An important challenge to adoption is the lack of support for WebSocket in some browsers. Notably the first Internet Explorer version to support WebSocket is version 10 (see http://caniuse.com/websockets for support by browser versions). Furthermore, some restrictive proxies may be configured in ways that either preclude the attempt to do an HTTP upgrade or otherwise break connection after some time because it has remained opened for too long. A good overview on this topic from Peter Lubbers is available in the InfoQ article "How HTML5 Web Sockets Interact With Proxy Servers".

Therefore to build a WebSocket application today, fallback options are required in order to simulate the WebSocket API where necessary. The Spring Framework provides such transparent fallback options based on the SockJS protocol. These options can be enabled through configuration and do not require modifying the application otherwise.

Aside from short-to-midterm adoption challenges, using WebSocket brings up important design considerations that are important to recognize early on, especially in contrast to what we know about building web applications today.

Today REST is a widely accepted, understood, and supported architecture for building web applications. It is an architecture that relies on having many URLs (nouns), a handful of HTTP methods (verbs), and other principles such as using hypermedia (links), remaining stateless, etc.

By contrast a WebSocket application may use a single URL only for the initial HTTP handshake. All messages thereafter share and flow on the same TCP connection. This points to an entirely different, asynchronous, event-driven, messaging architecture. One that is much closer to traditional messaging applications (e.g. JMS, AMQP).

Spring Framework 4 includes a new spring-messaging module with key abstractions from the Spring Integration project such as Message, MessageChannel, MessageHandler, and others that can serve as a foundation for such a messaging architecture. The module also includes a set of annotations for mapping messages to methods, similar to the Spring MVC annotation based programming model.

WebSocket does imply a messaging architecture but does not mandate the use of any specific messaging protocol. It is a very thin layer over TCP that transforms a stream of bytes into a stream of messages (either text or binary) and not much more. It is up to applications to interpret the meaning of a message.

Unlike HTTP, which is an application-level protocol, in the WebSocket protocol there is simply not enough information in an incoming message for a framework or container to know how to route it or process it. Therefore WebSocket is arguably too low level for anything but a very trivial application. It can be done, but it will likely lead to creating a framework on top. This is comparable to how most web applications today are written using a web framework rather than the Servlet API alone.

For this reason the WebSocket RFC defines the use of sub-protocols. During the handshake, the client and server can use the header Sec-WebSocket-Protocol to agree on a sub-protocol, i.e. a higher, application-level protocol to use. The use of a sub-protocol is not required, but even if not used, applications will still need to choose a message format that both the client and server can understand. That format can be custom, framework-specific, or a standard messaging protocol.

The Spring Framework provides support for using STOMP — a simple, messaging protocol originally created for use in scripting languages with frames inspired by HTTP. STOMP is widely supported and well suited for use over WebSocket and over the web.

With all the design considerations surrounding the use of WebSocket, it is reasonable to ask, "When is it appropriate to use?".

The best fit for WebSocket is in web applications where the client and server need to exchange events at high frequency and with low latency. Prime candidates include, but are not limited to, applications in finance, games, collaboration, and others. Such applications are both very sensitive to time delays and also need to exchange a wide variety of messages at a high frequency.

For other application types, however, this may not be the case. For example, a news or social feed that shows breaking news as it becomes available may be perfectly okay with simple polling once every few minutes. Here latency is important, but it is acceptable if the news takes a few minutes to appear.

Even in cases where latency is crucial, if the volume of messages is relatively low (e.g. monitoring network failures) the use of long polling should be considered as a relatively simple alternative that works reliably and is comparable in terms of efficiency (again assuming the volume of messages is relatively low).

It is the combination of both low latency and high frequency of messages that can make the use of the WebSocket protocol critical. Even in such applications, the choice remains whether all client-server communication should be done through WebSocket messages as opposed to using HTTP and REST. The answer is going to vary by application; however, it is likely that some functionality may be exposed over both WebSocket and as a REST API in order to provide clients with alternatives. Furthermore, a REST API call may need to broadcast a message to interested clients connected via WebSocket.

The Spring Framework allows @Controller and @RestController classes to have both HTTP request handling and WebSocket message handling methods. Furthermore, a Spring MVC request handling method, or any application method for that matter, can easily broadcast a message to all interested WebSocket clients or to a specific user.

Creating a WebSocket server is as simple as implementing WebSocketHandler or more likely extending either TextWebSocketHandler or BinaryWebSocketHandler:

import org.springframework.web.socket.WebSocketHandler;
import org.springframework.web.socket.WebSocketSession;
import org.springframework.web.socket.TextMessage;

public class MyHandler extends TextWebSocketHandler {

    @Override
    public void handleTextMessage(WebSocketSession session, TextMessage message) {
        // ...
    }

}

There is dedicated WebSocket Java-config and XML namespace support for mapping the above WebSocket handler to a specific URL:

import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocket;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketConfigurer;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketHandlerRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler");
    }

    @Bean
    public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
        return new MyHandler();
    }

}

XML configuration equivalent:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:handlers>
        <websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
    </websocket:handlers>

    <bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

The above is for use in Spring MVC applications and should be included in the configuration of a DispatcherServlet. However, Spring’s WebSocket support does not depend on Spring MVC. It is relatively simple to integrate a WebSocketHandler into other HTTP serving environments with the help of WebSocketHttpRequestHandler.

The easiest way to customize the initial HTTP WebSocket handshake request is through a HandshakeInterceptor, which exposes "before" and "after" the handshake methods. Such an interceptor can be used to preclude the handshake or to make any attributes available to the WebSocketSession. For example, there is a built-in interceptor for passing HTTP session attributes to the WebSocket session:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addHandler(new MyHandler(), "/myHandler")
            .addInterceptors(new HttpSessionHandshakeInterceptor());
    }

}

And the XML configuration equivalent:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:handlers>
        <websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
        <websocket:handshake-interceptors>
            <bean class="org.springframework.web.socket.server.support.HttpSessionHandshakeInterceptor"/>
        </websocket:handshake-interceptors>
    </websocket:handlers>

    <bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

A more advanced option is to extend the DefaultHandshakeHandler that performs the steps of the WebSocket handshake, including validating the client origin, negotiating a sub-protocol, and others. An application may also need to use this option if it needs to configure a custom RequestUpgradeStrategy in order to adapt to a WebSocket server engine and version that is not yet supported (also see Section 26.2.4, “Deployment” for more on this subject). Both the Java-config and XML namespace make it possible to configure a custom HandshakeHandler.

Spring provides a WebSocketHandlerDecorator base class that can be used to decorate a WebSocketHandler with additional behavior. Logging and exception handling implementations are provided and added by default when using the WebSocket Java-config or XML namespace. The ExceptionWebSocketHandlerDecorator catches all uncaught exceptions arising from any WebSocketHandler method and closes the WebSocket session with status 1011 that indicates a server error.

