Can I use Spring WebFlux to implement REST services which get data through Kafka request/response topics? - spring

Question

I'm developing REST service which, in turn, will query slow legacy system so response time will be measured in seconds. We also expect massive load so I was thinking about asynchronous/non-blocking approaches to avoid hundreds of "servlet" threads blocked on calls to slow system.
As I see this can be implemented using AsyncContext which is present in new servlet API specs. I even developed small prototype and it seems to be working.
On the other hand it looks like I can achieve the same using Spring WebFlux.
Unfortunately I did not find any example where custom "backend" calls are wrapped with Mono/Flux. Most of the examples just reuse already-prepared reactive connectors, like ReactiveCassandraOperations.java, etc.
My data flow is the following:
JS client --> Spring RestController --> send request to Kafka topic --> read response from Kafka reply topic --> return data to client
Can I wrap Kafka steps into Mono/Flux and how to do this?
How my RestController method should look like?
Here is my simple implementation which achieves the same using Servlet 3.1 API
//took the idea from some Jetty examples
public class AsyncRestServlet extends HttpServlet {
...
#Override
protected void doGet(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException {
String result = (String) req.getAttribute(RESULTS_ATTR);
if (result == null) { //data not ready yet: schedule async processing
final AsyncContext async = req.startAsync();
//generate some unique request ID
String uid = "req-" + String.valueOf(req.hashCode());
//share it to Kafka receive together with AsyncContext
//when Kafka receiver will get the response it will put it in Servlet request attribute and call async.dispatch()
//This doGet() method will be called again and it will send the response to client
receiver.rememberKey(uid, async);
//send request to Kafka
sender.send(uid, param);
//data is not ready yet so we are releasing Servlet thread
return;
}
//return result as html response
resp.setContentType("text/html");
PrintWriter out = resp.getWriter();
out.println(result);
out.close();
}

Answer 1

Here's a short example - Not the WebFlux client you probably had in mind, but at least it would enable you to utilize Flux and Mono for asynchronous processing, which I interpreted to be the point of your question. The web objects should work without additional configurations, but of course you will need to configure Kafka as the KafkaTemplate object will not work on its own.
#Bean // Using org.springframework.web.reactive.function.server.RouterFunction<ServerResponse>
public RouterFunction<ServerResponse> sendMessageToTopic(KafkaController kafkaController){
return RouterFunctions.route(RequestPredicates.POST("/endpoint"), kafkaController::sendMessage);
}
#Component
public class ResponseHandler {
public getServerResponse() {
return ServerResponse.ok().body(Mono.just(Status.SUCCESS), String.class);
}
}
#Component
public class KafkaController {
public Mono<ServerResponse> auditInvalidTransaction(ServerRequest request) {
return request.bodyToMono(TopicMsgMap.class)
// your HTTP call may not return immediately without this
.subscribeOn(Schedulers.single()) // for a single worker thread
.flatMap(topicMsgMap -> {
MyKafkaPublisher.sendMessages(topicMsgMap);
}.flatMap(responseHandler::getServerResponse);
}
}
#Data // model class just to easily convert the ServerRequest (from json, for ex.)
// + ~#constructors
public class TopicMsgMap() {
private Map<String, String> topicMsgMap;
}
#Service // Using org.springframework.kafka.core.KafkaTemplate<String, String>
public class MyKafkaPublisher {
#Autowired
private KafkaTemplate<String, String> template;
#Value("${topic1}")
private String topic1;
#Value("${topic2}")
private String topic2;
public void sendMessages(Map<String, String> topicMsgMap){
topicMsgMap.forEach((top, msg) -> {
if (topic.equals("topic1") kafkaTemplate.send(topic1, message);
if (topic.equals("topic2") kafkaTemplate.send(topic2, message);
});
}
}
Guessing this isn't the use-case you had in mind, but hope you find this general structure useful.

Answer 2

There is several approaches including KafkaReplyingRestTemplate for this problem but continuing your approach in servlet api's the solution will be something like this in spring Webflux.
Your Controller method looks like this:
#RequestMapping(path = "/completable-future", method = RequestMethod.POST)
Mono<Response> asyncTransaction(#RequestBody RequestDto requestDto, #RequestHeader Map<String, String> requestHeaders) {
String internalTransactionId = UUID.randomUUID().toString();
kafkaSender.send(Request.builder()
.transactionId(requestHeaders.get("transactionId"))
.internalTransactionId(internalTransactionId)
.sourceIban(requestDto.getSourceIban())
.destIban(requestDto.getDestIban())
.build());
CompletableFuture<Response> completableFuture = new CompletableFuture();
taskHolder.pushTask(completableFuture, internalTransactionId);
return Mono.fromFuture(completableFuture);
}
Your taskHolder component will be something like this:
#Component
public class TaskHolder {
private Map<String, CompletableFuture> taskHolder = new ConcurrentHashMap();
public void pushTask(CompletableFuture<Response> task, String transactionId) {
this.taskHolder.put(transactionId, task);
}
public Optional<CompletableFuture> remove(String transactionId) {
return Optional.ofNullable(this.taskHolder.remove(transactionId));
}
}
And finally your Kafka ResponseListener looks like this:
#Component
public class ResponseListener {
#Autowired
TaskHolder taskHolder;
#KafkaListener(topics = "reactive-response-topic", groupId = "test")
public void listen(Response response) {
taskHolder.remove(response.getInternalTransactionId()).orElse(
new CompletableFuture()).complete(response);
}
}
In this example I used internalTransactionId as CorrelationId but you can use "kafka_correlationId" that is a known kafka header.