One of the key themes of the Spring Framework is inversion of control. In its broadest sense, this means that the framework handles responsibilities on behalf of the components that are managed within its context. The components themselves are simplified since they are relieved of those responsibilities. For example, dependency injection relieves the components of the responsibility of locating or creating their dependencies. Likewise, aspect-oriented programming relieves business components of generic cross-cutting concerns by modularizing them into reusable aspects. In each case, the end result is a system that is easier to test, understand, maintain, and extend.
Furthermore, the Spring framework and portfolio provide a comprehensive programming model for building enterprise applications. Developers benefit from the consistency of this model and especially the fact that it is based upon well-established best practices such as programming to interfaces and favoring composition over inheritance. Spring’s simplified abstractions and powerful support libraries boost developer productivity while simultaneously increasing the level of testability and portability.
Spring Integration is motivated by these same goals and principles. It extends the Spring programming model into the messaging domain and builds upon Spring’s existing enterprise integration support to provide an even higher level of abstraction. It supports message-driven architectures where inversion of control applies to runtime concerns, such as when certain business logic should execute and where the response should be sent. It supports routing and transformation of messages so that different transports and different data formats can be integrated without impacting testability. In other words, the messaging and integration concerns are handled by the framework, so business components are further isolated from the infrastructure and developers are relieved of complex integration responsibilities.
As an extension of the Spring programming model, Spring Integration provides a wide variety of configuration options including annotations, XML with namespace support, XML with generic "bean" elements, and of course direct usage of the underlying API. That API is based upon well-defined strategy interfaces and non-invasive, delegating adapters. Spring Integration’s design is inspired by the recognition of a strong affinity between common patterns within Spring and the well-known Enterprise Integration Patterns as described in the book of the same name by Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf (Addison Wesley, 2004). Developers who have read that book should be immediately comfortable with the Spring Integration concepts and terminology.
Spring Integration is motivated by the following goals:
Spring Integration is guided by the following principles:
From the vertical perspective, a layered architecture facilitates separation of concerns, and interface-based contracts between layers promote loose coupling. Spring-based applications are typically designed this way, and the Spring framework and portfolio provide a strong foundation for following this best practice for the full-stack of an enterprise application. Message-driven architectures add a horizontal perspective, yet these same goals are still relevant. Just as "layered architecture" is an extremely generic and abstract paradigm, messaging systems typically follow the similarly abstract "pipes-and-filters" model. The "filters" represent any component that is capable of producing and/or consuming messages, and the "pipes" transport the messages between filters so that the components themselves remain loosely-coupled. It is important to note that these two high-level paradigms are not mutually exclusive. The underlying messaging infrastructure that supports the "pipes" should still be encapsulated in a layer whose contracts are defined as interfaces. Likewise, the "filters" themselves would typically be managed within a layer that is logically above the application’s service layer, interacting with those services through interfaces much in the same way that a web-tier would.
In Spring Integration, a Message is a generic wrapper for any Java object combined with metadata used by the framework while handling that object. It consists of a payload and headers. The payload can be of any type and the headers hold commonly required information such as id, timestamp, correlation id, and return address. Headers are also used for passing values to and from connected transports. For example, when creating a Message from a received File, the file name may be stored in a header to be accessed by downstream components. Likewise, if a Message’s content is ultimately going to be sent by an outbound Mail adapter, the various properties (to, from, cc, subject, etc.) may be configured as Message header values by an upstream component. Developers can also store any arbitrary key-value pairs in the headers.
A Message Channel represents the "pipe" of a pipes-and-filters architecture. Producers send Messages to a channel, and consumers receive Messages from a channel. The Message Channel therefore decouples the messaging components, and also provides a convenient point for interception and monitoring of Messages.
A Message Channel may follow either Point-to-Point or Publish/Subscribe semantics. With a Point-to-Point channel, at most one consumer can receive each Message sent to the channel. Publish/Subscribe channels, on the other hand, will attempt to broadcast each Message to all of its subscribers. Spring Integration supports both of these.