The Spring WebSocket API is easy to integrate into a Spring MVC application where the DispatcherServlet serves both HTTP WebSocket handshake as well as other HTTP requests. It is also easy to integrate into other HTTP processing scenarios by invoking WebSocketHttpRequestHandler. This is convenient and easy to understand. However, special considerations apply with regards to JSR-356 runtimes.

The Java WebSocket API (JSR-356) provides two deployment mechanisms. The first involves a Servlet container classpath scan (Servlet 3 feature) at startup; and the other is a registration API to use at Servlet container initialization. Neither of these mechanism makes it possible to use a single "front controller" for all HTTP processing — including WebSocket handshake and all other HTTP requests — such as Spring MVC’s DispatcherServlet.

This is a significant limitation of JSR-356 that Spring’s WebSocket support addresses by providing a server-specific RequestUpgradeStrategy even when running in a JSR-356 runtime.

	Note
	A request to overcome the above limitation in the Java WebSocket API has been created and can be followed at WEBSOCKET_SPEC-211. Also note that Tomcat and Jetty already provide native API alternatives that makes it easy to overcome the limitation. We are hopeful that more servers will follow their example regardless of when it is addressed in the Java WebSocket API.

A secondary consideration is that Servlet containers with JSR-356 support are expected to perform a ServletContainerInitializer (SCI) scan that can slow down application startup, in some cases dramatically. If a significant impact is observed after an upgrade to a Servlet container version with JSR-356 support, it should be possible to selectively enable or disable web fragments (and SCI scanning) through the use of the <absolute-ordering /> element in web.xml:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
    version="3.0">

    <absolute-ordering/>

</web-app>

You can then selectively enable web fragments by name, such as Spring’s own SpringServletContainerInitializer that provides support for the Servlet 3 Java initialization API, if required:

<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
        http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
    version="3.0">

    <absolute-ordering>
        <name>spring_web</name>
    </absolute-ordering>

</web-app>

Each underlying WebSocket engine exposes configuration properties that control runtime characteristics such as the size of message buffer sizes, idle timeout, and others.

For Tomcat, WildFly, and GlassFish add a ServletServerContainerFactoryBean to your WebSocket Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Bean
    public ServletServerContainerFactoryBean createWebSocketContainer() {
        ServletServerContainerFactoryBean container = new ServletServerContainerFactoryBean();
        container.setMaxTextMessageBufferSize(8192);
        container.setMaxBinaryMessageBufferSize(8192);
        return container;
    }

}

or WebSocket XML namespace:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <bean class="org.springframework...ServletServerContainerFactoryBean">
        <property name="maxTextMessageBufferSize" value="8192"/>
        <property name="maxBinaryMessageBufferSize" value="8192"/>
    </bean>

</beans>

	Note
	For client side WebSocket configuration, you should use WebSocketContainerFactoryBean (XML) or ContainerProvider.getWebSocketContainer() (Java config).

For Jetty, you’ll need to supply a pre-configured Jetty WebSocketServerFactory and plug that into Spring’s DefaultHandshakeHandler through your WebSocket Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addHandler(echoWebSocketHandler(),
            "/echo").setHandshakeHandler(handshakeHandler());
    }

    @Bean
    public DefaultHandshakeHandler handshakeHandler() {

        WebSocketPolicy policy = new WebSocketPolicy(WebSocketBehavior.SERVER);
        policy.setInputBufferSize(8192);
        policy.setIdleTimeout(600000);

        return new DefaultHandshakeHandler(
                new JettyRequestUpgradeStrategy(new WebSocketServerFactory(policy)));
    }

}

or WebSocket XML namespace:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:handlers>
        <websocket:mapping path="/echo" handler="echoHandler"/>
        <websocket:handshake-handler ref="handshakeHandler"/>
    </websocket:handlers>

    <bean id="handshakeHandler" class="org.springframework...DefaultHandshakeHandler">
        <constructor-arg ref="upgradeStrategy"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="upgradeStrategy" class="org.springframework...JettyRequestUpgradeStrategy">
        <constructor-arg ref="serverFactory"/>
    </bean>

    <bean id="serverFactory" class="org.eclipse.jetty...WebSocketServerFactory">
        <constructor-arg>
            <bean class="org.eclipse.jetty...WebSocketPolicy">
                <constructor-arg value="SERVER"/>
                <property name="inputBufferSize" value="8092"/>
                <property name="idleTimeout" value="600000"/>
            </bean>
        </constructor-arg>
    </bean>

</beans>

As of Spring Framework 4.1.5, the default behavior for WebSocket and SockJS is to accept only same origin requests. It is also possible to allow all or a specified list of origins. This check is mostly designed for browser clients. There is nothing preventing other types of clients from modifying the Origin header value (see RFC 6454: The Web Origin Concept for more details).

The 3 possible behaviors are:

WebSocket and SockJS allowed origins can be configured as shown bellow:

import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocket;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketConfigurer;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.WebSocketHandlerRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler").setAllowedOrigins("http://mydomain.com");
    }

    @Bean
    public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
        return new MyHandler();
    }

}

XML configuration equivalent:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:handlers allowed-origins="http://mydomain.com">
        <websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler" />
    </websocket:handlers>

    <bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

The goal of SockJS is to let applications use a WebSocket API but fall back to non-WebSocket alternatives when necessary at runtime, i.e. without the need to change application code.

SockJS consists of:

SockJS is designed for use in browsers. It goes to great lengths to support a wide range of browser versions using a variety of techniques. For the full list of SockJS transport types and browsers see the SockJS client page. Transports fall in 3 general categories: WebSocket, HTTP Streaming, and HTTP Long Polling. For an overview of these categories see this blog post.

The SockJS client begins by sending "GET /info" to obtain basic information from the server. After that it must decide what transport to use. If possible WebSocket is used. If not, in most browsers there is at least one HTTP streaming option and if not then HTTP (long) polling is used.

All transport requests have the following URL structure:

http://host:port/myApp/myEndpoint/{server-id}/{session-id}/{transport}

The WebSocket transport needs only a single HTTP request to do the WebSocket handshake. All messages thereafter are exchanged on that socket.

HTTP transports require more requests. Ajax/XHR streaming for example relies on one long-running request for server-to-client messages and additional HTTP POST requests for client-to-server messages. Long polling is similar except it ends the current request after each server-to-client send.

SockJS adds minimal message framing. For example the server sends the letter o ("open" frame) initially, messages are sent as a["message1","message2"] (JSON-encoded array), the letter h ("heartbeat" frame) if no messages flow for 25 seconds by default, and the letter c ("close" frame) to close the session.

To learn more, run an example in a browser and watch the HTTP requests. The SockJS client allows fixing the list of transports so it is possible to see each transport one at a time. The SockJS client also provides a debug flag which enables helpful messages in the browser console. On the server side enable TRACE logging for org.springframework.web.socket. For even more detail refer to the SockJS protocol narrated test.

