Accessing the underlying ActorRef of an akka stream Source created by Source.actorRef

You need a Flow:

  import akka.stream.OverflowStrategy.fail
  import akka.stream.scaladsl.Source
  import akka.stream.scaladsl.{Sink, Flow}

  case class Weather(zip : String, temp : Double, raining : Boolean)

  val weatherSource = Source.actorRef[Weather](Int.MaxValue, fail)

  val sunnySource = weatherSource.filter(!_.raining)

  val ref = Flow[Weather]
    .to(Sink.ignore)
    .runWith(sunnySource)

  ref ! Weather("02139", 32.0, true)

Remember this is all experimental and may change!

As @Noah points out the experimental nature of akka-streams, his answer might not work with the 1.0 release. I had to follow the example given by this example:

implicit val materializer = ActorMaterializer()
val (actorRef: ActorRef, publisher: Publisher[TweetInfo]) = Source.actorRef[TweetInfo](1000, OverflowStrategy.fail).toMat(Sink.publisher)(Keep.both).run()
actorRef ! TweetInfo(...)
val source: Source[TweetInfo, Unit] = Source[TweetInfo](publisher)

Instance of ActorRef, like all 'materialized values', will become accessible only once whole stream is materialized, or, in other words, when RunnableGraph is being run.

// RunnableGraph[ActorRef] means that you get ActorRef when you run the graph
val rg1: RunnableGraph[ActorRef] = sunnySource.to(Sink.foreach(println))

// You get ActorRef instance as a materialized value
val actorRef1: ActorRef = rg1.run()

// Or even more correct way: to materialize both ActorRef and future to completion 
// of the stream, so that we know when we are done:

// RunnableGraph[(ActorRef, Future[Done])] means that you get tuple
// (ActorRef, Future[Done]) when you run the graph
val rg2: RunnableGraph[(ActorRef, Future[Done])] =
  sunnySource.toMat(Sink.foreach(println))(Keep.both)

// You get both ActorRef and Future[Done] instances as materialized values
val (actorRef2, future) = rg2.run()

actorRef2 ! Weather("90210", 72.0, false)
actorRef2 ! Weather("02139", 32.0, true)
actorRef2 ! akka.actor.Status.Success("Done!") // Complete the stream
future onComplete { /* ... */ }