Whereas "Point-to-Point" and "Publish/Subscribe" define the two options for how many consumers will ultimately receive each Message, there is another important consideration: should the channel buffer messages? In Spring Integration, Pollable Channels are capable of buffering Messages within a queue. The advantage of buffering is that it allows for throttling the inbound Messages and thereby prevents overloading a consumer. However, as the name suggests, this also adds some complexity, since a consumer can only receive the Messages from such a channel if a poller is configured. On the other hand, a consumer connected to a Subscribable Channel is simply Message-driven. The variety of channel implementations available in Spring Integration will be discussed in detail in Section 4.1.2, “Message Channel Implementations”.
One of the primary goals of Spring Integration is to simplify the development of enterprise integration solutions through inversion of control. This means that you should not have to implement consumers and producers directly, and you should not even have to build Messages and invoke send or receive operations on a Message Channel. Instead, you should be able to focus on your specific domain model with an implementation based on plain Objects. Then, by providing declarative configuration, you can "connect" your domain-specific code to the messaging infrastructure provided by Spring Integration. The components responsible for these connections are Message Endpoints. This does not mean that you will necessarily connect your existing application code directly. Any real-world enterprise integration solution will require some amount of code focused upon integration concerns such as routing and transformation. The important thing is to achieve separation of concerns between such integration logic and business logic. In other words, as with the Model-View-Controller paradigm for web applications, the goal should be to provide a thin but dedicated layer that translates inbound requests into service layer invocations, and then translates service layer return values into outbound replies. The next section will provide an overview of the Message Endpoint types that handle these responsibilities, and in upcoming chapters, you will see how Spring Integration’s declarative configuration options provide a non-invasive way to use each of these.
A Message Endpoint represents the "filter" of a pipes-and-filters architecture. As mentioned above, the endpoint’s primary role is to connect application code to the messaging framework and to do so in a non-invasive manner. In other words, the application code should ideally have no awareness of the Message objects or the Message Channels. This is similar to the role of a Controller in the MVC paradigm. Just as a Controller handles HTTP requests, the Message Endpoint handles Messages. Just as Controllers are mapped to URL patterns, Message Endpoints are mapped to Message Channels. The goal is the same in both cases: isolate application code from the infrastructure. These concepts are discussed at length along with all of the patterns that follow in the Enterprise Integration Patterns book. Here, we provide only a high-level description of the main endpoint types supported by Spring Integration and their roles. The chapters that follow will elaborate and provide sample code as well as configuration examples.
A Message Transformer is responsible for converting a Message’s content or structure and returning the modified Message. Probably the most common type of transformer is one that converts the payload of the Message from one format to another (e.g. from XML Document to java.lang.String). Similarly, a transformer may be used to add, remove, or modify the Message’s header values.
A Message Filter determines whether a Message should be passed to an output channel at all. This simply requires a boolean test method that may check for a particular payload content type, a property value, the presence of a header, etc. If the Message is accepted, it is sent to the output channel, but if not it will be dropped (or for a more severe implementation, an Exception could be thrown). Message Filters are often used in conjunction with a Publish Subscribe channel, where multiple consumers may receive the same Message and use the filter to narrow down the set of Messages to be processed based on some criteria.
Note | |
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Be careful not to confuse the generic use of "filter" within the Pipes-and-Filters architectural pattern with this specific endpoint type that selectively narrows down the Messages flowing between two channels. The Pipes-and-Filters concept of "filter" matches more closely with Spring Integration’s Message Endpoint: any component that can be connected to Message Channel(s) in order to send and/or receive Messages. |
A Message Router is responsible for deciding what channel or channels should receive the Message next (if any). Typically the decision is based upon the Message’s content and/or metadata available in the Message Headers. A Message Router is often used as a dynamic alternative to a statically configured output channel on a Service Activator or other endpoint capable of sending reply Messages. Likewise, a Message Router provides a proactive alternative to the reactive Message Filters used by multiple subscribers as described above.