SockJS is easy to enable through Java configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerWebSocketHandlers(WebSocketHandlerRegistry registry) {
        registry.addHandler(myHandler(), "/myHandler").withSockJS();
    }

    @Bean
    public WebSocketHandler myHandler() {
        return new MyHandler();
    }

}

and the XML configuration equivalent:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:handlers>
        <websocket:mapping path="/myHandler" handler="myHandler"/>
        <websocket:sockjs/>
    </websocket:handlers>

    <bean id="myHandler" class="org.springframework.samples.MyHandler"/>

</beans>

The above is for use in Spring MVC applications and should be included in the configuration of a DispatcherServlet. However, Spring’s WebSocket and SockJS support does not depend on Spring MVC. It is relatively simple to integrate into other HTTP serving environments with the help of SockJsHttpRequestHandler.

On the browser side, applications can use the sockjs-client (version 1.0.x) that emulates the W3C WebSocket API and communicates with the server to select the best transport option depending on the browser it’s running in. Review the sockjs-client page and the list of transport types supported by browser. The client also provides several configuration options, for example, to specify which transports to include.

Internet Explorer 8 and 9 are and will remain common for some time. They are a key reason for having SockJS. This section covers important considerations about running in those browsers.

The SockJS client supports Ajax/XHR streaming in IE 8 and 9 via Microsoft’s XDomainRequest. That works across domains but does not support sending cookies. Cookies are very often essential for Java applications. However since the SockJS client can be used with many server types (not just Java ones), it needs to know whether cookies matter. If so the SockJS client prefers Ajax/XHR for streaming or otherwise it relies on a iframe-based technique.

The very first "/info" request from the SockJS client is a request for information that can influence the client’s choice of transports. One of those details is whether the server application relies on cookies, e.g. for authentication purposes or clustering with sticky sessions. Spring’s SockJS support includes a property called sessionCookieNeeded. It is enabled by default since most Java applications rely on the JSESSIONID cookie. If your application does not need it, you can turn off this option and the SockJS client should choose xdr-streaming in IE 8 and 9.

If you do use an iframe-based transport, and in any case, it is good to know that browsers can be instructed to block the use of IFrames on a given page by setting the HTTP response header X-Frame-Options to DENY, SAMEORIGIN, or ALLOW-FROM <origin>. This is used to prevent clickjacking.

Note

Spring Security 3.2+ provides support for setting X-Frame-Options on every response. By default the Spring Security Java config sets it to DENY. In 3.2 the Spring Security XML namespace does not set that header by default but may be configured to do so, and in the future it may set it by default. See Section 7.1. "Default Security Headers" of the Spring Security documentation for details on how to configure the setting of the X-Frame-Options header. You may also check or watch SEC-2501 for additional background.

If your application adds the X-Frame-Options response header (as it should!) and relies on an iframe-based transport, you will need to set the header value to SAMEORIGIN or ALLOW-FROM <origin>. Along with that the Spring SockJS support also needs to know the location of the SockJS client because it is loaded from the iframe. By default the iframe is set to download the SockJS client from a CDN location. It is a good idea to configure this option to a URL from the same origin as the application.

In Java config this can be done as shown below. The XML namespace provides a similar option via the <websocket:sockjs> element:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocket
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
        registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS()
                .setClientLibraryUrl("http://localhost:8080/myapp/js/sockjs-client.js");
    }

    // ...

}

	Note
	During initial development, do enable the SockJS client devel mode that prevents the browser from caching SockJS requests (like the iframe) that would otherwise be cached. For details on how to enable it see the SockJS client page.

The SockJS protocol requires servers to send heartbeat messages to preclude proxies from concluding a connection is hung. The Spring SockJS configuration has a property called heartbeatTime that can be used to customize the frequency. By default a heartbeat is sent after 25 seconds assuming no other messages were sent on that connection. This 25 seconds value is in line with the following IETF recommendation for public Internet applications.

	Note
	When using STOMP over WebSocket/SockJS, if the STOMP client and server negotiate heartbeats to be exchanged, the SockJS heartbeats are disabled.

The Spring SockJS support also allows configuring the TaskScheduler to use for scheduling heartbeats tasks. The task scheduler is backed by a thread pool with default settings based on the number of available processors. Applications should consider customizing the settings according to their specific needs.

HTTP streaming and HTTP long polling SockJS transports require a connection to remain open longer than usual. For an overview of these techniques see this blog post.

In Servlet containers this is done through Servlet 3 async support that allows exiting the Servlet container thread processing a request and continuing to write to the response from another thread.

A specific issue is that the Servlet API does not provide notifications for a client that has gone away, see SERVLET_SPEC-44. However, Servlet containers raise an exception on subsequent attempts to write to the response. Since Spring’s SockJS Service supports sever-sent heartbeats (every 25 seconds by default), that means a client disconnect is usually detected within that time period or earlier if messages are sent more frequently.

Note

As a result network IO failures may occur simply because a client has disconnected, which can fill the log with unnecessary stack traces. Spring makes a best effort to identify such network failures that represent client disconnects (specific to each server) and log a minimal message using the dedicated log category DISCONNECTED_CLIENT_LOG_CATEGORY defined in AbstractSockJsSession. If you need to see the stack traces, set that log category to TRACE.

If you allow cross-origin requests (see Section 26.2.6, “Configuring allowed origins”), the SockJS protocol uses CORS for cross-domain support in the XHR streaming and polling transports. Therefore CORS headers are added automatically unless the presence of CORS headers in the response is detected. So if an application is already configured to provide CORS support, e.g. through a Servlet Filter, Spring’s SockJsService will skip this part.

It is also possible to disable the addition of these CORS headers via the suppressCors property in Spring’s SockJsService.

The following is the list of headers and values expected by SockJS:

For the exact implementation see addCorsHeaders in AbstractSockJsService as well as the TransportType enum in the source code.

Alternatively if the CORS configuration allows it consider excluding URLs with the SockJS endpoint prefix thus letting Spring’s SockJsService handle it.

A SockJS Java client is provided in order to connect to remote SockJS endpoints without using a browser. This can be especially useful when there is a need for bidirectional communication between 2 servers over a public network, i.e. where network proxies may preclude the use of the WebSocket protocol. A SockJS Java client is also very useful for testing purposes, for example to simulate a large number of concurrent users.

The SockJS Java client supports the "websocket", "xhr-streaming", and "xhr-polling" transports. The remaining ones only make sense for use in a browser.

The WebSocketTransport can be configured with:

An XhrTransport by definition supports both "xhr-streaming" and "xhr-polling" since from a client perspective there is no difference other than in the URL used to connect to the server. At present there are two implementations:

The example below shows how to create a SockJS client and connect to a SockJS endpoint:

List<Transport> transports = new ArrayList<>(2);
transports.add(new WebSocketTransport(new StandardWebSocketClient()));
transports.add(new RestTemplateXhrTransport());

SockJsClient sockJsClient = new SockJsClient(transports);
sockJsClient.doHandshake(new MyWebSocketHandler(), "ws://example.com:8080/sockjs");

	Note
	SockJS uses JSON formatted arrays for messages. By default Jackson 2 is used and needs to be on the classpath. Alternatively you can configure a custom implementation of SockJsMessageCodec and configure it on the SockJsClient.

