How to decide the sequence of actions in Netty channel pipeline - websocket

For example, if I want to build a websocket server, I wonder what should be put in the initChannel method. Then I found the websocket example in netty's sourcecode, in which I need to do the following:
public void initChannel(final SocketChannel ch) throws Exception {
ch.pipeline().addLast(
new HttpRequestDecoder(),
new HttpObjectAggregator(65536),
new HttpResponseEncoder(),
new WebSocketServerProtocolHandler("/websocket"),
new CustomTextFrameHandler());
}
But I have no idea why I need to put the objects in such an order. In the description of HttpObjectAggregator I found something like this:
Be aware that you need to have the {#link HttpResponseEncoder} or {#link HttpRequestEncoder} before the {#link HttpObjectAggregator} in the {#link ChannelPipeline}.
But in the above code HttpObjectAggregator object is before the HttpResponseEncoder object. I am confused. How do I know I am putting those objects in a correct order?

TLDR; You should put HttpServerCodec into your init method, to keep things simple. Do that before HttpObjectAggregator if you choose to use the aggregator.
I'm pretty sure the advice about putting encoders before the HttpObjectAggregator is a typo. The encoders are outbound only handlers, while the HttpObjectAggregator is an inbound only handler, which means an event will never interact with both of them; so it makes no sense that their relative order would matter.
The caveat here is that HttpObjectAggregator will write HttpObjects out (mainly a 100 CONTINUE) in certain cases, and for that HttpObject to be converted to a byte[] that can be sent on the wire it needs a HttpResponseEncoder before it in the pipeline. On outgoing the pipeline is traversed in reverse, so the encoder before it will receive a message sent by the aggregator, but an encoder after it won't. The sample code you posted has a bug in it that will only be hit if a 100 CONTINUE would need to be sent. Looks like that bug was fixed by replacing the encoder/decoder with a HttpServerCodec before the aggregator.
A decoder, like HttpRequestDecoder or HttpResponseDecoder is an inbound only handler, and they need to be before the HttpObjectAggregator for it to function properly. That's because those two decoders transform a byte[] into an HttpObject, while the HttpObjectAggregator is really a Message to Message decoder that transforms a HttpObject into a FullHttpMessage.
Netty introduced the HttpServerCodec which is a combination of HttpRequestDecoder and HttpResponseEncoder in one class. If you put that before your aggregator you'll save yourself a line of code and make sure you have the proper encoder and decoder for your server.
Good reference on understanding how a message works in the pipeline for inbound vs outbound handlers: https://netty.io/4.0/api/io/netty/channel/ChannelPipeline.html
Issue where this wording was first introduced (notice no mention of encoding, only decoding): https://github.com/netty/netty/issues/2401
Issue where this wording is pointed out as a typo/bug: https://github.com/netty/netty/issues/2471

Related

Spring Integration can’t use multiple Outbound Channel Adapters

I want to write to a channel adapter only if the previous channel adapter write has been written successfully. I’m trying to do this by:
#Bean
public IntegrationFlow buildFlow() {
return IntegrationFlows.from(someChannelAdapter)
.handle(outboundChannelAdapter1)
.handle(outboundChannelAdapter2)
.get();
}
But I’m getting the following exception: The ‘currentComponent’ (…ReactiveMessageHandlerAdapter) is a one-way 'MessageHandler’ and it isn’t appropriate to configure ‘outputChannel’. This is the end of the integration flow.
How can I perform this?
If your handler implementation is one-way, fire-n-forget, then indeed there is no justification to continue the flow. It can go ahead with the configuration if the current handler is reply-producing and there will be something we can build a message to send to the next channel.
In your case .handle(outboundChannelAdapter1) is just void, so the next .handle(outboundChannelAdapter2) is not going to have anything to continue the flow. So, the framework gives you a hint that such a configuration is wrong. It is called flow for a reason: the result of the current endpoint is going to be an input for the next one. If no result, no continuation. How else it could work in your opinion?
The point is that there need to be something to write to your channel adapter. One of the solution is a PublishSubscribeChannel which distributes the same input message to all its subscribers. If that is what would fit to your expectations, then take a look into its support in Java DSL: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/dsl.html#java-dsl-subflows.
Another way is a RecipientListRouter pattern: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/message-routing.html#router-implementations-recipientlistrouter.
You may achieve the same with WireTap as well, but it depends on a business logic of your solution: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/core.html#channel-wiretap.
But anyway: you need to understand that the second handler can be called only if there is an input message for its channel. In all those cases I showed you it is exactly the same message you send to a first handler. If your expectations are different, please elaborate what kind of message you'd like to have for a second handler if the first does not return anything.

