How to use AsyncRestTemplate to make multiple calls simultaneously?

Question

I don't understand how to use AsyncRestTemplate effectively for making external service calls. For the code below:

class Foo {

    public void doStuff() {
        Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future1 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(
                url1, String.class);
        String response1 = future1.get();

        Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future2 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(
                url2, String.class);
        String response2 = future2.get();

        Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future3 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(
                url3, String.class);
        String response3 = future3.get();
    }
}

Ideally I want to execute all 3 calls simultaneously and process the results once they're all done. However each external service call is not fetched until get() is called but get() is blocked. So doesn't that defeat the purpose of AsyncRestTemplate? I might as well use RestTemplate.

So I don't understaand how I can get them to execute simultaneously?

Answer 1

Simply don't call blocking get() before dispatching all of your asynchronous calls:

class Foo {
  public void doStuff() {
    ListenableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> future1 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url1, String.class);
    ListenableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> future2 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url2, String.class);
    ListenableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> future3 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url3, String.class);

    String response1 = future1.get();
    String response2 = future2.get();
    String response3 = future3.get();
  }
}

You can do both dispatch and get in loops, but note that current results gathering is inefficient as it would get stuck on the next unfinished future.

You could add all the futures to a collection, and iterate through it testing each future for non blocking isDone(). When that call returns true, you can then call get().

This way your en masse results gathering will be optimised rather than waiting on the next slow future result in the order of calling get()s.

Better still you can register callbacks (runtimes) within each ListenableFuture returned by AccyncRestTemplate and you don't have to worry about cyclically inspecting the potential results.

Answer 2

If you don't have to use 'AsyncRestTemplate' I would suggest to use RxJava instead. RxJava zip operator is what you are looking for. Check code below:

private rx.Observable<String> externalCall(String url, int delayMilliseconds) {
    return rx.Observable.create(
            subscriber -> {
                try {
                    Thread.sleep(delayMilliseconds); //simulate long operation
                    subscriber.onNext("response(" + url + ") ");
                    subscriber.onCompleted();
                } catch (InterruptedException e) {
                    subscriber.onError(e);
                }
            }
    );
}

public void callServices() {
    rx.Observable<String> call1 = externalCall("url1", 1000).subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread());
    rx.Observable<String> call2 = externalCall("url2", 4000).subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread());
    rx.Observable<String> call3 = externalCall("url3", 5000).subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread());
    rx.Observable.zip(call1, call2, call3, (resp1, resp2, resp3) -> resp1 + resp2 + resp3)
            .subscribeOn(Schedulers.newThread())
            .subscribe(response -> System.out.println("done with: " + response));
}

All requests to external services will be executed in separate threads, when last call will be finished transformation function( in example simple string concatenation) will be applied and result (concatenated string) will be emmited from 'zip' observable.

Answer 3

What I Understand by Your question is You have a predefined asynchronous method and you try to do is call this method asynchoronously using RestTemplate Class.

I have wrote a method that will help you out to call Your method asynchoronously.

 public void testMyAsynchronousMethod(String... args) throws Exception {
        // Start the clock
        long start = System.currentTimeMillis();

        // Kick of multiple, asynchronous lookups
        Future<String> future1 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url1, String.class);;
        Future<String> future2 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url2, String.class);
        Future<String> future3 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url3, String.class);

        // Wait until they are all done
        while (!(future1 .isDone() && future2.isDone() && future3.isDone())) {
            Thread.sleep(10); //10-millisecond pause between each check
        }

        // Print results, including elapsed time
        System.out.println("Elapsed time: " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - start));
        System.out.println(future1.get());
        System.out.println(future2.get());
        System.out.println(future3.get());
    }

Answer 4

You might want to use CompletableFuture class (javadoc).

1. Transform your calls into CompletableFuture. For instance.

   final CompletableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> cf = CompletableFuture.supplyAsync(() -> {
       try {
           return future.get();
       } catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
           throw new RuntimeException(e);
       }
   });
   

2. Next call CompletableFuture::allOf method with your 3 newly created completable futures.

3. Call join() method on the result. After the resulting completable future is resolved you can get the results from each separate completable future you've created on step 3.