To use the SockJsClient for simulating a large number of concurrent users you will need to configure the underlying HTTP client (for XHR transports) to allow a sufficient number of connections and threads. For example with Jetty:

HttpClient jettyHttpClient = new HttpClient();
jettyHttpClient.setMaxConnectionsPerDestination(1000);
jettyHttpClient.setExecutor(new QueuedThreadPool(1000));

Consider also customizing these server-side SockJS related properties (see Javadoc for details):

@Configuration
public class WebSocketConfig extends WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurationSupport {

    @Override
    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
        registry.addEndpoint("/sockjs").withSockJS()
            .setStreamBytesLimit(512 * 1024)
            .setHttpMessageCacheSize(1000)
            .setDisconnectDelay(30 * 1000);
    }

    // ...
}

STOMP is a simple text-oriented messaging protocol that was originally created for scripting languages such as Ruby, Python, and Perl to connect to enterprise message brokers. It is designed to address a subset of commonly used messaging patterns. STOMP can be used over any reliable 2-way streaming network protocol such as TCP and WebSocket. Although STOMP is a text-oriented protocol, the payload of messages can be either text or binary.

STOMP is a frame based protocol whose frames are modeled on HTTP. The structure of a STOMP frame:

COMMAND
header1:value1
header2:value2

Body^@

Clients can use the SEND or SUBSCRIBE commands to send or subscribe for messages along with a "destination" header that describes what the message is about and who should receive it. This enables a simple publish-subscribe mechanism that can be used to send messages through the broker to other connected clients or to send messages to the server to request that some work be performed.

When using Spring’s STOMP support, the Spring WebSocket application acts as the STOMP broker to clients. Messages are routed to @Controller message-handling methods or to a simple, in-memory broker that keeps track of subscriptions and broadcasts messages to subscribed users. You can also configure Spring to work with a dedicated STOMP broker (e.g. RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc) for the actual broadcasting of messages. In that case Spring maintains TCP connections to the broker, relays messages to it, and also passes messages from it down to connected WebSocket clients. Thus Spring web applications can rely on unified HTTP-based security, common validation, and a familiar programming model message-handling work.

Here is an example of a client subscribing to receive stock quotes which the server may emit periodically e.g. via a scheduled task sending messages through a SimpMessagingTemplate to the broker:

SUBSCRIBE
id:sub-1
destination:/topic/price.stock.*

^@

Here is an example of a client sending a trade request, which the server may handle through an @MessageMapping method and later on, after the execution, broadcast a trade confirmation message and details down to the client:

SEND
destination:/queue/trade
content-type:application/json
content-length:44

{"action":"BUY","ticker":"MMM","shares",44}^@

The meaning of a destination is intentionally left opaque in the STOMP spec. It can be any string, and it’s entirely up to STOMP servers to define the semantics and the syntax of the destinations that they support. It is very common, however, for destinations to be path-like strings where "/topic/.." implies publish-subscribe (one-to-many) and "/queue/" implies point-to-point (one-to-one) message exchanges.

STOMP servers can use the MESSAGE command to broadcast messages to all subscribers. Here is an example of a server sending a stock quote to a subscribed client:

MESSAGE
message-id:nxahklf6-1
subscription:sub-1
destination:/topic/price.stock.MMM

{"ticker":"MMM","price":129.45}^@

It is important to know that a server cannot send unsolicited messages. All messages from a server must be in response to a specific client subscription, and the "subscription-id" header of the server message must match the "id" header of the client subscription.

The above overview is intended to provide the most basic understanding of the STOMP protocol. It is recommended to review the protocol specification in full.

Use of STOMP as a sub-protocol enables the Spring Framework and Spring Security to provide a richer programming model vs using raw WebSockets. The same point can be made about how HTTP vs raw TCP and how it enables Spring MVC and other web frameworks to provide rich functionality. The following is a list of benefits:

STOMP over WebSocket support is available in the spring-messaging and the spring-websocket modules. Once you have those dependencies, you can expose a STOMP endpoints, over WebSocket with Section 26.3, “SockJS Fallback”, as shown below:

import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.EnableWebSocketMessageBroker;
import org.springframework.web.socket.config.annotation.StompEndpointRegistry;

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
        registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS();
    }

    @Override
    public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry config) {
        config.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
        config.enableSimpleBroker("/topic", "/queue");
    }
}

The same configuration in XML:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app">
        <websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/portfolio">
            <websocket:sockjs/>
        </websocket:stomp-endpoint>
        <websocket:simple-broker prefix="/topic, /queue"/>
    </websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

	Note
	For the built-in, simple broker the "/topic" and "/queue" prefixes do not have any special meaning. They’re merely a convention to differentiate between pub-sub vs point-to-point messaging (i.e. many subscribers vs one consumer). When using an external broker, please check the STOMP page of the broker to understand what kind of STOMP destinations and prefixes it supports.

To connect from a browser, for SockJS you can use the sockjs-client. For STOMP many applications have used the jmesnil/stomp-websocket library (also known as stomp.js) which is feature complete and has been used in production for years but is no longer maintained. At present the JSteunou/webstomp-client is the most actively maintained and evolving successor of that library and the example code below is based on it:

var socket = new SockJS("/spring-websocket-portfolio/portfolio");
var stompClient = webstomp.over(socket);

stompClient.connect({}, function(frame) {
}

Or if connecting via WebSocket (without SockJS):

var socket = new WebSocket("/spring-websocket-portfolio/portfolio");
var stompClient = Stomp.over(socket);

stompClient.connect({}, function(frame) {
}

Note that the stompClient above does not need to specify login and passcode headers. Even if it did, they would be ignored, or rather overridden, on the server side. See the sections Section 26.4.9, “Connect to Broker” and Section 26.4.11, “Authentication” for more information on authentication.

For a more example code see:

Once a STOMP endpoint is exposed, the Spring application becomes a STOMP broker for connected clients. This section describes the flow of messages on the server side.

The spring-messaging module contains foundational support for messaging applications that originated in Spring Integration and was later extracted and incorporated into the Spring Framework for broader use across many Spring projects and application scenarios. Below is a list of a few of the available messaging abstractions:

Both the Java config (i.e. @EnableWebSocketMessageBroker) and the XML namespace config (i.e. <websocket:message-broker>) use the above components to assemble a message workflow. The diagram below shows the components used when the simple, built-in message broker is enabled:

There are 3 message channels in the above diagram:

The next diagram shows the components used when an external broker (e.g. RabbitMQ) is configured for managing subscriptions and broadcasting messages:

The main difference in the above diagram is the use of the "broker relay" for passing messages up to the external STOMP broker over TCP, and for passing messages down from the broker to subscribed clients.

When messages are received from a WebSocket connectin, they’re decoded to STOMP frames, then turned into a Spring Message representation, and sent to the "clientInboundChannel" for further processing. For example STOMP messages whose destination header starts with "/app" may be routed to @MessageMapping methods in annotated controllers, while "/topic" and "/queue" messages may be routed directly to the message broker.