Timeout on replyChannel when wireTap is used

We are using wireTap to take timestamps at different parts of the flow. When introduced to the newest flow, it started causing a timeout in the replyChannel. From what I understand from the documentation, wireTap does intercept the message and sends it to secondary channel, while not affecting the main flow - so it looks like the perfect thing to use to take snapshots of said timestamps. Are we using wrong component for the job, or is there something wrong with the configuration? And if so, how would you recommend to register such information?
The exception:
o.s.integration.core.MessagingTemplate : Failed to receive message from channel 'org.springframework.messaging.core.GenericMessagingTemplate$TemporaryReplyChannel#21845b0d' within timeout: 1000
The code:
#Bean
public MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway inboundGateway(Jaxb2Marshaller jaxb2Marshaller,
DefaultSoapHeaderMapper defaultSoapHeaderMapper) {
final MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway inboundGateway =
new MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway(jaxb2Marshaller);
inboundGateway.setRequestChannelName(INPUT_CHANNEL_NAME);
inboundGateway.setHeaderMapper(defaultSoapHeaderMapper);
return inboundGateway;
}
#Bean
public IntegrationFlow querySynchronous() {
return IntegrationFlows.from(INPUT_CHANNEL_NAME)
.enrichHeaders(...)
.wireTap(performanceTimestampRegistrator.registerTimestampFlow(SYNC_REQUEST_RECEIVED_TIMESTAMP_NAME))
.handle(outboundGateway)
.wireTap(performanceTimestampRegistrator.registerTimestampFlow(SYNC_RESPONSE_RECEIVED_TIMESTAMP_NAME))
//.transform( m -> m) // for tests - REMOVE
.get();
}
And the timestamp flow:
public IntegrationFlow registerTimestampFlow(String asyncRequestReceivedTimestampName) {
return channel -> channel.handle(
m -> MetadataStoreConfig.registerFlowTimestamp(m, metadataStore, asyncRequestReceivedTimestampName));
}
The notable thing here is that if I uncomment the no-operation transformer, everything suddenly works fine, but it doesn't sound right and I would like to avoid such workarounds.
Another thing is that the other, very similar flow works correctly, without any workarounds. Notable difference being it puts message in kafka using kafka adapter, instead of calling some web service with outbound gateway. It still generates response to handle (with generateResponseFlow()), so it should behave the same way. Here is the flow, which works fine:
#Bean
public MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway workingInboundGateway(Jaxb2Marshaller jaxb2Marshaller,
DefaultSoapHeaderMapper defaultSoapHeaderMapper, #Qualifier("errorChannel") MessageChannel errorChannel) {
MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway aeoNotificationInboundGateway =
new MarshallingWebServiceInboundGateway(jaxb2Marshaller);
aeoNotificationInboundGateway.setRequestChannelName(WORKING_INPUT_CHANNEL_NAME);
aeoNotificationInboundGateway.setHeaderMapper(defaultSoapHeaderMapper);
aeoNotificationInboundGateway.setErrorChannel(errorChannel);
return aeoNotificationInboundGateway;
}
#Bean
public IntegrationFlow workingEnqueue() {
return IntegrationFlows.from(WORKING_INPUT_CHANNEL_NAME)
.enrichHeaders(...)
.wireTap(performanceTimestampRegistrator
.registerTimestampFlow(ASYNC_REQUEST_RECEIVED_TIMESTAMP_NAME))
.filter(...)
.filter(...)
.publishSubscribeChannel(channel -> channel
.subscribe(sendToKafkaFlow())
.subscribe(generateResponseFlow()))
.wireTap(performanceTimestampRegistrator
.registerTimestampFlow(ASYNC_REQUEST_ENQUEUED_TIMESTAMP_NAME))
.get();
}
Then, there is no problem with wireTap being the last component and response is correctly received on replyChannel in time, without any workarounds.
The behavior is expected.
When the wireTap() (or log()) is used in the end of flow, there is no reply by default.
Since we can't assume what logic you try to include into the flow definition, therefore we do our best with the default behavior - the flow becomes a one-way, send-and-forget one: some people really asked to make it non replyable after log() ...
To make it still reply to the caller you need to add a bridge() in the end of flow.
See more in docs: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/docs/current/reference/html/dsl.html#java-dsl-log
It works with your much complex scenario because one of the subscriber for your publishSubscribeChannel is that generateResponseFlow() with the reply. Honestly you need to be careful with request-reply behavior and such a publishSubscribeChannel configuration. The replyChannel can accept only one reply and if you would expect a reply from several subscribers, you would be surprised how the behavior is strange.
The wireTap in this your configuration is not a subscriber, it is an interceptor injected into that publishSubscribeChannel. So, your assumption about similarity is misleading. There is the end of the flow after that wiretap, but since one of the subscribers is replying, you get an expected behavior. Let's take a look into the publishSubscribeChannel as a parallel electrical circuit where all the connections get an electricity independently of others. And they perform they job not affecting all others. Anyway this is different story.
To conclude: to reply from the flow after wireTap(), you need to specify a bridge() and reply message will be routed properly into the replyChannel from the caller.

