Retry

retry is a pure async function for “try this call up to N times, with backoff between attempts.” It’s the simplest layer in the resilience stack — no actors, no state, just a Promise-returning factory.

import { retry } from 'actor-ts';

const data = await retry(
  () => fetch('https://example.com/items').then(r => r.json()),
  { attempts: 3, delayMs: 200, factor: 2 },
);

The factory is called up to 3 times. Each retry waits longer: attempt 1 immediately, attempt 2 after 200 ms, attempt 3 after 400 ms. Returns the first success; rejects with the last error if every attempt fails.

The signature

function retry<T>(factory: () => Promise<T>, options: RetryOptions): Promise<T>;

interface RetryOptions {
  attempts:        number;     // total including initial call (>= 1)
  delayMs?:        number;     // base delay between attempts
  factor?:         number;     // multiplier for exponential backoff (default 1)
  maxDelayMs?:     number;     // ceiling for any individual delay
  shouldRetry?:    (err: Error, attempt: number) => boolean;
  onAttempt?:      (err: Error, attempt: number) => void;
}

The attempts field is total attempts, not retries — attempts: 1 runs the factory exactly once with no retries. attempts: 3 runs up to 3 times.

Configuring the backoff

Four knobs cooperate to control the delay between attempts:

Setting	What it does
`delayMs`	Base delay between attempts. Default `0` (no wait).
`factor`	Multiplier per attempt. Delay on attempt N is `delayMs × factor^(N-1)`. Default `1` (constant).
`maxDelayMs`	Upper bound on any single delay. Default unbounded.

// Constant 500ms between attempts:
retry(factory, { attempts: 5, delayMs: 500 });

// Exponential: 200ms, 400ms, 800ms, capped at 5s:
retry(factory, { attempts: 6, delayMs: 200, factor: 2, maxDelayMs: 5_000 });

// Fibonacci-ish: ad-hoc via factor=1.6:
retry(factory, { attempts: 5, delayMs: 100, factor: 1.6 });

No jitter — the delay is deterministic per attempt. If you need jittered retries (recommended for high-concurrency scenarios that might synchronize), wrap the policy:

import { retry, exponentialBackoff } from 'actor-ts';

const policy = exponentialBackoff({ minMs: 200, maxMs: 5_000, randomFactor: 0.2 });

async function jitteredRetry<T>(factory: () => Promise<T>, attempts: number): Promise<T> {
  for (let i = 0; i < attempts; i++) {
    try { return await factory(); }
    catch (e) {
      if (i === attempts - 1) throw e;
      await new Promise(r => setTimeout(r, policy.delayFor(i)));
    }
  }
  throw new Error('unreachable');
}

Or use BackoffSupervisor if the thing being retried is an actor restart.

Selective retry — `shouldRetry`

class TransientError extends Error {}
class PermanentError extends Error {}

await retry(
  () => callExternalAPI(),
  {
    attempts:    5,
    delayMs:     500,
    factor:      2,
    shouldRetry: (err) => err instanceof TransientError,
  },
);

shouldRetry runs after every failed attempt. Return false to short-circuit — the retry loop exits immediately with that error, no more attempts.

Use it to differentiate transient and permanent failures:

Transient (network blip, rate limit, lock-contention) → retry.
Permanent (validation error, auth failure, 4xx) → don’t retry; the next attempt will fail the same way.

Observability — `onAttempt`

await retry(factory, {
  attempts:  3,
  delayMs:   500,
  onAttempt: (err, attempt) => {
    metrics.counter('retry.attempt').inc({ attempt });
    log.warn(`attempt ${attempt} failed: ${err.message}`);
  },
});

Fires after every failed attempt, including the final one. Use it for retry-aware metrics and logging — counters per attempt, spans for tracing, alerts on “we ran out of retries.”

Compared to BackoffSupervisor

Use case	Reach for…
A single `Promise`-returning call (HTTP fetch, DB query, ask)	`retry`
An actor that fails and should be respawned	`BackoffSupervisor`
A call protected by short-circuit behavior	`CircuitBreaker` (often combined with `retry` inside)

retry is the call-level primitive. BackoffSupervisor is the actor-level primitive. They don’t compete — pick by what you’re protecting.

For an actor that wants to retry its own downstream call, retry inside onReceive is fine:

class MyActor extends Actor<...> {
  override async onReceive(msg): Promise<void> {
    const result = await retry(
      () => this.callDownstream(msg),
      { attempts: 3, delayMs: 200, factor: 2 },
    );
    // ...
  }
}

Awaiting inside onReceive blocks the actor’s mailbox until the retry completes — same trade-off as any await inside an onReceive. See Ask pattern for when this is a problem.

Compared to circuit breaker

A circuit breaker is per-dependency state that says “stop trying this thing for a while.” Retry is per-call logic that says “try again right now after a short wait.”

Combine them — retry inside a breaker call:

breaker.call(() => retry(
  () => fetch('https://flaky.example'),
  { attempts: 3, delayMs: 100, factor: 2 },
));

The retry handles transient blips during a single call; the breaker tracks the trend across many calls.

const p = retry(longCall, { attempts: 5, delayMs: 1000 });
// ... user clicked cancel ...
// p will still run all attempts.

There’s no built-in cancellation. If you need to abort, pass an AbortSignal to the factory and check it inside:

retry(() => longCall({ signal: ac.signal }), { attempts: 5, delayMs: 1000 });

An AbortError thrown by the factory bypasses shouldRetry’s default “retry any” — provide a shouldRetry that returns false for AbortError to fail fast on cancellation.

retry(() => paymentApi.charge(card, amount), { attempts: 3, delayMs: 1000 });

If the first call succeeds but the response is lost in transit, the retry charges the card again. Either make the operation idempotent (request-id, idempotency key) or don’t retry side-effecting calls without that protection.

retry(factory, { attempts: 50, delayMs: 100, factor: 2 });
// Attempt 30: delay = 100 × 2^29 ≈ 1.6 years

Always set maxDelayMs for factor > 1. Otherwise a high attempts count produces absurd delays.

Where to next

Backoff supervisor — the actor-restart equivalent of retry.
Backoff policy — pure delay-calculation primitives for custom retry loops.
Circuit breaker — the complementary “stop calling for a while” primitive.

The retry API reference covers the full signature.