In this example the Factor instance associated with port 9000 will run a thread that receives and prints messages in the listener. The code to run the server is:

USING: io.servers ; 9000 local-server start-node

The code to start the thread is:

USING: concurrency.messaging threads ; : log-message ( -- ) receive . flush log-message ; [ log-message ] "logger" [ spawn ] keep register-remote-thread

This spawns a thread that waits for the messages and prints them. It registers the thread as remotely accessible with register-remote-thread.

The second Factor instance can send messages to the 'logger' thread by name:

USING: io.servers concurrency.distributed ; FROM: concurrency.messaging => send ; "hello" 9000 local-server "logger" <remote-thread> send

The send word is used to send messages to threads. If an instance of remote-thread is provided, then the message is marshalled to the named thread on the given machine using the serialize vocabulary.

Running this code should show the message "hello" in the first Factor instance.

It is also possible to use send-synchronous to receive a response to a distributed message. When an instance of thread is marshalled, it is converted into an instance of remote-thread. The receiver of this can use it as the target of a send, send-synchronous or reply-synchronous call.

Note: send-synchronous can only work if local-node is assigned (use start-node), because there must be a server for the remote instance to send its reply to.