title: akka ask actorselection from play controller
body: <p>I'm trying to implement this pattern in play:</p>
  
  <pre><code>class MyController extends Controller {
      def getStuff(actorPath: String) = {
          implicit request =&gt; Async {
              val myFutureStuff = system.actorSelection(actorPath) ? FindStuff()
  
              // Handle the result
          }
      }
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But apparently you can't "ask" an ActorSelection, only an ActorRef.</p>
  
  <p>So you have to get an ActorRef from the ActorSelection, which means sending an "Identify" message to the ActorSelection and getting the response back.  I can't find a simple way to do this from within the controller, though, as the actor has no way of sending the response of "Identify" back to it.</p>
  
  <p>From examples I've seen where people communicate with actors through the controller, they use ActorRef directly.  In my application, I don't want to be hanging on to these ActorRefs.  Instead, I fire them up and let them go until I need to communicate with them.  When that happens, I want to be able to get a handle to them via their path and ask some information of them.</p>
  
  <p>Is there a better way to do what I want while still using an actor back-end/play front-end approach?</p>
  
  <p>Many thanks</p>