Using the @Input and @Output annotations, you can specify a customized channel name for the channel, as shown in the following example:

public interface Barista {
    ...
    @Input("inboundOrders")
    SubscribableChannel orders();
}

In this example, the created bound channel will be named inboundOrders.

For easy addressing of the most common use cases, which involve either an input channel, an output channel, or both, Spring Cloud Stream provides three predefined interfaces out of the box.

Source can be used for an application which has a single outbound channel.

public interface Source {

  String OUTPUT = "output";

  @Output(Source.OUTPUT)
  MessageChannel output();

}

Sink can be used for an application which has a single inbound channel.

public interface Sink {

  String INPUT = "input";

  @Input(Sink.INPUT)
  SubscribableChannel input();

}

Processor can be used for an application which has both an inbound channel and an outbound channel.

public interface Processor extends Source, Sink {
}

Spring Cloud Stream provides no special handling for any of these interfaces; they are only provided out of the box.

For each bound interface, Spring Cloud Stream will generate a bean that implements the interface. Invoking a @Input-annotated or @Output-annotated method of one of these beans will return the relevant bound channel.

The bean in the following example sends a message on the output channel when its hello method is invoked. It invokes output() on the injected Source bean to retrieve the target channel.

@Component
public class SendingBean {

    private Source source;

    @Autowired
    public SendingBean(Source source) {
        this.source = source;
    }

    public void sayHello(String name) {
         source.output().send(MessageBuilder.withPayload(name).build());
    }
}

Bound channels can be also injected directly:

@Component
public class SendingBean {

    private MessageChannel output;

    @Autowired
    public SendingBean(MessageChannel output) {
        this.output = output;
    }

    public void sayHello(String name) {
         output.send(MessageBuilder.withPayload(name).build());
    }
}

If the name of the channel is customized on the declaring annotation, that name should be used instead of the method name. Given the following declaration:

public interface CustomSource {
    ...
    @Output("customOutput")
    MessageChannel output();
}

The channel will be injected as shown in the following example:

@Component
public class SendingBean {

    private MessageChannel output;

    @Autowired
    public SendingBean(@Qualifier("customOutput") MessageChannel output) {
        this.output = output;
    }

    public void sayHello(String name) {
         this.output.send(MessageBuilder.withPayload(name).build());
    }
}

Because Spring Cloud Stream is based on Spring Integration, Stream completely inherits Integration’s foundation and infrastructure as well as the component itself. For example, you can attach the output channel of a Source to a MessageSource:

@EnableBinding(Source.class)
public class TimerSource {

  @Value("${format}")
  private String format;

  @Bean
  @InboundChannelAdapter(value = Source.OUTPUT, poller = @Poller(fixedDelay = "${fixedDelay}", maxMessagesPerPoll = "1"))
  public MessageSource<String> timerMessageSource() {
    return () -> new GenericMessage<>(new SimpleDateFormat(format).format(new Date()));
  }
}

Or you can use a processor’s channels in a transformer:

@EnableBinding(Processor.class)
public class TransformProcessor {
  @Transformer(inputChannel = Processor.INPUT, outputChannel = Processor.OUTPUT)
  public Object transform(String message) {
    return message.toUpperCase();
  }
}

Note

It’s important to understant that when you consume from the same binding using @StreamListener a pubsub model is used, where each method annotated with @StreamListener receives it’s own copy of the message, each one has its own consumer group. However, if you share a bindable channel as an input for @Aggregator, @Transformer or @ServiceActivator, those will consume in a competing model, no individual consumer group is created for each subscription.

Spring Cloud Stream supports publishing error messages received by the Spring Integration global error channel. Error messages sent to the errorChannel can be published to a specific destination at the broker by configuring a binding for the outbound target named error. For example, to publish error messages to a broker destination named "myErrors", provide the following property: spring.cloud.stream.bindings.error.destination=myErrors.

Starting with version 1.3, some MessageChannel - based binders publish errors to a discrete error channel for each destination. In addition, these error channels are bridged to the global Spring Integration errorChannel mentioned above. You can therefore consume errors for specific destinations and/or for all destinations, using a standard Spring Integration flow (IntegrationFlow, @ServiceActivator, etc.).

On the consumer side, the listener thread catches any exceptions and forwards an ErrorMessage to the destination’s error channel. The payload of the message is a MessagingException with the normal failedMessage and cause properties. Usually, the raw data received from the broker is included in a header. For binders that support (and are configured with) a dead letter destination; a MessagePublishingErrorHandler is subscribed to the channel, and the raw data is forwarded to the dead letter destination.

