Channels and protocols

A MessageChannel is a bidirectional communication channel between the routers, passing messages defined by the Protocol. To create a channel you need to define a protocol and a handler for your messages.


Message protocol defines what messages can be sent on a channel and how they are serialized. It also defines a context type and its serialization, which is used when materializing a channel. To define a protocol for our logging channel, we could write something like this:

import arteria.core._
import boopickle.Default._

object LoggerProtocol extends Protocol {

  sealed trait LoggerMessage extends Message

  case class LogDebug(message: String) extends LoggerMessage

  case class LogInfo(message: String) extends LoggerMessage

  case class LogWarn(message: String) extends LoggerMessage

  case class LogError(message: String) extends LoggerMessage

  private val logPickler = compositePickler[LoggerMessage]

  implicit val (messagePickler, logMsgWitness) = defineProtocol(logPickler)

  case class LoggerProtocolContext(name: String)

  override type ChannelContext = LoggerProtocolContext

  override val contextPickler = implicitly[Pickler[LoggerProtocolContext]]

First we define a base trait LoggerMessage for all logger messages and then the actual messages. These message case classes form a sealed class hierarchy which can be reliably serialized (pickled). Next step is to define a composite pickler logPickler that knows how to pickle and unpickle the logger messages. The composite pickler is defined by its base type and by adding individual concrete types with addConcreteType. Then we are ready to define the actual messagePickler using the defineProtocol helper function, passing the previously created composite pickler. In addition to the pickler, defineProtocol also returns a message witness which is used to ensure that messages sent on this channel are type safe.

MessageWitness[M, P] is a type class that signals that a messages of type M are valid for protocol P. Calling send on a channel requires that an appropriate MessageWitness is implicitly available. By storing the message witnesses inside the protocol class, they automatically are.

When a channel is created, its initial context is sent to the other side to be used in channel materialization. For this purpose we need to override the ChannelContext type with our own context and provide a pickler for the context. Here we can simply use an implicitly created pickler.

Message handler

While Arteria makes sure that your messages are passed through, it cannot handle those messages for you, so you need to provide a MessageChannelHandler. The handler trait has several lifecycle callbacks such as establishing, established and closed, but mainly we are interested in the process method which is called for every message received.

A simple implementation for handling the logger protocol could be something like this,

class LoggerHandler(logger: Logger) extends MessageChannelHandler[LoggerProtocol.type] {
  override def process = {
    case LogDebug(msg) => logger.debug(msg)
    case LogInfo(msg)  =>
    case LogWarn(msg)  => logger.warn(msg)
    case LogError(msg) => logger.error(msg)

The process method actually returns a PartialFunction[Message, Unit] which handles the real message processing. This makes defining the implementation simple, as you can just write the matching case statements for each message type.

Materializing channels

When a new channel is created on top of a router (or another channel), a special message is sent to the other router, instructing it to materialize an instance of that channel. For our logger, we need to do this in our router handler.

class TopChannelHandler(loggerHandler: MessageChannelHandler[LoggerProtocol.type]) 
  extends MessageRouterHandler[RouterChild] {
  override def materializeChildChannel(id: Int,
                                       globalId: Int,
                                       router: MessageRouterBase,
                                       materializeChild: RouterChild,
                                       contextReader: ChannelReader): MessageChannelBase = {
    materializeChild match {
      case CreateLoggerChannel =>
        val context =[LoggerProtocol.ChannelContext]
        Some(new MessageChannel(LoggerProtocol)(id, globalId, router, loggerHandler, context))

First step is to read the channel context data from ChannelReader and pass that, with other relevant parameters including the logger handler, to the constructor of MessageChannel. Once the channel is created, it's ready to process incoming messages.

Creating a channel

Channels are always created as sub-channels of existing channels. The only exception being the router, which is also a channel, but stands on its own. To create our logger channel, we need to call createChannel on the router.

val loggerChannel = router.createChannel(LoggerProtocol)(

The first argument to createChannel is the protocol implementation, which also defines the types for the next arguments. While channels are bidirectional, in case of our logger we only send messages in one direction, so at this end we can replace the channel handler with an empty implementation. The initial context of the channel is passed as well as the instruction to materialize the correct channel type.

Sending messages

Establishing the channel is an asynchronous process as the other router must acknowledge the new channel, but we can start sending messages immediately after we have created the channel. Simply call the send method and pass an appropriate message:

loggerChannel.send(LogDebug("Just debugging"))

If you try to send a message that is not supported by the protocol, you will get a compilation error:

>>> Message of type UIProtocol.NextFrame is not valid for protocol LoggerProtocol.type

To make the use of logger a bit easier, we can define a wrapper interface that provides nice and simple methods:

val logger: Logger = new Logger {
  override def error(message: String): Unit = loggerChannel.send(LogError(message))
  override def debug(message: String): Unit = loggerChannel.send(LogDebug(message))
  override def info(message: String): Unit  = loggerChannel.send(LogInfo(message))
  override def warn(message: String): Unit  = loggerChannel.send(LogWarn(message))

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