A Splitter is another type of Message Endpoint whose responsibility is to accept a Message from its input channel, split that Message into multiple Messages, and then send each of those to its output channel. This is typically used for dividing a "composite" payload object into a group of Messages containing the sub-divided payloads.
Basically a mirror-image of the Splitter, the Aggregator is a type of Message Endpoint that receives multiple Messages and combines them into a single Message.
In fact, Aggregators are often downstream consumers in a pipeline that includes a Splitter.
Technically, the Aggregator is more complex than a Splitter, because it is required to maintain state (the Messages to-be-aggregated), to decide when the complete group of Messages is available, and to timeout if necessary.
Furthermore, in case of a timeout, the Aggregator needs to know whether to send the partial results or to discard them to a separate channel.
Spring Integration provides a CorrelationStrategy
, a ReleaseStrategy
and configurable settings for: timeout, whether
to send partial results upon timeout, and a discard channel.
A Service Activator is a generic endpoint for connecting a service instance to the messaging system. The input Message Channel must be configured, and if the service method to be invoked is capable of returning a value, an output Message Channel may also be provided.
Note | |
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The output channel is optional, since each Message may also provide its own Return Address header. This same rule applies for all consumer endpoints. |
The Service Activator invokes an operation on some service object to process the request Message, extracting the request Message’s payload and converting if necessary (if the method does not expect a Message-typed parameter). Whenever the service object’s method returns a value, that return value will likewise be converted to a reply Message if necessary (if it’s not already a Message). That reply Message is sent to the output channel. If no output channel has been configured, then the reply will be sent to the channel specified in the Message’s "return address" if available.
A request-reply "Service Activator" endpoint connects a target object’s method to input and output Message Channels.
Note | |
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As discussed in Message Channel above, channels can be Pollable or Subscribable; in this diagram, this is depicted by the "clock" symbol and the solid arrow (poll) and the dotted arrow (subscribe). |
A Channel Adapter is an endpoint that connects a Message Channel to some other system or transport. Channel Adapters may be either inbound or outbound. Typically, the Channel Adapter will do some mapping between the Message and whatever object or resource is received-from or sent-to the other system (File, HTTP Request, JMS Message, etc). Depending on the transport, the Channel Adapter may also populate or extract Message header values. Spring Integration provides a number of Channel Adapters, and they will be described in upcoming chapters.
Note | |
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Message sources can be Pollable (e.g. POP3) or Message-Driven (e.g. IMAP Idle); in this diagram, this is depicted by the "clock" symbol and the solid arrow (poll) and the dotted arrow (message-driven). |
Note | |
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As discussed in Message Channel above, channels can be Pollable or Subscribable; in this diagram, this is depicted by the "clock" symbol and the solid arrow (poll) and the dotted arrow (subscribe). |
Consuming endpoints (anything with an inputChannel
) consist of two beans, the consumer and message handler.
The consumer has a reference to the message handler and invokes it as messages arrive.
When configuring with XML:
<int:service-activator id = "someService" ... />
the bean names will be as follows:
someService
(the id
)
someService.handler
When using EIP annotations, the names depend on several factors.
When Annotating POJO Methods
@Component public class SomeComponent { @ServiceActivator(inputChannel = ...) public String someMethod(...) { ... } }
the bean names will be as follows:
someComponent.someMethod.serviceActivator
someComponent.someMethod.serviceActivator.handler
Starting with version 5.0.4, these names can be modified using the @EndpointId
annotation:
@Component public class SomeComponent { @EndpointId("someService") @ServiceActivator(inputChannel = ...) public String someMethod(...) { ... } }
the bean names will be as follows:
someService
someService.handler
i.e. @EndpointId
creates names as created by the id
attribute with XML configuration.