How to better correlate Spring Integration TCP Inbound and Outbound Adapters within the same application?

I currently have a Spring Integration application which is utilizing a number of TCP inbound and outbound adapter combinations for message handling. All of these adapter combinations utilize the same single MessageEndpoint for request processing and the same single MessagingGateway for response sending.
The MessageEndpoint’s final output channel is a DirectChannel that is also the DefaultRequestChannel of the MessageGateway. This DirectChannel utilizes the default RoundRobinLoadBalancingStrategy which is doing a Round Robin search for the correct Outbound Adapter to send the given response through. Of course, this round robin search does not always find the appropriate Outbound Adapter on first search and when it doesn’t it logs accordingly. Not only is this producing a large amount of unwanted logging but it also raises some performance concerns as I anticipate several hundred inbound/outbound adapter combinations existing at any given time.
I am wondering if there is a way in which I can more closely correlate the inbound and outbound adapters in a way that there is no need for the round robin processing and each response can be sent directly to the corresponding outbound adapter? Ideally, I would like this to be implemented in a way that the use of a single MessageEndpoint and single MessageGateway can be maintained.
Note: Please limit solutions to those which use the Inbound/Outbound Adapter combinations. The use of TcpInbound/TcpOutboundGateways is not possible for my implementation as I need to send multiple responses to a single request and, to my knowledge, this can only be done with the use of inbound/outbound adapters.
To add some clarity, below is a condensed version of the current implementation described. I have tried to clear out any unrelated code just to make things easier to read...
// Inbound/Outbound Adapter creation (part of a service that is used to dynamically create varying number of inbound/outbound adapter combinations)
public void configureAdapterCombination(int port) {
TcpNioServerConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new TcpNioServerConnectionFactory(port);
// Connection Factory registered with Application Context bean factory (removed for readability)...
TcpReceivingChannelAdapter inboundAdapter = new TcpReceivingChannelAdapter();
inboundAdapter.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory);
inboundAdapter.setOutputChannel(context.getBean("sendFirstResponse", DirectChannel.class));
// Inbound Adapter registered with Application Context bean factory (removed for readability)...
TcpSendingMessageHandler outboundAdapter = new TcpSendingMessageHandler();
outboundAdapter.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory);
// Outbound Adapter registered with Application Context bean factory (removed for readability)...
context.getBean("outboundResponse", DirectChannel.class).subscribe(outboundAdapter);
}
// Message Endpoint for processing requests
#MessageEndpoint
public class RequestProcessor {
#Autowired
private OutboundResponseGateway outboundResponseGateway;
// Direct Channel which is using Round Robin lookup
#Bean
public DirectChannel outboundResponse() {
return new DirectChannel();
}
// Removed additional, unrelated, endpoints for readability...
#ServiceActivator(inputChannel="sendFirstResponse", outputChannel="sendSecondResponse")
public Message<String> sendFirstResponse(Message<String> message) {
// Unrelated message processing/response generation excluded...
outboundResponseGateway.sendOutboundResponse("First Response", message.getHeaders().get(IpHeaders.CONNECTION_ID, String.class));
return message;
}
// Service Activator that puts second response on the request channel of the Message Gateway
#ServiceActivator(inputChannel = "sendSecondResponse", outputChannel="outboundResponse")
