resilience4j circuit breaker change fallback method return type than actual called method return type - spring-boot

Question

I am trying to learn Spring Boot microservices. Now I am trying to implement circuit breaker with resilience4j if any of my called service is off.
If I set the fallback method return type as like the actual method return type than it works fine but I can't show the information that my service is off. Because it then send the response null in object's fields. But if I change the return type to String on actual method and also in fallback then I will not be able to get the object value as JSON.
Is it possible to return as string something like Branch service is down!.. with my fallback method and if OK then get the object value as JSON from actual called method? My attempts are below:
My controller method:
#GetMapping("/getById/{id}")
#CircuitBreaker(name = "default", fallbackMethod = "employeeFallback")
public ResponseModelEmployee getEmployee(#PathVariable("id") Long id) {
return employeeService.findByEmployeeId(id);
}
My fallback method in controller:
public ResponseModelEmployee employeeFallback(Long id, Exception ex) {
return new ResponseModelEmployee();
}
My service method called from controller:
public ResponseModelEmployee findByEmployeeId(Long id) {
ResponseModelEmployee empDetails = new ResponseModelEmployee();
...
Branch branch = restTemplate.getForObject("http://BRANCH-SERVICE/branch/getById/" +
employee.get().getBranchId(),
Branch.class);
...
return empDetails;
}
My desire method as fallback:
public String employeeFallback(Long id, Exception ex) {
return "Branch Service is down";
}
If I set my desire method for fallback then it gives the following error:
java.lang.NoSuchMethodException: class com.example.employee.VO.ResponseModelEmployee class com.example.employee.controller.EmployeeController.employeeFallback(class java.lang.Long,class java.lang.Throwable) at io.github.resilience4j.fallback.FallbackMethod.create(FallbackMethod.java:92) ~[resilience4j-spring-1.7.0.jar:1.7.0] ....

Answer 1

Resilince4j expects the fallback method to have the same return type as of the actual method.
Documentation says:
It's important to remember that a fallback method should be placed in
the same class and must have the same method signature with just ONE
extra target exception parameter).
If there are multiple fallbackMethod methods, the method that has the
most closest match will be invoked, for example:
If you try to recover from NumberFormatException, the method with
signature String fallback(String parameter, IllegalArgumentException
exception)} will be invoked.
You can define one global fallback method with an exception parameter
only if multiple methods has the same return type and you want to
define the same fallback method for them once and for all.
So, you cannot directly change the return type to a different one.
You can try few suggestions:
Add #CircuitBreaker and fallback to the service method.
Change return type of service method and fallback method to Object.
One more way could be , you can keep the return type as it is but add a String type message object to response model ResponseModelEmployee. Then set message string to it during fallback.
Another solution could be to return ResponseEntity from the from the method where rest call is made and in the fallback method use ResponseEntity<?> as response object.

Answer 2

you can use Object as a return type
in my case for example:
#GetMapping("/getUser/{id}")
#CircuitBreaker(name= something , fallbackMethod = "ContactsServiceDown")
public ResponseEntity<User> getDetailsById(#PathVariable(id)){
//some logic
return new ResponseEntity<User>(user , HttpStatus.OK);
}
public ResponseEntity<Object> ContactsServiceDown(int id , Exception e){
//some logic
return new ResponseEntity<Object>("ContactsServersDown", HttpStatus.Forbidden)
}
or in returnType ResponseEntity<> leave the type Field empty, hopefully it may work!