When Annotating @Beans
@Configuratiom public class SomeConfiguration { @Bean @ServiceActivator(inputChannel = ...) public MessageHandler someHandler() { ... } }
the bean names will be as follows:
someConfiguration.someHandler.serviceActivator
someHandler
(the @Bean
name)
Starting with version 5.0.4, these names can be modified using the @EndpointId
annotation:
@Configuratiom public class SomeConfiguration { @Bean("someService.handler") @EndpointId("someService") @ServiceActivator(inputChannel = ...) public MessageHandler someHandler() { ... } }
someService
someService.handler
i.e. @EndpointId
creates names as created by the id
attribute with XML configuration, as long as you use the convention of appending .handler
to the @Bean
name.
There is one special case where a third bean is created; for architectural reasons, if a MessageHandler
@Bean
does not define an AbstractReplyProducingMessageHandler
, the framework wraps the provided bean in a ReplyProducingMessageHandlerWrapper
.
This wrapper supports request handler advice handling as well as emitting the normal produced no reply debug log messages.
Its bean name is the handler bean name plus .wrapper
(when there is an @EndpointId
, otherwise it’s the normal generated handler name).
Message Sources
Similarly Pollable Message Sources create two beans, a SourcePollingChannelAdapter
(SPCA) and a MessageSource
.
When configuring with XML:
<int:inbound-channel-adapter id = "someAdapter" ... />
the bean names will be as follows:
someAdapter
(the id
)
someAdapter.source
Using @EndpointId
with Java configuration:
@EndpointId("someAdapter") @InboundChannelAdapter(channel = "channel3", poller = @Poller(fixedDelay = "5000")) public String pojoSource() { ... }
the bean names will be as follows:
someAdapter
someAdapter.source
@Bean("someAdapter.source") @EndpointId("someAdapter") @InboundChannelAdapter(channel = "channel3", poller = @Poller(fixedDelay = "5000")) public MessageSource<?> source() { return () -> { ... }; }
the bean names will be as follows:
someAdapter
someAdapter.source
(as long as you use the convention of appending .source
to the @Bean
name)
Throughout this document you will see references to XML namespace support for declaring elements in a Spring Integration flow.
This support is provided by a series of namespace parsers that generate appropriate bean definitions to implement a particular component.
For example, many endpoints consist of a MessageHandler
bean and a ConsumerEndpointFactoryBean
into which the handler and an input channel name are injected.
The first time a Spring Integration namespace element is encountered, the framework automatically declares a number of beans that are used to support the runtime environment (task scheduler, implicit channel creator, etc).
Important | |
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Starting with version 4.0, the |
The @EnableIntegration
annotation is also useful when you have a parent context with no Spring Integration components
and 2 or more child contexts that use Spring Integration.
It enables these common components to be declared once only, in the parent context.
The @EnableIntegration
annotation registers many infrastructure components with the application context:
errorChannel
and its LoggingHandler
, taskScheduler
for pollers,
jsonPath
SpEL-function etc.;
BeanFactoryPostProcessor
s to enhance the BeanFactory
for global and default integration environment;
BeanPostProcessor
s to enhance and/or convert and wrap particular beans for integration purposes;
The @IntegrationComponentScan
annotation has also been introduced to permit classpath scanning.
This annotation plays a similar role as the standard Spring Framework @ComponentScan
annotation, but it is restricted just to Spring Integration specific components and annotations, which aren’t reachable by the standard Spring Framework component scan mechanism.
For example Section 8.4.6, “@MessagingGateway Annotation”.
The @EnablePublisher
annotation has been introduced to register a PublisherAnnotationBeanPostProcessor
bean and configure the default-publisher-channel
for those @Publisher
annotations which are provided without a channel
attribute.
If more than one @EnablePublisher
annotation is found, they must all have the same value for the default channel.
See Section B.1.1, “Annotation-driven approach via @Publisher annotation” for more information.
The @GlobalChannelInterceptor
annotation has been introduced to mark ChannelInterceptor
beans for global channel interception.
This annotation is an analogue of the <int:channel-interceptor>
xml element (see the section called “Global Channel Interceptor Configuration”).
@GlobalChannelInterceptor
annotations can be placed at the class level (with a @Component
stereotype annotation), or on @Bean
methods within @Configuration
classes.
In either case, the bean must be a ChannelInterceptor
.
