Workflow modeling problem in Spring Integration - spring

I have a problem creating/modeling integration flow for the next global use case:
Input to the system is some kind of Message. That message goes
through Splitter and Transformer Endpoint and after that on
ServiceActivator where that transformed message is processed. This
use case is clear for me.
Confusion occurs because of the next part. After the ServiceActivator
finishes processing I need to took the base Message (message from the
beginning of first part) again and put it in other processing, for example again through Splitter and Transformer. How can
I model that use case? Can I return the message payload to that base
value? Is there some component that could help me?
Hope I describe it well.

Your use-case sounds more like a PublishSubscribeChannel: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/core.html#channel-implementations-publishsubscribechannel. So, you are going to have several subscribers (splitters) for that channel and the same input message is going to be processed in those independent sub-flows. You even can do that in parallel if you configure an Executor into that PublishSubscribeChannel.
Another way, if you can do that in parallel and you still need some result from that ServiceActivator to be available alongside with an original message for the next endpoint or so, then you can use a HeaderEnricher to store an original message in the headers ad get access to it whenever you need in your flow: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/message-transformation.html#header-enricher

Related

Processing incoming payloads as batch not working as expected in spring-cloud-streams

I say 'not working as expected' but actually is more like 'I don't really know if I'm doing the proper work in here', I feel like I'm mixing stuff from different approaches and doesn't really correlate.
Right now I've been using Spring Cloud Streams to process String-type messages from a PubSub subscription and so far so good, message in message out without much of a hassle.
What I'm trying to achieve now is to gather, let's say, 1000 messages, process them and send them altogether to another PubSub Topic. Still unsure about sending them as a List or individually like now, but all at the same time (this shouldn't be related to this question though).
Now I just discovered the following property.
spring.cloud.stream.bindings.input.consumer.batch-mode=true
Together with the following ones more specific to the GCP stuff.
spring.cloud.gcp.pubsub.publisher.batching.enabled=true
spring.cloud.gcp.pubsub.publisher.batching.delay-threshold-seconds=300
spring.cloud.gcp.pubsub.publisher.batching.element-count-threshold=100
So first question is... Are they linked by any means? Must I have the first one together with the other three?
What happened after I added the previous properties to my application.properties file is actually no change at all. Messages keep arriving and leaving the application without any issue and with no batch approach whatsoever.
Currently using the functional features the following way.
#Bean
public Function<Message<String>, String> sampleFunction() {
... // Stream processing in here
return processedString;
}
I was expecting this to crash with some message since the method only receives a String, not a list of String. Since it didn't crash, I modified the method above to receive a list of String (maybe Spring does some magic behind the scenes to still receive messages as String but collect them in a list for the method to process afterwards?).
#Bean
public Function<Message<List<String>>, String> sampleFunction() {
... // Stream processing in here
return processedString;
}
But this just crashes since it's trying to parse a single String message as a List of String.
How could I prepare the code to batch all those String messages into a List? Is there any example on this?
...batch-mode only works with binders that support it (e.g. Kafka, RabbitMQ). It doesn't look like the GCP binder supports it (I see no references to the property).
https://github.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-gcp/blob/master/spring-cloud-gcp-pubsub-stream-binder/src/main/java/org/springframework/cloud/gcp/stream/binder/pubsub/PubSubMessageChannelBinder.java
https://docs.spring.io/spring-cloud-stream/docs/3.1.0/reference/html/spring-cloud-stream.html#_batch_consumers
Publisher batching is not related to consumer batching.

bind destinations dynamically for producers and consumers (Spring)

I'm trying to send and receive messages to channels/topics whose destination names are in a database, so they can be added/modified/deleted at runtime, but I'm surprised I have found little on the web. I'm using Spring Cloud Streams to allow to change the underlying broker.
To send messages to dynamically bound destinations I'm going with BinderAwareChannelResolver.resolveDestination(target).send(message), but I haven't found something that works like it to receive messages.
My questions are:
1. Is there something similar?
2. how can the message be processed periodically as #StreamListener does?
3. And not as important, but can you create a subscriber automatically in case there is none?
Thanks for any help!
This is a bit out of scope of the original design of the framework. But I would further question your architecture. . . If you truly desire to subscribe to unlimited amount of destinations I wonder why? What is the underlying business requirement?
Keep in mind that even if we were to do it somehow that would require creation of a message listener container dynamically for each new destination which would raise more questions, such as, how long would such container have to live since eventually you would run out of resources.
If, however, you simply asking about possibility of mapping multiple destinations to a single channel so all messages go to the same message handler (e.g., StreamListener), then you can simply use input destination property and define multiple destination delimited by comas.

