Is it possible to access the spring context outside of a spring-boot application? - spring-boot

Question

I am trying to create a standalone database application which can offer CRUD operations to other applications/modules...
I am aware of the need to create the entities and services used by the application in another artifact since you cannot depend on a spring-boot application alone.
But, can one get the runtime spring-configuration of a spring-boot application? So one can access a service that is deployed on my application?
For best through-put I am looking for a way to use services on a running spring-boot database application on the same JVM in order to minimise overhead...

Answer 1

RMI
What you want is technically it is possible using basic Java RMI (remote method invocation), you just register the bean as the implementation instance and share the interface between the two JVMs, either on localhost or even on different machines.
Spring even gives some additional support for this using RmiProxyFactoryBean, see Spring Remoting RMI article.
From above article, you can export it, using:
#Bean
RmiServiceExporter exporter(CabBookingService implementation) {
Class<CabBookingService> serviceInterface = CabBookingService.class;
RmiServiceExporter exporter = new RmiServiceExporter();
exporter.setServiceInterface(serviceInterface);
exporter.setService(implementation);
exporter.setServiceName(serviceInterface.getSimpleName());
exporter.setRegistryPort(1099);
return exporter;
}
and import it, using:
#Bean
RmiProxyFactoryBean service() {
RmiProxyFactoryBean rmiProxyFactory = new RmiProxyFactoryBean();
rmiProxyFactory.setServiceUrl("rmi://localhost:1099/CabBookingService");
rmiProxyFactory.setServiceInterface(CabBookingService.class);
return rmiProxyFactory;
}
Then you can use it in your application context based on your interface.
However I would not suggest to share beans like this because it has the same problem RMI has.
Shared library
Another way to do what you want is to create a shared library that can be included in other projects.
If all the project, which want to use it are Spring Boot application you can create a Spring Boot starter, see Spring documentation.
This way, other applications just have to add the dependency and they already has access to the beans in their application context, as well as the shared domain objects.
If other application use just regular Spring, they can just #Import your main configuration class.
If other apps are using Java, but not Spring, you can still use Spring inside, just provide a factory, which creates an internal Spring context.
REST service
If other applications are not written in Java, your best bet is to expose a REST interface for them to use the database applications.