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javarestcxfjax-rs

CXF asynchronous client with RESTful web service

I have a client that interacts with a restful web service using CXF. I want to make use of asynchronous mode provided by CXF since 2.7.0 http://cxf.apache.org/javadoc/latest/org/apache/cxf/jaxrs/client/WebClient.html. I haven't really found a good example of a client using this feature

Previously I had code that did some thing like this

Response response = webclient.get();

updated code:

Future<Response> responseFuture = webclient.async().get();
// code to get future response ...

My questions:

  • Is this all I need to do and how will the client behavior change? My understanding is that previously it would create a separate thread for each client request. Now it will perform multiple requests using a single thread or thread pool?

  • Also, what is the best way for me to monitor what it is doing in the background in the two different cases?

Solution

  • Well, yes and no.

    That's all you need to do in your code, yes. However, by default, CXF would still use an HttpURLConnection object which requires a dedicated thread per request. Thus, under the covers, it would use CXF's thread pools for this.

    However, you can add CXF's async based transport (see http://cxf.apache.org/docs/asynchronous-client-http-transport.html ) which would allow hundreds of outstanding requests with very few threads used.