An annotated @Controller handling a STOMP message from a client may send a message to the message broker through the "brokerChannel", and the broker will broadcast the message to matching subscribers through the "clientOutboundChannel". The same controller can also do the same in response to HTTP requests, so a client may perform an HTTP POST and then an @PostMapping method can send a message to the message broker to broadcast to subscribed clients.

Let’s trace the flow through a simple example. Given the following server setup:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
        registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio");
    }

    @Override
    public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
        registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
        registry.enableSimpleBroker("/topic");
    }

}

@Controller
public class GreetingController {

    @MessageMapping("/greeting") {
    public String handle(String greeting) {
        return "[" + getTimestamp() + ": " + greeting;
    }

}

The next section provides more details on annotated methods including the kinds of arguments and return values supported.

The @MessageMapping annotation is supported on methods of @Controller classes. It can be used for mapping methods to message destinations and can also be combined with the type-level @MessageMapping for expressing shared mappings across all annotated methods within a controller.

By default destination mappings are treated as Ant-style, slash-separated, path patterns, e.g. "/foo*", "/foo/**". etc. They can also contain template variables, e.g. "/foo/{id}" that can then be referenced via @DestinationVariable-annotated method arguments.

	Note
	Applications can also use dot-separated destinations (vs slash). See Section 26.4.10, “Dot as Separator”.

The following method arguments are supported for @MessageMapping methods:

A return value from an @MessageMapping method will be converted with a org.springframework.messaging.converter.MessageConverter and used as the body of a new message that is then sent, by default, to the "brokerChannel" with the same destination as the client message but using the prefix "/topic" by default. An @SendTo message level annotation can be used to specify any other destination instead. It can also be set a class-level to share a common destination.

A response message may also be provided asynchronously via a ListenableFuture or CompletableFuture/CompletionStage return type signature, analogous to deferred results in an MVC handler method.

A @SubscribeMapping annotation can be used to map subscription requests to @Controller methods. It is supported on the method level, but can also be combined with a type level @MessageMapping annotation that expresses shared mappings across all message handling methods within the same controller.

By default the return value from an @SubscribeMapping method is sent as a message directly back to the connected client and does not pass through the broker. This is useful for implementing request-reply message interactions; for example, to fetch application data when the application UI is being initialized. Or alternatively an @SubscribeMapping method can be annotated with @SendTo in which case the resulting message is sent to the "brokerChannel" using the specified target destination.

Note

In some cases a controller may need to be decorated with an AOP proxy at runtime. One example is if you choose to have @Transactional annotations directly on the controller. When this is the case, for controllers specifically, we recommend using class-based proxying. This is typically the default choice with controllers. However if a controller must implement an interface that is not a Spring Context callback (e.g. InitializingBean, *Aware, etc), you may need to explicitly configure class-based proxying. For example with <tx:annotation-driven />, change to <tx:annotation-driven proxy-target-class="true" />.

What if you want to send messages to connected clients from any part of the application? Any application component can send messages to the "brokerChannel". The easiest way to do that is to have a SimpMessagingTemplate injected, and use it to send messages. Typically it should be easy to have it injected by type, for example:

@Controller
public class GreetingController {

    private SimpMessagingTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    public GreetingController(SimpMessagingTemplate template) {
        this.template = template;
    }

    @RequestMapping(path="/greetings", method=POST)
    public void greet(String greeting) {
        String text = "[" + getTimestamp() + "]:" + greeting;
        this.template.convertAndSend("/topic/greetings", text);
    }

}

But it can also be qualified by its name "brokerMessagingTemplate" if another bean of the same type exists.

The built-in, simple message broker handles subscription requests from clients, stores them in memory, and broadcasts messages to connected clients with matching destinations. The broker supports path-like destinations, including subscriptions to Ant-style destination patterns.

	Note
	Applications can also use dot-separated destinations (vs slash). See Section 26.4.10, “Dot as Separator”.

The simple broker is great for getting started but supports only a subset of STOMP commands (e.g. no acks, receipts, etc.), relies on a simple message sending loop, and is not suitable for clustering. As an alternative, applications can upgrade to using a full-featured message broker.

Check the STOMP documentation for your message broker of choice (e.g. RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, etc.), install the broker, and run it with STOMP support enabled. Then enable the STOMP broker relay in the Spring configuration instead of the simple broker.

Below is example configuration that enables a full-featured broker:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void registerStompEndpoints(StompEndpointRegistry registry) {
        registry.addEndpoint("/portfolio").withSockJS();
    }

    @Override
    public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
        registry.enableStompBrokerRelay("/topic", "/queue");
        registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
    }

}

XML configuration equivalent:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app">
        <websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/portfolio" />
            <websocket:sockjs/>
        </websocket:stomp-endpoint>
        <websocket:stomp-broker-relay prefix="/topic,/queue" />
    </websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

The "STOMP broker relay" in the above configuration is a Spring MessageHandler that handles messages by forwarding them to an external message broker. To do so it establishes TCP connections to the broker, forwards all messages to it, and then forwards all messages received from the broker to clients through their WebSocket sessions. Essentially it acts as a "relay" that forwards messages in both directions.

Note

Spring uses org.projectreactor:reactor-net and io.netty:netty-all for managing TCP connections to the broker both of which need to be added as project dependencies. The STOMP broker support in Spring Framework 4.3.x is compatible with the 2.0.x generation of Reactor. Therefore it is not supported in combination with the spring-cloud-stream-reactive module which requires Reactor 3.x. Spring Framework 5 relies on Reactor 3 and Reactor Netty, which has independent versioning, for TCP connections to the STOMP broker but also to provide broad support for reactive programming models.

Furthermore, application components (e.g. HTTP request handling methods, business services, etc.) can also send messages to the broker relay, as described in Section 26.4.6, “Send Messages”, in order to broadcast messages to subscribed WebSocket clients.

In effect, the broker relay enables robust and scalable message broadcasting.

A STOMP broker relay maintains a single "system" TCP connection to the broker. This connection is used for messages originating from the server-side application only, not for receiving messages. You can configure the STOMP credentials for this connection, i.e. the STOMP frame login and passcode headers. This is exposed in both the XML namespace and the Java config as the systemLogin/systemPasscode properties with default values guest/guest.

The STOMP broker relay also creates a separate TCP connection for every connected WebSocket client. You can configure the STOMP credentials to use for all TCP connections created on behalf of clients. This is exposed in both the XML namespace and the Java config as the clientLogin/clientPasscode properties with default values guest/guest.

	Note
	The STOMP broker relay always sets the login and passcode headers on every CONNECT frame that it forwards to the broker on behalf of clients. Therefore WebSocket clients need not set those headers; they will be ignored. As the following section explains, instead WebSocket clients should rely on HTTP authentication to protect the WebSocket endpoint and establish the client identity.

The STOMP broker relay also sends and receives heartbeats to and from the message broker over the "system" TCP connection. You can configure the intervals for sending and receiving heartbeats (10 seconds each by default). If connectivity to the broker is lost, the broker relay will continue to try to reconnect, every 5 seconds, until it succeeds.

