@Phate - Absolutely! I just answered a related question (possibly) using Apache Geode or Pivotal GemFire as the caching provider in a Spring Boot application with Spring's Cache Abstraction.
In that posting, rather than disabling the cache completely, I switched GemFire/Geode to run in a local-only mode (a possible configuration with GemFire/Geode). However, the same techniques can be applied to disable caching entirely if that is what is desired.
In essence, you need a pre-processing step, before Spring Boot and Spring in general start to evaluate the configuration of your application.
In my example, I implemented a custom Spring Condition that checked the availability of the cluster (i.e. servers). I then applied the Condition to my @Configuration class.
In the case of Spring Boot, Spring Boot applies auto-configuration for Redis (as a store and a caching provider) when it effectively sees (as well as see here) Redis and Spring Data Redis on the classpath of your application. So, essentially, Redis is only enabled as a caching provider when the "conditions" are true, primarily that a
RedisConnectionFactory bean was declared by your application configuration, your responsibility.
So, what would this look like?
Like my Apache Geode & Pivotal GemFire custom Spring Condition, you could implement a similar Condition for Redis, such as:
static RedisAvailableCondition implements Condition {
@Override
public boolean matches(ConditionContext conditionContext,
AnnotatedTypeMetadata annotatedTypeMetadata) {
// Check the available of the Redis server, such as by opening a Socket
// connection to the server node.
// NOTE: There might be other, more reliable/robust means of checking
// the availability of a Redis server in the Redis community.
Socket redisServer;
try {
Environment environment = conditionContext.getEnvironment();
String host = environment.getProperty("spring.redis.host");
Integer port = environment.getProperty("spring.redis.port", Integer.class);
SocketAddress redisServerAddress = new InetSocketAddress(host, port);
redisServer = new Socket();
redisServer.connect(redisServerAddress);
return true;
}
catch (Throwable ignore) {
System.setProperty("spring.cache.type", "none");
return false;
}
finally {
// TODO: You need to implement this method yourself.
safeCloseSocket(redisServer);
}
}
}
Additionally, I also set the spring.cache.type to NONE, to ensure that caching is rendered as a no-op in the case that Redis is not available. NONE is explained in more detail here.
Of course, you could also use a fallback caching option, using some other caching provider (like a simple ConcurrentHashMap, but I leave that as an exercise for you). Onward...
Then, in your Spring Boot application configuration class where you have defined your RedisConnectionFactory bean (as expected by Spring Boot's auto-configuration), you add this custom Condition using Spring's @Conditiional annotation, like so:
@Confgiuration
@Conditional(RedisAvailableCondition.class);
class MyRedisConfiguration {
@Bean
RedisConnectionFactory redisConnectionFactory() {
// Construct and return new RedisConnectionFactory
}
}
This should effectively handle the case when Redis is not available.
DISCLAIMER: I did not test this myself, but is based on my Apache Geode/Pivotal GemFire example that does work. So, perhaps, with some tweaks this will address your needs. It should also serve to give you some ideas.
Hope this helps!
Cheers!
