[Core][Feature request] Promote `actor_handle._actor_id` to public API

[cadedaniel]

We should promote _actor_id to public API and also make it a usable string, e.g. repr does not add anything except the ID.

>>> a._actor_id
ActorID(811a6143d62d08e4d6e447c21c000000)
# This should change to just return '811a6143d62d08e4d6e447c21c000000'

Example use case is in combination with the State API:

import ray

ray.init()

@ray.remote
class A:
    pass

a = A.remote()

# Use here instead of this hack
obj_ref = str(a).replace('Actor(A, ', '').replace(')', '')

from ray.experimental.state.api import get_actor
print(get_actor(id=obj_ref))

[pcmoritz]

Yeah, exposing actor_handle.actor_id() seems like a no-brainer here. I think it should actually be actor_handle.get_actor_id() and return a string to be consistent with the APIs in https://docs.ray.io/en/master/ray-core/api/doc/ray.runtime_context.RuntimeContext.html

Any thoughts @ericl or @scv119 ?

[ericl]

Wouldn't this conflict with a method called 'get_actor_id' on the actual actor?

[pcmoritz]

Great point! So maybe be consistent with the other "hidden" methods then, call it actor_handle.__ray_actor_id__() then and still make it public? Or keep it like it is and make it public?

[ericl]

__ray_terminate__ launches a remote method, so we should probably make this syntactically different. I'd vote to make the current thing public.

[jovany-wang]

I'd vote to make the current thing public.

vote +1

[pcmoritz]

Alright, sounds good to me! This has the advantage that it doesn't need migrations. We can just say in the docs even though this starts with an underscore to not clash with actor methods, this is a public interface or something like that :)

[pcmoritz]

I think the main action item of this issue will be to add ActorHandle to https://docs.ray.io/en/latest/ray-core/package-ref.html and make sure this is documented.

[scv119]

Would an alternative is to add an helper method ray.get_actor_id(actor_handle)?

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[krtkvrm]

can I take this up ?