	Note
	A Spring bean can implement ApplicationListener<BrokerAvailabilityEvent> in order to receive notifications when the "system" connection to the broker is lost and re-established. For example a Stock Quote service broadcasting stock quotes can stop trying to send messages when there is no active "system" connection.

The STOMP broker relay can also be configured with a virtualHost property. The value of this property will be set as the host header of every CONNECT frame and may be useful for example in a cloud environment where the actual host to which the TCP connection is established is different from the host providing the cloud-based STOMP service.

When messages are routed to @MessageMapping methods, they’re matched with AntPathMatcher and by default patterns are expected to use slash "/" as separator. This is a good convention in a web applications and similar to HTTP URLs. However if you are more used to messaging conventions, you can switch to using dot "." as separator.

In Java config:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    // ...

    @Override
    public void configureMessageBroker(MessageBrokerRegistry registry) {
        registry.setPathMatcher(new AntPathMatcher("."));
        registry.enableStompBrokerRelay("/queue", "/topic");
        registry.setApplicationDestinationPrefixes("/app");
    }
}

In XML:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
        xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
        xsi:schemaLocation="
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
                http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:message-broker application-destination-prefix="/app" path-matcher="pathMatcher">
        <websocket:stomp-endpoint path="/stomp"/>
        <websocket:stomp-broker-relay prefix="/topic,/queue" />
    </websocket:message-broker>

    
    <bean id="pathMatcher" class="org.springframework.util.AntPathMatcher">
        <constructor-arg index="0" value="."/>
    </bean>
    

</beans>

After that a controller may use dot "." as separator in @MessageMapping methods:

@Controller
@MessageMapping("foo")
public class FooController {

    @MessageMapping("bar.{baz}")
    public void handleBaz(@DestinationVariable String baz) {
        // ...
    }
}

The client can now send a message to "/app/foo.bar.baz123".

In the example above we did not change the prefixes on the "broker relay" because those depend entirely on the external message broker. Check the STOMP documentation pages of the broker you’re using to see what conventions it supports for the destination header.

The "simple broker" on the other hand does rely on the configured PathMatcher so if you switch the separator that will also apply to the broker and the way matches destinations from a message to patterns in subscriptions.

Every STOMP over WebSocket messaging session begins with an HTTP request — that can be a request to upgrade to WebSockets (i.e. a WebSocket handshake) or in the case of SockJS fallbacks a series of SockJS HTTP transport requests.

Web applications already have authentication and authorization in place to secure HTTP requests. Typically a user is authenticated via Spring Security using some mechanism such as a login page, HTTP basic authentication, or other. The security context for the authenticated user is saved in the HTTP session and is associated with subsequent requests in the same cookie-based session.

Therefore for a WebSocket handshake, or for SockJS HTTP transport requests, typically there will already be an authenticated user accessible via HttpServletRequest#getUserPrincipal(). Spring automatically associates that user with a WebSocket or SockJS session created for them and subsequently with all STOMP messages transported over that session through a user header.

In short there is nothing special a typical web application needs to do above and beyond what it already does for security. The user is authenticated at the HTTP request level with a security context maintained through a cookie-based HTTP session which is then associated with WebSocket or SockJS sessions created for that user and results in a user header stamped on every Message flowing through the application.

Note that the STOMP protocol does have a "login" and "passcode" headers on the CONNECT frame. Those were originally designed for and are still needed for example for STOMP over TCP. However for STOMP over WebSocket by default Spring ignores authorization headers at the STOMP protocol level and assumes the user is already authenticated at the HTTP transport level and expects that the WebSocket or SockJS session contain the authenticated user.

	Note
	Spring Security provides WebSocket sub-protocol authorization that uses a ChannelInterceptor to authorize messages based on the user header in them. Also Spring Session provides a WebSocket integration that ensures the user HTTP session does not expire when the WebSocket session is still active.

Spring Security OAuth provides support for token based security including JSON Web Token (JWT). This can be used as the authentication mechanism in Web applications including STOMP over WebSocket interactions just as described in the previous section, i.e. maintaining identity through a cookie-based session.

At the same time cookie-based sessions are not always the best fit for example in applications that don’t wish to maintain a server-side session at all or in mobile applications where it’s common to use headers for authentication.

The WebSocket protocol RFC 6455 "doesn’t prescribe any particular way that servers can authenticate clients during the WebSocket handshake." In practice however browser clients can only use standard authentication headers (i.e. basic HTTP authentication) or cookies and cannot for example provide custom headers. Likewise the SockJS JavaScript client does not provide a way to send HTTP headers with SockJS transport requests, see sockjs-client issue 196. Instead it does allow sending query parameters that can be used to send a token but that has its own drawbacks, for example as the token may be inadvertently logged with the URL in server logs.

	Note
	The above limitations are for browser-based clients and do not apply to the Spring Java-based STOMP client which does support sending headers with both WebSocket and SockJS requests.

Therefore applications that wish to avoid the use of cookies may not have any good alternatives for authentication at the HTTP protocol level. Instead of using cookies they may prefer to authenticate with headers at the STOMP messaging protocol level There are 2 simple steps to doing that:

Below is the example server-side configuration to register a custom authentication interceptor. Note that an interceptor only needs to authenticate and set the user header on the CONNECT Message. Spring will note and save the authenticated user and associate it with subsequent STOMP messages on the same session:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class MyConfig extends AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureClientInboundChannel(ChannelRegistration registration) {
        registration.setInterceptors(new ChannelInterceptorAdapter() {
            @Override
            public Message<?> preSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel) {
                StompHeaderAccessor accessor =
                        MessageHeaderAccessor.getAccessor(message, StompHeaderAccessor.class);
                if (StompCommand.CONNECT.equals(accessor.getCommand())) {
                    Authentication user = ... ; // access authentication header(s)
                    accessor.setUser(user);
                }
                return message;
            }
        });
    }
}

Also note that when using Spring Security’s authorization for messages, at present you will need to ensure that the authentication ChannelInterceptor config is ordered ahead of Spring Security’s. This is best done by declaring the custom interceptor in its own sub-class of AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer marked with @Order(Ordered.HIGHEST_PRECEDENCE + 99).

An application can send messages targeting a specific user, and Spring’s STOMP support recognizes destinations prefixed with "/user/" for this purpose. For example, a client might subscribe to the destination "/user/queue/position-updates". This destination will be handled by the UserDestinationMessageHandler and transformed into a destination unique to the user session, e.g. "/queue/position-updates-user123". This provides the convenience of subscribing to a generically named destination while at the same time ensuring no collisions with other users subscribing to the same destination so that each user can receive unique stock position updates.

On the sending side messages can be sent to a destination such as "/user/{username}/queue/position-updates", which in turn will be translated by the UserDestinationMessageHandler into one or more destinations, one for each session associated with the user. This allows any component within the application to send messages targeting a specific user without necessarily knowing anything more than their name and the generic destination. This is also supported through an annotation as well as a messaging template.

