This version is still in development and is not considered stable yet. For the latest stable version, please use Spring Integration 6.4.1!

HTTP Header Mappings

Spring Integration provides support for HTTP header mapping for both HTTP Request and HTTP Responses.

By default, all standard HTTP headers are mapped from the message to HTTP request or response headers without further configuration. However, if you do need further customization, you can provide additional configuration by taking advantage of the namespace support. You can provide a comma-separated list of header names, and you can include simple patterns with the '*' character acting as a wildcard. Provide such values overrides the default behavior. Basically, it assumes you are in complete control at that point. However, if you do want to include all the standard HTTP headers, you can use the shortcut patterns: HTTP_REQUEST_HEADERS and HTTP_RESPONSE_HEADERS. The following listing shows two examples (the first of which uses a wildcard):

<int-http:outbound-gateway id="httpGateway"
    url="http://localhost/test2"
    mapped-request-headers="thing1, thing2"
    mapped-response-headers="X-*, HTTP_RESPONSE_HEADERS"
    channel="someChannel"/>

<int-http:outbound-channel-adapter id="httpAdapter"
    url="http://localhost/test2"
    mapped-request-headers="thing1, thing2, HTTP_REQUEST_HEADERS"
    channel="someChannel"/>

The adapters and gateways use the DefaultHttpHeaderMapper, which now provides two static factory methods for inbound and outbound adapters so that the proper direction can be applied (mapping HTTP requests and responses either in or out, as appropriate).

If you need further customization, you can also configure a DefaultHttpHeaderMapper independently and inject it into the adapter through the header-mapper attribute.

Before version 5.0, the DefaultHttpHeaderMapper the default prefix for user-defined, non-standard HTTP headers was X-. Version 5.0 changed the default prefix to an empty string. According to RFC-6648, the use of such prefixes is now discouraged. You can still customize this option by setting the DefaultHttpHeaderMapper.setUserDefinedHeaderPrefix() property. The following example configures a header mapper for an HTTP gateway:

<int-http:outbound-gateway id="httpGateway"
    url="http://localhost/test2"
    header-mapper="headerMapper"
    channel="someChannel"/>

<bean id="headerMapper" class="o.s.i.http.support.DefaultHttpHeaderMapper">
    <property name="inboundHeaderNames" value="thing1*, *thing2, thing3"/>
    <property name="outboundHeaderNames" value="a*b, d"/>
</bean>

If you need to do something other than what the DefaultHttpHeaderMapper supports, you can implement the HeaderMapper strategy interface directly and provide a reference to your implementation.