The @IntegrationConverter
annotation has been introduced to mark Converter
, GenericConverter
or ConverterFactory
beans as candidate converters for integrationConversionService
.
This annotation is an analogue of the <int:converter>
xml element (see Section 8.1.6, “Payload Type Conversion”).
@IntegrationConverter
annotations can be placed at the class level (with a @Component
stereotype annotation), or on @Bean
methods within @Configuration
classes.
Also see Section E.6, “Annotation Support” for more information about Messaging Annotations.
It is generally recommended that you use plain old java objects (POJOs) whenever possible and only expose the framework in your code when absolutely necessary. See Section 3.9, “POJO Method invocation” for more information.
If you do expose the framework to your classes, there are some considerations that need to be taken into account, especially during application startup; some of these are listed here.
ApplicationContextAware
, you should generally not "use" the ApplicationContext
in the setApplicationContext()
method; just store a reference and defer such uses until later in the context lifecycle.
InitializingBean
or uses @PostConstruct
methods, do not send any messages from these initialization methods - the application context is not yet initialized when these methods are called, and sending such messages will likely fail.
If you need to send a messages during startup, implement ApplicationListener
and wait for the ContextRefreshedEvent
.
Alternatively, implement SmartLifecycle
, put your bean in a late phase, and send the messages from the start()
method.
Spring Integration bootstraps certain features using Spring Framework’s SpringFactories
mechanism to load several IntegrationConfigurationInitializer
classes.
This includes the -core
jar as well as certain others such as -http
, -jmx
, etc.
The information for this process is stored in a file META-INF/spring.factories
in each jar.
Some developers prefer to repackage their application and all dependencies into a single jar using well-known tools, such as the Apache Maven Shade Plugin.
By default, the shade plugin will not merge the spring.factories
files when producing the shaded jar.
In addition to spring.factories
, there are other META-INF
files (spring.handlers
, spring.schemas
) used for XML configuration.
These also need to be merged.
Important | |
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Spring Boot’s executable jar mechanism takes a different approach in that it nests the jars, thus retaining each |
Even if you are not using Spring Boot, you can still use tooling provided by Boot to enhance the shade plugin by adding transformers for the above mentioned files.
The following is an example configuration for the plugin at the time of writing. You may wish to consult the current spring-boot-starter-parent pom to see the current settings that boot uses.
pom.xml.
... <plugins> <plugin> <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId> <artifactId>maven-shade-plugin</artifactId> <configuration> <keepDependenciesWithProvidedScope>true</keepDependenciesWithProvidedScope> <createDependencyReducedPom>true</createDependencyReducedPom> </configuration> <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId> <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId> <version>${spring.boot.version}</version> </dependency> </dependencies> <executions> <execution> <phase>package</phase> <goals> <goal>shade</goal> </goals> <configuration> <transformers> <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.AppendingTransformer"> <resource>META-INF/spring.handlers</resource> </transformer> <transformer implementation="org.springframework.boot.maven.PropertiesMergingResourceTransformer"> <resource>META-INF/spring.factories</resource> </transformer> <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.AppendingTransformer"> <resource>META-INF/spring.schemas</resource> </transformer> <transformer implementation="org.apache.maven.plugins.shade.resource.ServicesResourceTransformer" /> </transformers> </configuration> </execution> </executions> </plugin> </plugins> ...
Specifically,
Add a property for ${spring.boot.version}
or use a version explicitly there.
When using XML configuration, to avoid getting false schema validation errors, you should use a "Spring-aware" IDE, such as the Spring Tool Suite (STS) (or eclipse with the Spring IDE plugins) or IntelliJ IDEA, for example.
These IDEs know how to resolve the correct XML schema from the classpath (using the META-INF/spring.schemas
file in the jar(s)).
When using STS, or eclipse with the plugin, be sure to enable Spring Project Nature
on the project.
The schemas hosted on the internet for certain legacy modules (those that existed in version 1.0) are the 1.0 versions for compatibility reasons; if your IDE uses these schemas, you will likely see false errors.