Answer 5

I think you are misunderstanding a few things here. When you call the getForEntity method, the requests are already fired. When the get() method of the future object is called, you are just waiting for the request to complete. So in order fire all those three requests on the same subsecond, you just have to do:

// Each of the lines below will fire an http request when it's executed
Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future1 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(url1, String.class);
Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future2 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(url2, String.class);
Future<ResponseEntity<String>> future3 = asyncRestTemplate.getForEntity(url3, String.class);

After all these codes are run, all the requests are already fired (most probably in the same subsecond). Then you can do whatever you want in the meanwhile. As soon as you call any of the get() method, you are waiting for each request to complete. If they are already completed, then it will just return immediately.

// do whatever you want in the meantime
// get the response of the http call and wait if it's not completed
String response1 = future1.get();
String response2 = future2.get();
String response3 = future3.get();

Answer 6

I don't think any of the previous answers actually achieve parallelism. The problem with @diginoise response is that it doesn't actually achieve parallelism. As soon as we call get, we're blocked. Consider that the calls are really slow such that future1 takes 3 seconds to complete, future2 2 seconds and future3 3 seconds again. With 3 get calls one after another, we end up waiting 3 + 2 + 3 = 8 seconds. @Vikrant Kashyap answer blocks as well on while (!(future1 .isDone() && future2.isDone() && future3.isDone())). Besides the while loop is a pretty ugly looking piece of code for 3 futures, what if you have more? @lkz answer uses a different technology than you asked for, and even then, I'm not sure if zip is going to do the job. From Observable Javadoc:

zip applies this function in strict sequence, so the first item emitted by the new Observable will be the result of the function applied to the first item emitted by each of the source Observables; the second item emitted by the new Observable will be the result of the function applied to the second item emitted by each of those Observables; and so forth.

Due to Spring's widespread popularity, they try very hard to maintain backward compatibility and in doing so, sometimes make compromises with the API. AsyncRestTemplate methods returning ListenableFuture is one such case. If they committed to Java 8+, CompletableFuture could be used instead. Why? Since we won't be dealing with thread pools directly, we don't have a good way to know when all the ListenableFutures have completed. CompletableFuture has an allOf method that creates a new CompletableFuture that is completed when all of the given CompletableFutures complete. Since we don't have that in ListenableFuture, we will have to improvise. I've not compiled the following code but it should be clear what I'm trying to do. I'm using Java 8 because it's end of 2016.

// Lombok FTW
@RequiredArgsConstructor
public final class CounterCallback implements ListenableFutureCallback<ResponseEntity<String>> {
  private final LongAdder adder;

  public void onFailure(Throwable ex) {
    adder.increment();
  }
  public void onSuccess(ResponseEntity<String> result) {
    adder.increment();
  }
}

ListenableFuture<ResponseEntity<String>> f1 = asyncRestTemplate
        .getForEntity(url1, String.class);
f1.addCallback(//);
// more futures

LongAdder adder = new LongAdder();
ListenableFutureCallback<ResponseEntity<String>> callback = new CounterCallback(adder);
Stream.of(f1, f2, f3)
  .forEach {f -> f.addCallback(callback)}

for (int counter = 1; adder.sum() < 3 && counter < 10; counter++) {
  Thread.sleep(1000);
}
// either all futures are done or we're done waiting
Map<Boolean, ResponseEntity<String>> futures = Stream.of(f1, f2, f3)
  .collect(Collectors.partitioningBy(Future::isDone));

Now we've a Map for which futures.get(Boolean.TRUE) will give us all the futures that have completed and futures.get(Boolean.FALSE) will give us the ones that didn't. We will want to cancel the ones that didn't complete.

This code does a few things that are important with parallel programming:

1. It doesn't block.
2. It limits the operation to some maximum allowed time.
3. It clearly separates successful and failure cases.