On the producer side; for binders that support some kind of async result after publishing messages (e.g. RabbitMQ, Kafka), you can enable an error channel by setting the …​producer.errorChannelEnabled to true. The payload of the ErrorMessage depends on the binder implementation but will be a MessagingException with the normal failedMessage property, as well as additional properties about the failure. Refer to the binder documentation for complete details.

Complementary to its Spring Integration support, Spring Cloud Stream provides its own @StreamListener annotation, modeled after other Spring Messaging annotations (e.g. @MessageMapping, @JmsListener, @RabbitListener, etc.). The @StreamListener annotation provides a simpler model for handling inbound messages, especially when dealing with use cases that involve content type management and type coercion.

Spring Cloud Stream provides an extensible MessageConverter mechanism for handling data conversion by bound channels and for, in this case, dispatching to methods annotated with @StreamListener. The following is an example of an application which processes external Vote events:

@EnableBinding(Sink.class)
public class VoteHandler {

  @Autowired
  VotingService votingService;

  @StreamListener(Sink.INPUT)
  public void handle(Vote vote) {
    votingService.record(vote);
  }
}

The distinction between @StreamListener and a Spring Integration @ServiceActivator is seen when considering an inbound Message that has a String payload and a contentType header of application/json. In the case of @StreamListener, the MessageConverter mechanism will use the contentType header to parse the String payload into a Vote object.

As with other Spring Messaging methods, method arguments can be annotated with @Payload, @Headers and @Header.

	Note
	For methods which return data, you must use the @SendTo annotation to specify the output binding destination for data returned by the method: @EnableBinding(Processor.class) public class TransformProcessor { @Autowired VotingService votingService; @StreamListener(Processor.INPUT) @SendTo(Processor.OUTPUT) public VoteResult handle(Vote vote) { return votingService.record(vote); } }

Since version 1.2, Spring Cloud Stream supports dispatching messages to multiple @StreamListener methods registered on an input channel, based on a condition.

In order to be eligible to support conditional dispatching, a method must satisfy the follow conditions:

The condition is specified via a SpEL expression in the condition attribute of the annotation and is evaluated for each message. All the handlers that match the condition will be invoked in the same thread and no assumption must be made about the order in which the invocations take place.

An example of using @StreamListener with dispatching conditions can be seen below. In this example, all the messages bearing a header type with the value foo will be dispatched to the receiveFoo method, and all the messages bearing a header type with the value bar will be dispatched to the receiveBar method.

@EnableBinding(Sink.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class TestPojoWithAnnotatedArguments {

    @StreamListener(target = Sink.INPUT, condition = "headers['type']=='foo'")
    public void receiveFoo(@Payload FooPojo fooPojo) {
       // handle the message
    }

    @StreamListener(target = Sink.INPUT, condition = "headers['type']=='bar'")
    public void receiveBar(@Payload BarPojo barPojo) {
       // handle the message
    }
}

	Note
	Dispatching via @StreamListener conditions is only supported for handlers of individual messages, and not for reactive programming support (described below).

A Reactor based handler can have the following argument types:

A Reactor based handler supports a return type of Flux, case in which it must be annotated with @Output. We recommend using the return value of the method when a single output flux is available.

Here is an example of a simple Reactor-based Processor.

@EnableBinding(Processor.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class UppercaseTransformer {

  @StreamListener
  @Output(Processor.OUTPUT)
  public Flux<String> receive(@Input(Processor.INPUT) Flux<String> input) {
    return input.map(s -> s.toUpperCase());
  }
}

The same processor using output arguments looks like this:

@EnableBinding(Processor.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class UppercaseTransformer {

  @StreamListener
  public void receive(@Input(Processor.INPUT) Flux<String> input,
     @Output(Processor.OUTPUT) FluxSender output) {
     output.send(input.map(s -> s.toUpperCase()));
  }
}

RxJava 1.x handlers follow the same rules as Reactor-based one, but will use Observable and ObservableSender arguments and return types.