For example, a message-handling method can send messages to the user associated with the message being handled through the @SendToUser annotation (also supported on the class-level to share a common destination):

@Controller
public class PortfolioController {

    @MessageMapping("/trade")
    @SendToUser("/queue/position-updates")
    public TradeResult executeTrade(Trade trade, Principal principal) {
        // ...
        return tradeResult;
    }
}

If the user has more than one session, by default all of the sessions subscribed to the given destination are targeted. However sometimes, it may be necessary to target only the session that sent the message being handled. This can be done by setting the broadcast attribute to false, for example:

@Controller
public class MyController {

    @MessageMapping("/action")
    public void handleAction() throws Exception{
        // raise MyBusinessException here
    }

    @MessageExceptionHandler
    @SendToUser(destinations="/queue/errors", broadcast=false)
    public ApplicationError handleException(MyBusinessException exception) {
        // ...
        return appError;
    }
}

	Note
	While user destinations generally imply an authenticated user, it isn’t required strictly. A WebSocket session that is not associated with an authenticated user can subscribe to a user destination. In such cases the @SendToUser annotation will behave exactly the same as with broadcast=false, i.e. targeting only the session that sent the message being handled.

It is also possible to send a message to user destinations from any application component by injecting the SimpMessagingTemplate created by the Java config or XML namespace, for example (the bean name is "brokerMessagingTemplate" if required for qualification with @Qualifier):

@Service
public class TradeServiceImpl implements TradeService {

	private final SimpMessagingTemplate messagingTemplate;

	@Autowired
	public TradeServiceImpl(SimpMessagingTemplate messagingTemplate) {
		this.messagingTemplate = messagingTemplate;
	}

	// ...

	public void afterTradeExecuted(Trade trade) {
		this.messagingTemplate.convertAndSendToUser(
				trade.getUserName(), "/queue/position-updates", trade.getResult());
	}
}

Note

When using user destinations with an external message broker, check the broker documentation on how to manage inactive queues, so that when the user session is over, all unique user queues are removed. For example, RabbitMQ creates auto-delete queues when destinations like /exchange/amq.direct/position-updates are used. So in that case the client could subscribe to /user/exchange/amq.direct/position-updates. Similarly, ActiveMQ has configuration options for purging inactive destinations.

In a multi-application server scenario a user destination may remain unresolved because the user is connected to a different server. In such cases you can configure a destination to broadcast unresolved messages to so that other servers have a chance to try. This can be done through the userDestinationBroadcast property of the MessageBrokerRegistry in Java config and the user-destination-broadcast attribute of the message-broker element in XML.

Several ApplicationContext events (listed below) are published and can be received by implementing Spring’s ApplicationListener interface.

	Note
	When using a full-featured broker, the STOMP "broker relay" automatically reconnects the "system" connection in case the broker becomes temporarily unavailable. Client connections however are not automatically reconnected. Assuming heartbeats are enabled, the client will typically notice the broker is not responding within 10 seconds. Clients need to implement their own reconnect logic.

Furthermore, an application can directly intercept every incoming and outgoing message by registering a ChannelInterceptor on the respective message channel. For example to intercept inbound messages:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig extends AbstractWebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureClientInboundChannel(ChannelRegistration registration) {
        registration.setInterceptors(new MyChannelInterceptor());
    }
}

A custom ChannelInterceptor can extend the empty method base class ChannelInterceptorAdapter and use StompHeaderAccessor or SimpMessageHeaderAccessor to access information about the message.

public class MyChannelInterceptor extends ChannelInterceptorAdapter {

    @Override
    public Message<?> preSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel) {
        StompHeaderAccessor accessor = StompHeaderAccessor.wrap(message);
        StompCommand command = accessor.getStompCommand();
        // ...
        return message;
    }
}

Spring provides a STOMP over WebSocket client and a STOMP over TCP client.

To begin create and configure WebSocketStompClient:

WebSocketClient webSocketClient = new StandardWebSocketClient();
WebSocketStompClient stompClient = new WebSocketStompClient(webSocketClient);
stompClient.setMessageConverter(new StringMessageConverter());
stompClient.setTaskScheduler(taskScheduler); // for heartbeats

In the above example StandardWebSocketClient could be replaced with SockJsClient since that is also an implementation of WebSocketClient. The SockJsClient can use WebSocket or HTTP-based transport as a fallback. For more details see Section 26.3.7, “SockJsClient”.

Next establish a connection and provide a handler for the STOMP session:

String url = "ws://127.0.0.1:8080/endpoint";
StompSessionHandler sessionHandler = new MyStompSessionHandler();
stompClient.connect(url, sessionHandler);

When the session is ready for use the handler is notified:

public class MyStompSessionHandler extends StompSessionHandlerAdapter {

	@Override
	public void afterConnected(StompSession session, StompHeaders connectedHeaders) {
		// ...
	}
}

Once the session is established any payload can be sent and that will be serialized with the configured MessageConverter:

session.send("/topic/foo", "payload");

You can also subscribe to destinations. The subscribe methods require a handler for messages on the subscription and return a Subscription handle that can be used to unsubscribe. For each received message the handler can specify the target Object type the payload should be deserialized to:

session.subscribe("/topic/foo", new StompFrameHandler() {

	@Override
	public Type getPayloadType(StompHeaders headers) {
		return String.class;
	}

	@Override
	public void handleFrame(StompHeaders headers, Object payload) {
		// ...
	}

});

To enable STOMP heartbeat configure WebSocketStompClient with a TaskScheduler and optionally customize the heartbeat intervals, 10 seconds for write inactivity which causes a heartbeat to be sent and 10 seconds for read inactivity which closes the connection.

	Note
	When using WebSocketStompClient for performance tests to simulate thousands of clients from the same machine consider turning off heartbeats since each connection schedules its own heartbeat tasks and that’s not optimized for a a large number of clients running on the same machine.

The STOMP protocol also supports receipts where the client must add a "receipt" header to which the server responds with a RECEIPT frame after the send or subscribe are processed. To support this the StompSession offers setAutoReceipt(boolean) that causes a "receipt" header to be added on every subsequent send or subscribe. Alternatively you can also manually add a "receipt" header to the StompHeaders. Both send and subscribe return an instance of Receiptable that can be used to register for receipt success and failure callbacks. For this feature the client must be configured with a TaskScheduler and the amount of time before a receipt expires (15 seconds by default).

Note that StompSessionHandler itself is a StompFrameHandler which allows it to handle ERROR frames in addition to the handleException callback for exceptions from the handling of messages, and handleTransportError for transport-level errors including ConnectionLostException.

