Declarative Clients in Spring

What is a declarative HTTP client vs an imperative one? Why are they useful and why should I care? We’ll talk about options that are available in the Spring Portfolio and what is coming on the horizon.

In this session, we will look at the history of declarative clients in Spring via Spring Cloud OpenFeign. We will also dive into upcoming options that are coming to Spring and the advantages that these new technologies bring to the developer experience.

Transcript

1. Olga Maciaszek-Sharma
   Rossen Stoyanchev
   Declarative Clients in Spring
   Copyright © 2020 VMware, Inc. or its affiliates.
   

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2. About Olga
   Software Engineer in Spring Cloud team
   Spring Cloud LoadBalancer, Spring Cloud OpenFeign, Spring
   Cloud Netflix, Spring Cloud Contract, Spring Cloud Square,
   RSocket HTTP Bridge
   

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3. About Rossen
   Spring Framework and Spring for GraphQL teams
   Spring MVC, WebFlux, WebSocket, RSocket
   

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4. What is a declarative client?
   

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5. Sample applications
   Customer Service Verification Service
   HTTP POST /verify
   Customer Verification Result
   

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6. Direct use of HTTP client
   

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7. Client interface
   

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8. Implementation
   

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9. Implementation with helper methods
   

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10. Client interface usage
    

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11. What if we could just create an annotated
    interface and have a library/ framework
    translate it into actual HTTP client requests?
    

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12. Declarative/ interface client
    Client interface
    method calls
    HTTP calls
    Proxy
    

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13. Feign
    

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14. OpenFeign/Feign
    

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15. Feign
    Java to HTTP client binder
    ● Core part of a former Spring Cloud Netflix module, passed over to the community
    ● Supports various HTTP clients, including Apache HTTP, Apache HC5, Ok HTTP
    ● Contracts - support for custom annotations and argument resolution
    ● Support for a broad range of encoders/ decoders, including Jackson and GSON
    ● Metrics, including Micrometer support
    

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16. Spring Cloud OpenFeign
    

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17. Spring Cloud OpenFeign
    Spring MVC and Spring Cloud support for OpenFeign
    ● Spring MVC annotations support
    ● Auto-configurations for Feign-specific beans
    ● Spring Cloud LoadBalancer support
    ● Spring Cloud CircuitBreaker support
    ● Tracing support
    

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18. A declarative/ interface client
    

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19. A declarative/ interface client use
    

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20. Spring Cloud OpenFeign Demo
    Applications communicating over HTTP
    Customer Service
    SC OpenFeign Client
    SC LoadBalancer
    SC Sleuth
    Verification Service
    POST /verify
    Customer Verification Result
    Eureka Service Registry
    

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21. Spring Cloud OpenFeign - popularity
    Highly-readable interface clients with robust integrations
    ● 797 GitHub stars
    ● 8670549 Maven downloads in 2021
    ● Nearly flat learning curve for Spring MVC users
    

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22. Spring Cloud OpenFeign - issues
    ● Issues with reusing client interfaces as controllers
    ○ @RequestMapping at class level user issues (GH-547, GH-678)
    ○ CVE-2021-22044
    ● Maintenance issues caused by dependence on third party upstream project
    ● Lack of non-blocking support
    

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23. Spring Cloud Square
    Spring Boot and Spring Cloud support for Retrofit and OkHttp
    ● WebClient support for Retrofit interface clients
    ● Auto-configurations
    ● Load-balancing
    ● Tracing
    ● Only Retrofit annotations
    ● Incubator project
    

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24. RetroSocket
    Interface client for RSocket
    ● Incubator project
    

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25. Considerations
    More third-party integrations or an in-house solution?
    ● HTTP/reactive, RSocket/RetroSocket - converging solutions
    ● Opportunity to create a first-class solution in the Spring Framework
    ○ No maintenance dependence on third party projects
    ● Previous Spring Cloud support built around external projects
    ○ Possibility of providing integration on top of the Spring Framework interface
    clients
    

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26. HTTP & RSocket Interface Clients
    in Spring Framework 6.0
    

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27. Interface clients are not new in
    the Spring Framework
    Same mechanism, different protocols
    

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28. Why HTTP and RSocket now?
    Discussions with Spring Cloud around
    OpenFeign, Retrofit, and RSocket integrations
    

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29. Spring Framework 6.0 already had plans
    for RSocket interface client
    

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30. Old request for HTTP, deferred to…
    Spring Cloud OpenFeign
    

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31. Old request for HTTP, deferred to…
    Spring Cloud OpenFeign
    

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32. Opportunity to revisit
    Underlying mechanism is not specific to Spring Cloud
    Cloud features are extensions on top
    

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33. Some issues can only be addressed
    in Spring Framework
    programming model vs reusing @RequestMapping
    

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34. Decided to explore
    for Spring Framework 6.0
    

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35. HTTP interface client programming model
    Relationship to server @RequestMapping?
    

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36. Two goals
    Define a single request (no wildcards of any kind!)
    Avoid outright server-specific
    

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37. @RequestMapping attributes
    For mapping of 1..N requests
    Any HTTP method Any URL path
    

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38. @RequestMapping method parameters
    ServletRequest
    HttpMethod
    @RequestHeader
    @RequestParam
    @RequestBody
    @RequestAttribute
    @ModelAttribute
    …
    

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39. @RequestMapping return values
    ResponseEntity
    HttpHeaders
    Body
    void
    Model
    View
    SseEmitter
    …
    

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40. New method annotation
    to declare rather than map requests
    @RequestMapping
    @HttpExchange
    

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41. @HttpExchange attributes
    url
    method
    contentType
    accept
    

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42. @HttpExchange method parameters
    Subset of those for @RequestMapping
    i.e. reusing method parameter annotations
    

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43. @HttpExchange method parameters
    URI
    HttpMethod
    @RequestHeader
    @PathVariable
    @RequestBody
    @RequestParam
    @CookieValue
    

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44. @HttpExchange return values
    Subset of those for @RequestMapping
    i.e. also using return value types
    

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46. Blocking
    

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47. Reactive
    

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48. status, headers, body
    

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49. headers
    

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50. execute only
    

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52. Spring Boot can declare this as a bean
    

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53. RSocket interface client planned for
    Spring Framework 6.0 M5
    

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54. Resources
    ● Demo code
    ● Spring Cloud OpenFeign
    ● Spring Framework documentation for HTTP interface client
    ● Spring Cloud Square
    ● RetroSocket
    

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55. Thank you
    Twitter: @olga_maciaszek, @rstoya05
    © 2020 Spring. A VMware-backed project.
    

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