public Message<String> processQuery(Message<String> message) {
// Unrelated message processing/response generation excluded...
return MessageBuilder.withPayload("Second Response").copyHeaders(message.getHeaders()).build();
}
}
// Messaging Gateway for sending responses
#MessagingGateway(defaultRequestChannel="outboundResponse")
public interface OutboundResponseGateway {
public void sendOutboundResponse(#Payload String payload, #Header(IpHeaders.CONNECTION_ID) String connectionId);
}
SOLUTION:
#Artem's suggestions in the comments/answers below seem to do the trick. Just wanted to make a quick note about how I was able to add a replyChannel to each Outbound Adapter on creation.
What I did was create two maps that are being maintained by the application. The first map is populated whenever a new Inbound/Outbound adapter combination is created and it is a mapping of ConnectionFactory name to replyChannel name. The second map is a map of ConnectionId to replyChannel name and this is populated on any new TcpConnectionOpenEvent via an EventListener.
Note that every TcpConnectionOpenEvent will have a ConnectionFactoryName and ConnectionId property defined based on where/how the connection is established.
From there, whenever a new request is received I use theses maps and the 'ip_connectionId' header on the Message to add a replyChannel header to the Message. The first response is sent by manually grabbing the corresponding replyChannel (based on the value of the replyChannel header) from the application's context and sending the response on that channel. The second response is sent via Spring Integration using the replyChannel header on the message as Artem describes in his responses.
This solution was implemented as a quick proof of concept and is just something that worked for my current implementation. Including this to hopefully jumpstart other viewer's own implementations/solutions.
Well, I see now your point about round-robin. You create many similar TCP channel adapters against the same channels. In this case it is indeed hard to distinguish one flow from another because you have a little control over those channels and their subscribers.
On of the solution would be grate with Spring Integration Java DSL and its dynamic flows: https://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/reference/html/dsl.html#java-dsl-runtime-flows
So, you would concentrate only on the flows and won't worry about runtime registration. But since you are not there and you deal just with plain Java & Annotations configuration, it is much harder for you to achieve a goal. But still...
You may be know that there is something like replyChannel header. It is taken into an account when we don't have a outputChannel configured. This way you would be able to have an isolated channel for each flow and the configuration would be really the same for all the flows.
So,
I would create a new channel for each configureAdapterCombination() call.
Propagate this one into that method for replyChannel.subscribe(outboundAdapter);
Use this channel in the beginning of your particular flow to populate it into a replyChannel header.
This way your processQuery() service-activator should go without an outputChannel. It is going to be selected from the replyChannel header for a proper outbound channel adapter correlation.
You don't need a #MessagingGateway for such a scenario since we don't have a fixed defaultRequestChannel any more. In the sendFirstResponse() service method you just take a replyChannel header and send a newly created message manually. Technically it is exactly the same what you try to do with a mentioned #MessagingGateway.
For Java DSL variant I would go with a filter on the PublishSubscribeChannel to discard those messages which don't belong to the current flow. Anyway it is a different story.
Try to figure out how you can have a reply channel per flow when you configure particular configureAdapterCombination().

