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Channel Interceptors

One of the advantages of a messaging architecture is the ability to provide common behavior and capture meaningful information about the messages passing through the system in a non-invasive way. Since the Message instances are sent to and received from MessageChannel instances, those channels provide an opportunity for intercepting the send and receive operations. The ChannelInterceptor strategy interface, shown in the following listing, provides methods for each of those operations:

public interface ChannelInterceptor {

    Message<?> preSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel);

    void postSend(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel, boolean sent);

    void afterSendCompletion(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel, boolean sent, Exception ex);

    boolean preReceive(MessageChannel channel);

    Message<?> postReceive(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel);

    void afterReceiveCompletion(Message<?> message, MessageChannel channel, Exception ex);
}

After implementing the interface, registering the interceptor with a channel is just a matter of making the following call:

channel.addInterceptor(someChannelInterceptor);

The methods that return a Message instance can be used for transforming the Message or can return 'null' to prevent further processing (of course, any of the methods can throw a RuntimeException). Also, the preReceive method can return false to prevent the receive operation from proceeding.

Keep in mind that receive() calls are only relevant for PollableChannels. In fact, the SubscribableChannel interface does not even define a receive() method. The reason for this is that when a Message is sent to a SubscribableChannel, it is sent directly to zero or more subscribers, depending on the type of channel (for example, a PublishSubscribeChannel sends to all of its subscribers). Therefore, the preReceive(…), postReceive(…), and afterReceiveCompletion(…) interceptor methods are invoked only when the interceptor is applied to a PollableChannel.

Spring Integration also provides an implementation of the Wire Tap pattern. It is a simple interceptor that sends the Message to another channel without otherwise altering the existing flow. It can be very useful for debugging and monitoring. An example is shown in Wire Tap.

Because it is rarely necessary to implement all of the interceptor methods, the interface provides no-op methods (those returning void method have no code, the Message-returning methods return the Message as-is, and the boolean method returns true).

The order of invocation for the interceptor methods depends on the type of channel. As described earlier, the queue-based channels are the only ones where the receive() method is intercepted in the first place. Additionally, the relationship between send and receive interception depends on the timing of the separate sender and receiver threads. For example, if a receiver is already blocked while waiting for a message, the order could be as follows: preSend, preReceive, postReceive, postSend. However, if a receiver polls after the sender has placed a message on the channel and has already returned, the order would be as follows: preSend, postSend (some-time-elapses), preReceive, postReceive. The time that elapses in such a case depends on a number of factors and is therefore generally unpredictable (in fact, the receive may never happen). The type of queue also plays a role (for example, rendezvous versus priority). In short, you cannot rely on the order beyond the fact that preSend precedes postSend and preReceive precedes postReceive.

Starting with Spring Framework 4.1 and Spring Integration 4.1, the ChannelInterceptor provides new methods: afterSendCompletion() and afterReceiveCompletion(). They are invoked after send()' and 'receive() calls, regardless of any exception that is raised, which allow for resource cleanup. Note that the channel invokes these methods on the ChannelInterceptor list in the reverse order of the initial preSend() and preReceive() calls.

Starting with version 5.1, global channel interceptors now apply to dynamically registered channels - such as through beans that are initialized by using beanFactory.initializeBean() or IntegrationFlowContext when using the Java DSL. Previously, interceptors were not applied when beans were created after the application context was refreshed.

Also, starting with version 5.1, ChannelInterceptor.postReceive() is no longer called when no message is received; it is no longer necessary to check for a null Message<?>. Previously, the method was called. If you have an interceptor that relies on the previous behavior, implement afterReceiveCompleted() instead, since that method is invoked, regardless of whether a message is received or not.

Starting with version 5.2, the ChannelInterceptorAware is deprecated in favor of InterceptableChannel from the Spring Messaging module, which it extends now for backward compatibility.