Each WebSocket session has a map of attributes. The map is attached as a header to inbound client messages and may be accessed from a controller method, for example:

@Controller
public class MyController {

	@MessageMapping("/action")
	public void handle(SimpMessageHeaderAccessor headerAccessor) {
		Map<String, Object> attrs = headerAccessor.getSessionAttributes();
		// ...
	}
}

It is also possible to declare a Spring-managed bean in the websocket scope. WebSocket-scoped beans can be injected into controllers and any channel interceptors registered on the "clientInboundChannel". Those are typically singletons and live longer than any individual WebSocket session. Therefore you will need to use a scope proxy mode for WebSocket-scoped beans:

@Component
@Scope(scopeName = "websocket", proxyMode = ScopedProxyMode.TARGET_CLASS)
public class MyBean {

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        // Invoked after dependencies injected
    }

    // ...

    @PreDestroy
    public void destroy() {
        // Invoked when the WebSocket session ends
    }
}

@Controller
public class MyController {

    private final MyBean myBean;

    @Autowired
    public MyController(MyBean myBean) {
        this.myBean = myBean;
    }

    @MessageMapping("/action")
    public void handle() {
        // this.myBean from the current WebSocket session
    }
}

As with any custom scope, Spring initializes a new MyBean instance the first time it is accessed from the controller and stores the instance in the WebSocket session attributes. The same instance is returned subsequently until the session ends. WebSocket-scoped beans will have all Spring lifecycle methods invoked as shown in the examples above.

There is no silver bullet when it comes to performance. Many factors may affect it including the size of messages, the volume, whether application methods perform work that requires blocking, as well as external factors such as network speed and others. The goal of this section is to provide an overview of the available configuration options along with some thoughts on how to reason about scaling.

In a messaging application messages are passed through channels for asynchronous executions backed by thread pools. Configuring such an application requires good knowledge of the channels and the flow of messages. Therefore it is recommended to review Section 26.4.4, “Flow of Messages”.

The obvious place to start is to configure the thread pools backing the "clientInboundChannel" and the "clientOutboundChannel". By default both are configured at twice the number of available processors.

If the handling of messages in annotated methods is mainly CPU bound then the number of threads for the "clientInboundChannel" should remain close to the number of processors. If the work they do is more IO bound and requires blocking or waiting on a database or other external system then the thread pool size will need to be increased.

Note

ThreadPoolExecutor has 3 important properties. Those are the core and the max thread pool size as well as the capacity for the queue to store tasks for which there are no available threads. A common point of confusion is that configuring the core pool size (e.g. 10) and max pool size (e.g. 20) results in a thread pool with 10 to 20 threads. In fact if the capacity is left at its default value of Integer.MAX_VALUE then the thread pool will never increase beyond the core pool size since all additional tasks will be queued. Please review the Javadoc of ThreadPoolExecutor to learn how these properties work and understand the various queuing strategies.

On the "clientOutboundChannel" side it is all about sending messages to WebSocket clients. If clients are on a fast network then the number of threads should remain close to the number of available processors. If they are slow or on low bandwidth they will take longer to consume messages and put a burden on the thread pool. Therefore increasing the thread pool size will be necessary.

While the workload for the "clientInboundChannel" is possible to predict — after all it is based on what the application does — how to configure the "clientOutboundChannel" is harder as it is based on factors beyond the control of the application. For this reason there are two additional properties related to the sending of messages. Those are the "sendTimeLimit" and the "sendBufferSizeLimit". Those are used to configure how long a send is allowed to take and how much data can be buffered when sending messages to a client.

The general idea is that at any given time only a single thread may be used to send to a client. All additional messages meanwhile get buffered and you can use these properties to decide how long sending a message is allowed to take and how much data can be buffered in the mean time. Please review the Javadoc and documentation of the XML schema for this configuration for important additional details.

Here is example configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureWebSocketTransport(WebSocketTransportRegistration registration) {
        registration.setSendTimeLimit(15 * 1000).setSendBufferSizeLimit(512 * 1024);
    }

    // ...

}

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:message-broker>
        <websocket:transport send-timeout="15000" send-buffer-size="524288" />
        <!-- ... -->
    </websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

The WebSocket transport configuration shown above can also be used to configure the maximum allowed size for incoming STOMP messages. Although in theory a WebSocket message can be almost unlimited in size, in practice WebSocket servers impose limits — for example, 8K on Tomcat and 64K on Jetty. For this reason STOMP clients such as stomp.js split larger STOMP messages at 16K boundaries and send them as multiple WebSocket messages thus requiring the server to buffer and re-assemble.

Spring’s STOMP over WebSocket support does this so applications can configure the maximum size for STOMP messages irrespective of WebSocket server specific message sizes. Do keep in mind that the WebSocket message size will be automatically adjusted if necessary to ensure they can carry 16K WebSocket messages at a minimum.

Here is example configuration:

@Configuration
@EnableWebSocketMessageBroker
public class WebSocketConfig implements WebSocketMessageBrokerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureWebSocketTransport(WebSocketTransportRegistration registration) {
        registration.setMessageSizeLimit(128 * 1024);
    }

    // ...

}

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:websocket="http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket
        http://www.springframework.org/schema/websocket/spring-websocket.xsd">

    <websocket:message-broker>
        <websocket:transport message-size="131072" />
        <!-- ... -->
    </websocket:message-broker>

</beans>

An important point about scaling is using multiple application instances. Currently it is not possible to do that with the simple broker. However when using a full-featured broker such as RabbitMQ, each application instance connects to the broker and messages broadcast from one application instance can be broadcast through the broker to WebSocket clients connected through any other application instances.

When using @EnableWebSocketMessageBroker or <websocket:message-broker> key infrastructure components automatically gather stats and counters that provide important insight into the internal state of the application. The configuration also declares a bean of type WebSocketMessageBrokerStats that gathers all available information in one place and by default logs it at INFO level once every 30 minutes. This bean can be exported to JMX through Spring’s MBeanExporter for viewing at runtime, for example through JDK’s jconsole. Below is a summary of the available information.

There are two main approaches to testing applications using Spring’s STOMP over WebSocket support. The first is to write server-side tests verifying the functionality of controllers and their annotated message handling methods. The second is to write full end-to-end tests that involve running a client and a server.

The two approaches are not mutually exclusive. On the contrary each has a place in an overall test strategy. Server-side tests are more focused and easier to write and maintain. End-to-end integration tests on the other hand are more complete and test much more, but they’re also more involved to write and maintain.

The simplest form of server-side tests is to write controller unit tests. However this is not useful enough since much of what a controller does depends on its annotations. Pure unit tests simply can’t test that.

Ideally controllers under test should be invoked as they are at runtime, much like the approach to testing controllers handling HTTP requests using the Spring MVC Test framework. i.e. without running a Servlet container but relying on the Spring Framework to invoke the annotated controllers. Just like with Spring MVC Test here there are two two possible alternatives, either using a "context-based" or "standalone" setup:

Both of these setup scenarios are demonstrated in the tests for the stock portfolio sample application.

The second approach is to create end-to-end integration tests. For that you will need to run a WebSocket server in embedded mode and connect to it as a WebSocket client sending WebSocket messages containing STOMP frames. The tests for the stock portfolio sample application also demonstrates this approach using Tomcat as the embedded WebSocket server and a simple STOMP client for test purposes.