Spring Boot Webflux/Netty - Detect closed connection

I've been working with spring-boot 2.0.0.RC1 using the webflux starter (spring-boot-starter-webflux). I created a simple controller that returns a infinite flux. I would like that the Publisher only does its work if there is a client (Subscriber). Let's say I have a controller like this one:
#RestController
public class Demo {
#GetMapping(value = "/")
public Flux<String> getEvents(){
return Flux.create((FluxSink<String> sink) -> {
while(!sink.isCancelled()){
// TODO e.g. fetch data from somewhere
sink.next("DATA");
}
sink.complete();
}).doFinally(signal -> System.out.println("END"));
}
}
Now, when I try to run that code and access the endpoint http://localhost:8080/ with Chrome, then I can see the data. However, once I close the browser the while-loop continues since no cancel event has been fired. How can I terminate/cancel the streaming as soon as I close the browser?
From this answer I quote that:
Currently with HTTP, the exact backpressure information is not
transmitted over the network, since the HTTP protocol doesn't support
this. This can change if we use a different wire protocol.
I assume that, since backpressure is not supported by the HTTP protocol, it means that no cancel request will be made either.
Investigating a little bit further, by analyzing the network traffic, showed that the browser sends a TCP FIN as soon as I close the browser. Is there a way to configure Netty (or something else) so that a half-closed connection will trigger a cancel event on the publisher, making the while-loop stop?
Or do I have to write my own adapter similar to org.springframework.http.server.reactive.ServletHttpHandlerAdapter where I implement my own Subscriber?
Thanks for any help.
EDIT:
An IOException will be raised on the attempt to write data to the socket if there is no client. As you can see in the stack trace.
But that's not good enough, since it might take a while before the next chunk of data will be ready to send and therefore it takes the same amount of time to detect the gone client. As pointed out in Brian Clozel's answer it is a known issue in Reactor Netty. I tried to use Tomcat instead by adding the dependency to the POM.xml. Like this:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
<artifactId>spring-boot-starter-tomcat</artifactId>
</dependency>
Although it replaces Netty and uses Tomcat instead, it does not seem reactive due to the fact that the browser does not show any data. However, there is no warning/info/exception in the console. Is spring-boot-starter-webflux as of this version (2.0.0.RC1) supposed to work together with Tomcat?
Since this is a known issue (see Brian Clozel's answer), I ended up using one Flux to fetch my real data and having another one in order to implement some sort of ping/heartbeat mechanism. As a result, I merge both together with Flux.merge().
Here you can see a simplified version of my solution:
#RestController
public class Demo {
public interface Notification{}
public static class MyData implements Notification{
…
public boolean isEmpty(){…}
}
#GetMapping(value = "/", produces = MediaType.TEXT_EVENT_STREAM_VALUE)
public Flux<ServerSentEvent<? extends Notification>> getNotificationStream() {
return Flux.merge(getEventMessageStream(), getHeartbeatStream());
}
private Flux<ServerSentEvent<Notification>> getHeartbeatStream() {
return Flux.interval(Duration.ofSeconds(2))
.map(i -> ServerSentEvent.<Notification>builder().event("ping").build())
.doFinally(signalType ->System.out.println("END"));
}
private Flux<ServerSentEvent<MyData>> getEventMessageStream() {
return Flux.interval(Duration.ofSeconds(30))
.map(i -> {
// TODO e.g. fetch data from somewhere,
// if there is no data return an empty object
return data;
})
.filter(data -> !data.isEmpty())
.map(data -> ServerSentEvent
.builder(data)
.event("message").build());
}
}
I wrap everything up as ServerSentEvent<? extends Notification>. Notification is just a marker interface. I use the event field from the ServerSentEvent class in order to separate between data and ping events. Since the heartbeat Flux sends events constantly and in short intervals, the time it takes to detect that the client is gone is at most the length of that interval. Remember, I need that because it might take a while before I get some real data that can be sent and, as a result, it might also take a while before it detects that the client is gone. Like this, it will detect that the client is gone as soon as it can’t sent the ping (or possibly the message event).
One last note on the marker interface, which I called Notification. This is not really necessary, but it gives some type safety. Without that, we could write Flux<ServerSentEvent<?>> instead of Flux<ServerSentEvent<? extends Notification>> as return type for the getNotificationStream() method. Or also possible, make getHeartbeatStream() return Flux<ServerSentEvent<MyData>>. However, like this it would allow that any object could be sent, which I don’t want. As a consequence, I added the interface.
I'm not sure why this behaves like this, but I suspect it is because of the choice of generation operator. I think using the following would work:
return Flux.interval(Duration.ofMillis(500))
.map(input -> {
return "DATA";
});
According to Reactor's reference documentation, you're probably hitting the key difference between generate and push (I believe a quite similar approach using generate would probably work as well).
My comment was referring to the backpressure information (how many elements a Subscriber is willing to accept), but the success/error information is communicated over the network.
Depending on your choice of web server (Reactor Netty, Tomcat, Jetty, etc), closing the client connection might result in:
a cancel signal being received on the server side (I think this is supported by Netty)
an error signal being received by the server when it's trying to write on a connection that's been closed (I believe the Servlet spec does not provide that that callback and we're missing the cancel information).
In short: you don't need to do anything special, it should be supported already, but your Flux implementation might be the actual problem here.
Update: this is a known issue in Reactor Netty

