nice to have this in the standard library, now that SIP 14 is in -- is this planned / already done? Care to open a pull request for this in scala.swing.Swing?

I would vote for this being not implicit in scala.swing.Swing, so one has to explicitly set it implicit. I guess this would avoid bugs.

Standard library:

package scala.swing

// imports

object Swing {
  // ...
  val swingExecutionContext: ExecutionContext = ExecutionContext.fromExecutor(new Executor {
    def execute(command: Runnable): Unit = SwingUtilities invokeLater command
  })
  // ...
}

Either your example or even SwingWorker simulation:

package org.example

// imports

object AwesomeApp {
  val label = new Label("...")
  // ...
  def mySwingWorkerSimulation() {
    implicit val ec = ...
    val f = future { "awe" + "some" }
    implicit val ec = Swing.swingExecutionContext
    f onSuccess {
      case s ⇒ label.text = s
    }
  }
  // ...
}

Hi!

Sorry for the late reply, just saw this.

I don't think it's needed to add to scala swing since it's just like 4 lines of code :-)

Cheers,
√