The Javascript ecosystem has become increasingly dependent on ways to manage and pass around data from React using Redux, Angular using RxJS, as well as various approaches for Node to communicate with database layers (DAL, Mongoose, etc).
While these approaches have all managed to do a good job of syncronizing data between decoupled elements they are not ideal when considering cross-platform or cross-domain integration. Due to inconsistency between implementation details glue code (code that translates data from one domain to another) is required.
While glue code is generally a point of interest for individual endpoints, used to decode information for a specific domain, the actor-model approach defines a standard model of behavior usable by any environment. This allows, for instance, a React application and an Angular application to share a common logical layer without relying on a specific clamp on what library or environment to use.
An actor-model as described here is a system that is capable of generating content based on messages received from other actors, mutating them as needed and returning new data.
In simplified terms consider a theatre play where each actor receives their cues from other actors as they recite their lines or things like a curtain call.
Using this as our jumping off point an actor-model should:
- receive information from other actors
- do something based on received information
- notify anyone watching the actor about anything it has to say
A minimal integration layer using a pub/sub system implemented with EventEmitter.
See here.
A purely native integration using the pre-existing EventTarget class.
See here.
Implementation usable in all environments using the events package.
See here
Actor-Model - description of what the concept is as well as history on the subject Node EventEmitter - the basic EventEmitter used by Node