Writing to channel in a loop

I have to send a lot of data to I client connected to my server in small blocks.
So, I have something like:
for(;;) {
messageEvent.getChannel().write("Hello World");
}
The problem is that, for some reason, client is receiving dirty data, like Netty buffer is not clear at each iteration, so we got something like "Hello WorldHello".
If I make a little change in my code putting a thread sleep everything works fine:
for(;;) {
messageEvent.getChannel().write("Hello World");
Thread.sleep(1000);
}
As MRAB said, if the server is sending multiple messages on a channel without indicating the end of each message, then client can not always read the messages correctly. By adding sleep time after writing a message, will not solve the root cause of the problem either.
To fix this problem, have to mark the end of each message in a way that other party can identify, if client and server both are using Netty, you can add LengthFieldPrepender and LengthFieldBasedFrameDecoder before your json handlers.
String encodedMsg = new Gson().toJson(
sendToClient,newTypeToken<ArrayList<CoordinateVO>>() {}.getType());
By default, Gson uses html escaping for content, sometime this will lead to wired encoding, you can disable this if required by using a Gson factory
final static GsonBuilder gsonBuilder = new GsonBuilder().disableHtmlEscaping();
....
String encodedMsg = gsonBuilder.create().toJson(object);
In neither case are you sending anything to indicate where one item ends and the next begins, or how long each item is.
In the second case the sleep is getting the channel time out and flush, so the client sees a 'break', which it interprets as the end of the item.
The client should never see this "dirty data". If thats really the case then its a bug. But to be hornest I can't think of anything that could lead to this in netty. As every Channel.write(..) event will be added to a queue which then get written to the client when possible. So every data that is passed in the write(..) method will just get written. There is no "concat" of the data.
Do you maybe have some custom Encoder in the pipeline that buffers the data before sending it to the client ?
It would also help if you could show the complete code that gives this behavoir so we see what handlers are in the pipeline etc.

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