Cannot use 'subscribe' or 'subscribeWith' with 'ReactorNettyWebSocketClient' in Kotlin

The Kotlin code below successfully connects to a Spring WebFlux server, sends a message and prints each message sent via the stream that is returned.
fun main(args: Array<String>) {
val uri = URI("ws://localhost:8080/myservice")
val client = ReactorNettyWebSocketClient()
val input = Flux.just(readMsg())
client.execute(uri) { session ->
session.send(input.map(session::textMessage))
.thenMany(
session.receive()
.map(WebSocketMessage::getPayloadAsText)
.doOnNext(::println) // want to replace this call
.then()
).then()
}.block()
}
In previous experience with Reactive programming I have always used subscribe or subscribeWith where the call to doOnNext occurs. However it will not work in this case. I understand that this is because neither returns the reactive stream in use - subscribe returns a Disposable and subscribeWith returns the Subscriber it received as a parameter.
My question is whether invoking doOnNext is really the correct way to add a handler to process incoming messages?
Most Spring 5 tutorials show code which either calls this or log, but some use subscribeWith(output).then() without specifying what output should be. I cannot see how the latter would even compile.
subscribe and subscribeWith should always be used right at the end of a chain of operators, not as intermediate operators.
Simon already provided the answer but I'll add some extra context.
When composing asynchronous logic with Reactor (and ReactiveX patterns) you build an end-to-end chain of processing steps, which includes not only the logic of the WebSocketHandler itself but also that of the underlying WebSocket framework code responsible for sending and receiving messages to and from the socket. It's very important for the entire chain to be connected together, so that at runtime "signals" will flow through it (onNext, onError, or onComplete) from start to end and communicate the final result, i.e where you have the .block() at the end.
In the case of WebSocket this looks a little daunting because you're essentially combining two or more streams into one. You can't just subscribe to one of those streams (e.g. for inbound messages) because that prevents composing a unified processing stream, and signals will not flow through to the end where the final outcome is expected.
The other side of this is that subscribe() triggers consumption on a stream whereas what you really want is to keep composing asynchronous logic in deferred mode, i.e. declaring all that will happen when data materializes. This is another reason why composing a single unified chain is important. So it can be triggered after it is fully declared.
In short the main difference with the imperative WebSocketHandler for the Servlet world, is that instead of it being a handler for individual messages, this is a handler for composing the complete streams. Here the handling of an individual message is just one step of the overall processing chain. So the only place to subscribe is at the very end, where .block() is, in order to kick off processing.
BTW since this question was first posted a few months ago, the documentation has been improved to provide more guidance on how to implement a WebSocketHandler.

Strategy for passing same payload between messages when optional outbound gateways fail

I have a workflow whose message payload (MasterObj) is being enriched several times. During the 2nd enrichment () an UnknownHostException was thrown by an outbound gateway. My error channel on the enricher is called but the message the error-channel receives is an exception, and the failed msg in that exception is no longer my MasterObj (original payload) but it is now the object gotten from request-payload-expression on the enricher.
The enricher calls an outbound-gateway and business-wise this is optional. I just want to continue my workflow with the payload that I've been enriching. The docs say that the error-channel on the enricher can be used to provide an alternate object (to what the enricher's request-channel would return) but even when I return an object from the enricher's error-channel, it still takes me to the workflow's overall error channel.
How do I trap errors from enricher's + outbound-gateways, and continue processing my workflow with the same payload I've been working on?
Is trying to maintain a single payload object for the entire workflow the right strategy? I need to be able to access it whenever I need.
I was thinking of using a bean scoped to the session where I store the payload but that seems to defeat the purpose of SI, no?
Thanks.
Well, if you worry about your MasterObj in the error-channel flow, don't use that request-payload-expression and let the original payload go to the enricher's sub-flow.
You always can use in that flow a simple <transformer expression="">.
On the other hand, you're right: it isn't good strategy to support single object through the flow. You carry messages via channel and it isn't good to be tied on each step. The Spring Integration purpose is to be able to switch from different MessageChannel types at any time with small effort for their producers and consumers. Also you can switch to the distributed mode when consumers and producers are on different machines.
If you still need to enrich the same object several times, consider to write some custom Java code. You can use a #MessagingGateway on the matter to still have a Spring Integration gain.
And right, scope is not good for integration flow, because you can simply switch there to a different channel type and lose a ThreadLocal context.

Spring integration - Keep messages after delivery

1) I'm interested to learn if it is possible to keep the messages that were delivered using Spring Integration. I'm already using the mongo persistent storage (ConfigurableMongoDbMessageStore), but only failed messages remain in the collection. Ideally, I want all messages to remain with the functionality to list them and retry them.
I would use a field "status" or similar to identify queued, succesful or failed messages. Not sure if this field exists already, but I'm guessing something similar must be in place.
2) Also, when a message fails and is persited, there is a lot more data in the message. This data is serialised, so I'm curious how I can extract the original message and retry it.
3) The goal is to create an interface in the webapp where all queued messages can be seen, and retried. Not only failed messages, but also succesful deliveries (useful for testing).
I looked everywhere for an answer to this, but could not find it.
Thanks
I'd say it isn't good design for queue component.
Right it returns failed messages to the queue back for the future redelivery, but good message should be removed from the queue to avoid duplication on the next poll from queue.
No, there is no "status" field on the message, because you use store as a queue.
BTW Spring Integration provides separete implementation for queue channels: MongoDbChannelMessageStore.
You can achieve it with separate parallel Mongo collection and store your message twice: for the queue and for the future analysis. Here you can introduce "status" field and control it, when message successful or not.
From here you can introduce you UI to manage that collection and provide actions like send, retry. Remove the message from here and send it again to those two collections.
HTH

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