Each of these online schemas has a warning similar to this:
Important | |
---|---|
This schema is for the 1.0 version of Spring Integration Core. We cannot update it to the current schema because that will break any applications using 1.0.3 or lower. For subsequent versions, the unversioned schema is resolved from the classpath and obtained from the jar. Please refer to github: |
The affected modules are
spring-integration.xsd
)
With XML configuration and Spring Integration Namespace support, the XML Parsers hide how target beans are declared and wired together. For Java & Annotation Configuration, it is important to understand the Framework API for target end-user applications.
The first class citizens for EIP implementation are Message
, Channel
and Endpoint
(see Section 3.3, “Main Components”
above).
Their implementations (contracts) are:
org.springframework.messaging.Message
- see Section 5.1, “Message”;
org.springframework.messaging.MessageChannel
- see Section 4.1, “Message Channels”;
org.springframework.integration.endpoint.AbstractEndpoint
- see Section 4.2, “Poller”.
The first two are simple enough to understand how to implement, configure and use, respectively; the last one deserves more review.
The AbstractEndpoint
is widely used throughout the Framework for different component implementations;
its main implementations are:
EventDrivenConsumer
, when we subscribe to a SubscribableChannel
to listen for messages;
PollingConsumer
, when we poll for messages from a PollableChannel
.
Using Messaging Annotations and/or Java DSL, you shouldn’t worry about these components, because the Framework produces
them automatically via appropriate annotations and BeanPostProcessor
s.
When building components manually, the ConsumerEndpointFactoryBean
should be used to help to determine the target
AbstractEndpoint
consumer implementation to create, based on the provided inputChannel
property.
On the other hand, the ConsumerEndpointFactoryBean
delegates to an another first class citizen in the Framework -
org.springframework.messaging.MessageHandler
.
The goal of the implementation of this interface is to handle the message consumed by the endpoint from the channel.
All EIP components in Spring Integration are MessageHandler
implementations,
e.g. AggregatingMessageHandler
, MessageTransformingHandler
, AbstractMessageSplitter
etc.; as well as the target
protocol outbound adapters are implementations too, e.g. FileWritingMessageHandler
,
HttpRequestExecutingMessageHandler
, AbstractMqttMessageHandler
etc.
When you develop Spring Integration applications with Java & Annotation Configuration, you should take a look into the
Spring Integration module to find an appropriate MessageHandler
implementation to be used for the @ServiceActivator
configuration.
For example to send an XMPP message (see Chapter 38, XMPP Support) we should configure something like this:
@Bean @ServiceActivator(inputChannel = "input") public MessageHandler sendChatMessageHandler(XMPPConnection xmppConnection) { ChatMessageSendingMessageHandler handler = new ChatMessageSendingMessageHandler(xmppConnection); DefaultXmppHeaderMapper xmppHeaderMapper = new DefaultXmppHeaderMapper(); xmppHeaderMapper.setRequestHeaderNames("*"); handler.setHeaderMapper(xmppHeaderMapper); return handler; }
The MessageHandler
implementations represent the outbound and processing part of the message flow.
The inbound message flow side has its own components, which are divided to polling and listening behaviors.
The listening (message-driven) components are simple and typically require only one target class implementation to be ready to
produce messages.
Listening components can be one-way MessageProducerSupport
implementations,
e.g. AbstractMqttMessageDrivenChannelAdapter
and ImapIdleChannelAdapter
; and request-reply -
MessagingGatewaySupport
implementations, e.g. AmqpInboundGateway
and AbstractWebServiceInboundGateway
.
Polling inbound endpoints are for those protocols which don’t provide a listener API or aren’t intended for such a behavior. For example any File based protocol, as an FTP, any data bases (RDBMS or NoSQL) etc.
These inbound endpoints consist with two components: the poller configuration, to initiate the polling task periodically,
and message source class to read data from the target protocol and produce a message for the downstream integration flow.
The first class, for the poller configuration, is a SourcePollingChannelAdapter
.