So the first example above will become:

@EnableBinding(Processor.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class UppercaseTransformer {

  @StreamListener
  @Output(Processor.OUTPUT)
  public Observable<String> receive(@Input(Processor.INPUT) Observable<String> input) {
    return input.map(s -> s.toUpperCase());
  }
}

The second example above will become:

@EnableBinding(Processor.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class UppercaseTransformer {

  @StreamListener
  public void receive(@Input(Processor.INPUT) Observable<String> input,
     @Output(Processor.OUTPUT) ObservableSender output) {
     output.send(input.map(s -> s.toUpperCase()));
  }
}

Spring Cloud Stream reactive support also provides the ability for creating reactive sources through the StreamEmitter annotation. Using StreamEmitter annotation, a regular source may be converted to a reactive one. StreamEmitter is a method level annotation that marks a method to be an emitter to outputs declared via EnableBinding. It is not allowed to use the Input annotation along with StreamEmitter, as the methods marked with this annotation are not listening from any input, rather generating to an output. Following the same programming model used in StreamListener, StreamEmitter also allows flexible ways of using the Output annotation depending on whether the method has any arguments, return type etc.

Here are some examples of using StreamEmitter in various styles.

The following example will emit the "Hello World" message every millisecond and publish to a Flux. In this case, the resulting messages in Flux will be sent to the output channel of the Source.

@EnableBinding(Source.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class HelloWorldEmitter {

  @StreamEmitter
  @Output(Source.OUTPUT)
  public Flux<String> emit() {
    return Flux.intervalMillis(1)
            .map(l -> "Hello World");
  }
}

Following is another flavor of the same sample as above. Instead of returning a Flux, this method uses a FluxSender to programmatically send Flux from a source.

@EnableBinding(Source.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class HelloWorldEmitter {

  @StreamEmitter
  @Output(Source.OUTPUT)
  public void emit(FluxSender output) {
    output.send(Flux.intervalMillis(1)
            .map(l -> "Hello World"));
  }
}

Following is exactly same as the above snippet in functionality and style. However, instead of using an explicit Output annotation at the method level, it is used as the method parameter level.

@EnableBinding(Source.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class HelloWorldEmitter {

  @StreamEmitter
  public void emit(@Output(Source.OUTPUT) FluxSender output) {
    output.send(Flux.intervalMillis(1)
            .map(l -> "Hello World"));
  }
}

Here is yet another flavor of writing reacting sources using the Reactive Streams Publisher API and the support for it in the Spring Integration Java DSL. The Publisher is still using Reactor Flux under the hood, but from an application perspective, that is transparent to the user and only needs Reactive Streams and Java DSL for Spring Integration.

@EnableBinding(Source.class)
@EnableAutoConfiguration
public static class HelloWorldEmitter {

  @StreamEmitter
  @Output(Source.OUTPUT)
  @Bean
  public Publisher<Message<String>> emit() {
    return IntegrationFlows.from(() ->
                new GenericMessage<>("Hello World"),
        e -> e.poller(p -> p.fixedDelay(1)))
        .toReactivePublisher();
  }
}

Spring Cloud Stream supports passing properties for the individual applications inside the aggregate application using 'namespace' as prefix.

The namespace can be set for applications as follows:

@SpringBootApplication
public class SampleAggregateApplication {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		new AggregateApplicationBuilder()
			.from(SourceApplication.class).namespace("source").args("--fixedDelay=5000")
			.via(ProcessorApplication.class).namespace("processor1")
			.to(SinkApplication.class).namespace("sink").args("--debug=true").run(args);
	}
}

Once the 'namespace' is set for the individual applications, the application properties with the namespace as prefix can be passed to the aggregate application using any supported property source (commandline, environment properties etc.).

For instance, to override the default fixedDelay and debug properties of 'source' and 'sink' applications:

java -jar target/MyAggregateApplication-0.0.1-SNAPSHOT.jar --source.fixedDelay=10000 --sink.debug=false

The non self-contained aggregate application is bound to external broker via either or both the inbound/outbound components (typically, message channels) of the aggregate application while the applications inside the aggregate application are directly bound. For example: a source application’s output and a processor application’s input are directly bound while the processor’s output channel is bound to an external destination at the broker. When passing the binding service properties for non-self contained aggregate application, it is required to pass the binding service properties to the aggregate application instead of setting them as 'args' to individual child application. For instance,

@SpringBootApplication
public class SampleAggregateApplication {

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		new AggregateApplicationBuilder()
			.from(SourceApplication.class).namespace("source").args("--fixedDelay=5000")
			.via(ProcessorApplication.class).namespace("processor1").args("--debug=true").run(args);
	}
}

The binding properties like --spring.cloud.stream.bindings.output.destination=processor-output need to be specified as one of the external configuration properties (cmdline arg etc.).