Spring WebClient - how to retry with delay based on response header

Question

A little background

I've been learning Spring Webflux and reactive programming and have gotten stuck on a problem I'm trying to solve around retry logic using Spring Webclient. I've created a client and made successful calls to an external web-service GET endpoint that returns some JSON data.

Problem

When the external service responds with a 503 - Service Unavailable status, the response includes a Retry-After header with a value that indicates how long I should wait before retrying the request. I want to find a way within Spring Webflux/Reactor to tell the webClient to retry it's request after X period, where X is the difference between now and the DateTime that I parse out of the response header.

Simple WebClient GET request

public <T> Mono<T> get(final String url, Class<T> clazz) {
        return webClient
                .get().uri(url)
                .retrieve()
                .bodyToMono(clazz);
    }

WebClient Builder

I use a builder to create the webClient variable used in the above method, and it's stored as an instance variable in the class.

webClientBuilder = WebClient.builder();
webClientBuilder.codecs(clientCodecConfigurer -> {
    clientCodecConfigurer.defaultCodecs();
    clientCodecConfigurer.customCodecs().register(new Jackson2JsonDecoder());
    clientCodecConfigurer.customCodecs().register(new Jackson2JsonEncoder());
});
webClient = webClientBuilder.build();

Retry When

I've tried to understand and use the retryWhen method with the Retry class, but can't figure out if I can access or pass through the response header value there.

public <T> Mono<T> get(final String url, Class<T> clazz) {
        return webClient
                .get().uri(url)
                .retrieve()
                .bodyToMono(clazz);
                .retryWhen(new Retry() {
                    @Override
                    public Publisher<?> generateCompanion(final Flux<RetrySignal> retrySignals) {
                        // Can I use retrySignals or retryContext to find the response header somehow?
                        // If I can find the response header, how to return a "yes-retry" response?
                    }
                })
    }

Filter(s) with Extra Logic and DB Interaction

I've also tried to do some extra logic and use filters with the WebClient.Builder, but that only gets me to a point of halting a new request (call to #get) until a previously established Retry-After value has elapsed.

webClientBuilder = WebClient.builder();
webClientBuilder.codecs(clientCodecConfigurer -> {
    clientCodecConfigurer.defaultCodecs();
    clientCodecConfigurer.customCodecs().register(new Jackson2JsonDecoder());
    clientCodecConfigurer.customCodecs().register(new Jackson2JsonEncoder());
});
webClientBuilder.filter(ExchangeFilterFunction.ofRequestProcessor(clientRequest -> {
            final Clock clock = Clock.systemUTC();
            final int id = (int) clientRequest.attribute("id"); // id is saved as an attribute for the request, pull it out here
            final long retryAfterEpochMillis = // get epoch millisecond from DB for id
            if(epoch is in the past) {
                return Mono.just(clientRequest);
            } else { // have to wait until epoch passes to send request
                return Mono.just(clientRequest).delayElement(Duration.between(clock.instant(), Instant.ofEpochMilli(retryAfterEpochMillis)));
            }
        })
);
webClient = webClientBuilder.build();

.onStatus(HttpStatus::isError, response -> {
                    final List<String> retryAfterHeaders = response.headers().header("Retry-After");
                    if(retryAfterHeaders.size() > 0) {
                        final long retryAfterEpochMillis = // parse millisecond epoch time from header
                        // Save millisecond time to DB associated to specific id
                    }
                    return response.bodyToMono(String.class).flatMap(body ->
                            Mono.error(new RuntimeException(
                                            String.format("Request url {%s} failed with status {%s} and reason {%s}",
                                                    url,
                                                    response.rawStatusCode(),
                                                    body))));
                })

Any help is appreciated, and if I can provide more contextual data to help, I will.

Answer 1

1. Retrieve header in retry builder

public class WebClientStatefulRetry3 {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        WebClient webClient = WebClient.create();

        call(webClient)
                .retryWhen(Retry.indefinitely()
                        .filter(ex -> ex instanceof WebClientResponseException.ServiceUnavailable)
                        .doBeforeRetryAsync(signal -> Mono.delay(calculateDelay(signal.failure())).then()))
                .block();
    }

    private static Mono<String> call(WebClient webClient) {
        return webClient.get()
                .uri("http://mockbin.org/bin/b2a26614-0219-4018-9446-c03bc1868ebf")
                .retrieve()
                .bodyToMono(String.class);
    }

    private static Duration calculateDelay(Throwable failure) {
        String headerValue = ((WebClientResponseException.ServiceUnavailable) failure).getHeaders().get("Retry-After").get(0);

        return // calculate delay here from header and current time;
    }
}

2. Use expand operator to access the previous response and generate the next one

public class WebClientRetryWithExpand {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        WebClient webClient = WebClient.create();

        call(webClient)
                .expand(prevResponse -> {
                    List<String> header = prevResponse.headers.header("Retry-After");
                    if (header.isEmpty()) {
                        return Mono.empty();
                    }
                    long delayInMillis = // calculate delay from header and current time

                    return Mono.delay(Duration.ofMillis(delayInMillis))
                            .then(call(webClient));
                })
                .last()
                .block();
    }

    private static Mono<ResponseWithHeaders> call(WebClient webClient) {
        return webClient.get()
                .uri("https://example.com")
                .exchangeToMono(response -> response.bodyToMono(String.class)
                        .map(rawResponse -> new ResponseWithHeaders(rawResponse, response.headers())));
    }

    @Data
    static class ResponseWithHeaders {
        private final String rawResponse;
        private final ClientResponse.Headers headers;
    }
}