A convenient MessageTemplate helper class is provided that allows you to push messages to any BlazeDS MessageDestination from a simple POJO. This provides a nice abstraction over push style messaging that hides away the details of the underlying messaging protocol. Whether using a simple AMF based destination or full-blown JMS, etc., the use of the MessageTemplate stays the same. The only thing the MessageTemplate requires is a reference to a Spring-managed MessageBroker. If the MessageTemplate is configured as a Spring bean, it will try and auto-detect the MessageBroker from its application context.

As an example of how the MessageTemplate could be used, suppose we have a RESTful travel application that has a Flex-based admin console but also exposes an API over HTTP. To give the admin console a "live" view of the data, we want to push updates to it anytime a new hotel booking is created. Given the following setup in our application context:

<flex:message-broker />

<bean id="defaultMessageTemplate" class="org.springframework.flex.messaging.MessageTemplate" />

<flex:message-destination id="bookingUpdates" />
    	

and assuming the Flex client is subscribed to the "bookingUpdates" destination, this could be achieved with the following controller code:

@Controller
public class BookingController {
	
	private MessageTemplate template;
	
	private BookingService bookingService;
	
	@RequestMapping(value="/bookings", method=RequestMethod.POST)
	public String createBooking(Booking booking){
		booking = bookingService.saveBooking(booking);
		template.send("bookingUpdates", booking);
		return "redirect:/bookings/"+booking.getId();
	}
	
	@Autowired
	public void setTemplate(MessageTemplate template) {
		this.template = template;
	}
	
	@Autowired
	public void setBookingService(BookingService bookingService) {
		this.bookingService = bookingService;
	}
}