Retry mechanism using Camel and ActiveMq - Retry Policy gets ignored - spring

Question

I am working on a retry mechanism using camel and activeMq. What I want to do is to start a retry mechanism if one of the servers I am calling is down, add the request into my queue and from hour to hour resend it to the server. Everything works fine except my Retry Policy that seems to be ignored (my requests are resent when they get into my queue and they are never added into the DLQ after the number of retries is reached)
My configuration looks as follows (Values are readed from a .cfg file):
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">
<bean id="jmsConnectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.ActiveMQConnectionFactory">
<property name="brokerURL" value="${activemq.broker.url}"/>
<property name="userName" value="${activemq.broker.username}"/>
<property name="password" value="${activemq.broker.password}"/>
<property name="redeliveryPolicy" ref="policy"/>
</bean>
<bean id="policy" class="org.apache.activemq.RedeliveryPolicy">
<property name="queue" value="*"/>
<property name="initialRedeliveryDelay" value="${activemq.redelivery.delay}"/>
<property name="redeliveryDelay" value="${activemq.redelivery.delay}"/>
<property name="useExponentialBackOff" value="false"/>
<property name="maximumRedeliveries" value="${activemq.number.of.redeliveries}"/>
</bean>
<bean id="pooledConnectionFactory" class="org.apache.activemq.pool.PooledConnectionFactory">
<property name="maxConnections" value="8"/>
<property name="connectionFactory" ref="jmsConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
<bean id="jmsTransactionManager" class="org.springframework.jms.connection.JmsTransactionManager">
<property name="connectionFactory" ref="pooledConnectionFactory"/>
</bean>
<bean id="jmsConfig" class="org.apache.camel.component.jms.JmsConfiguration">
<property name="connectionFactory" ref="pooledConnectionFactory"/>
<property name="transactionManager" ref="jmsTransactionManager"/>
<property name="transacted" value="true"/>
<property name="cacheLevelName" value="CACHE_CONSUMER"/>
<property name="concurrentConsumers" value="8"/>
</bean>
<bean id="activemq" class="org.apache.activemq.camel.component.ActiveMQComponent">
<property name="configuration" ref="jmsConfig"/>
</bean>
Camel route that calls my service:
<route id="addRegistrationRoute">
<from uri="direct:addRegistrationRoute"/>
<to uri="cxf:bean:addRegistrationEndpoint"/>
<onException>
<exception>java.net.ConnectException</exception>
<onWhen>
<el>${in.headers['previousRoute'] != 'registrationRetryRoute'}</el>
</onWhen>
<handled>
<constant>true</constant>
</handled>
<setBody>
<simple>${headers.request}</simple>
</setBody>
<removeHeaders pattern="*"/>
<to uri="activemq:queue:registrationRetryQueue"/>
<stop/>
</onException>
<onException>
<exception>org.apache.cxf.interceptor.Fault</exception>
<onWhen>
<el>${in.headers['previousRoute'] != 'registrationRetryRoute'}</el>
</onWhen>
<handled>
<constant>true</constant>
</handled>
<setBody>
<simple>${headers.request}</simple>
</setBody>
<removeHeaders pattern="*"/>
<to uri="activemq:queue:registrationRetryQueue"/>
<stop/>
</onException>
<onException>
<exception>javax.xml.soap.SOAPFault</exception>
<handled>
<constant>true</constant>
</handled>
</onException>
</route>
<route id="registrationRetryRoute">
<from uri="activemq:queue:registrationRetryQueue"/>
<setHeader headerName="previousRoute">
<simple>registrationRetryRoute</simple>
</setHeader>
<to uri="direct:addRegistrationRoute"/> <!-- Back to the initial flow. -->
</route>
If somebody can please tell me what I have did wrong in configuring activeMq I will be really thankful!
Regards,
Roxana

Answer 1

ActiveMQ pushes messages into DLQ only if you are throwing an error from your consumers (or message listeners). So try to catch your exception and throw it back so that retry policy will be enabled accordingly.