It is one more AbstractEndpoint
implementation, but especially for polling to initiate an integration
flow.
Typically, with the Messaging Annotations or Java DSL, you shouldn’t worry about this class, the Framework produces
a bean for it, based on the @InboundChannelAdapter
configuration or a Java DSL Builder spec.
Message source components are more important for the target application development and they all implement
the MessageSource
interface, e.g. MongoDbMessageSource
and AbstractTwitterMessageSource
.
With that in mind, our config for reading data from an RDBMS table with JDBC may look like:
@Bean @InboundChannelAdapter(value = "fooChannel", poller = @Poller(fixedDelay="5000")) public MessageSource<?> storedProc(DataSource dataSource) { return new JdbcPollingChannelAdapter(dataSource, "SELECT * FROM foo where status = 0"); }
All the required inbound and outbound classes for the target protocols you can find in the particular Spring
Integration module, in most cases in the respective package.
For example spring-integration-websocket
adapters are:
o.s.i.websocket.inbound.WebSocketInboundChannelAdapter
- implements MessageProducerSupport
implementation to listen frames on the socket and produce message to the channel;
o.s.i.websocket.outbound.WebSocketOutboundMessageHandler
- the one-way
AbstractMessageHandler
implementation to convert incoming messages to the appropriate frame and send over websocket.
If you are familiar with Spring Integration XML configuration, starting with version 4.3, we provide information in the XSD element definitions about which target classes are used to declare beans for the adapter or gateway, for example:
<xsd:element name="outbound-async-gateway"> <xsd:annotation> <xsd:documentation> Configures a Consumer Endpoint for the 'o.s.i.amqp.outbound.AsyncAmqpOutboundGateway' that will publish an AMQP Message to the provided Exchange and expect a reply Message. The sending thread returns immediately; the reply is sent asynchronously; uses 'AsyncRabbitTemplate.sendAndReceive()'. </xsd:documentation> </xsd:annotation>
As discussed in Section 3.6, “Programming Considerations”, it is generally recommended to use a POJO programming style. For example,
@ServiceActivator public String myService(String payload) { ... }
In this case, the framework will extract a String payload, invoke your method, and wrap the result in a message to send to the next component in the flow (the original headers will be copied to the new message).
In fact, if you are using XML configuration, you don’t even need the @ServiceActivator
annotation:
<int:service-activator ... ref="myPojo" method="myService" />
public String myService(String payload) { ... }
You can omit the method
attribute as long as there is no ambiguity in the public methods on the class.
Some further observations:
You can obtain header information in your POJO methods:
@ServiceActivator public String myService(@Payload String payload, @Header("foo") String fooHeader) { ... }
You can dereference properties on the message:
@ServiceActivator public String myService(@Payload("payload.foo") String foo, @Header("bar.baz") String barbaz) { ... }
Because many any varied POJO method invocations are available, versions prior to 5.0 used SpEL to invoke the POJO methods.
SpEL (even interpreted) is usually "fast enough" for these operations, when compared to the actual work usually done in the methods.
However, starting with version 5.0, the org.springframework.messaging.handler.invocation.InvocableHandlerMethod
is used by default, when possible.
This technique is usually faster to execute than interpreted SpEL and is consistent with other Spring messaging projects.
The InvocableHandlerMethod
is similar to the technique used to invoke controller methods in Spring MVC.
There are certain methods that are still always invoked using SpEL; examples include annotated parameters with dereferenced properties as discussed above.
This is because SpEL has the capability to navigate a property path.
There may be some other corner cases that we haven’t considered that also won’t work with InvocableHandlerMethod
s.
For this reason, we automatically fall-back to using SpEL in those cases.
If you wish, you can also set up your POJO method such that it always uses SpEL, with the UseSpelInvoker
annotation:
@UseSpelInvoker(compilerMode = "IMMEDIATE") public void bar(String bar) { ... }
If the compilerMode
property is omitted, the spring.expression.compiler.mode
system property will determine the compiler mode - see SpEL compilation for more information about compiled SpEL.