Spring boot Webclient's retrieve vs exchange

Question

I have started using WebClient in my Spring boot project recently. Can somebody throw some light on the differences/usages between exchange and retrieve methods in WebClient.

I understand that exchange returns Mono<ClientResponse> and retrieve returns ResponseSpec, I just want to know when/why I should use each one of them.

Answer 1

Adding to @JArgente's answer.

According to the official documentation of the retrieve() method:

Perform the HTTP request and retrieve the response body.

...

This method is a shortcut to using exchange() and decoding the response body through ClientResponse.

and the exchange() method

Perform the HTTP request and return a ClientResponse with the response status and headers. You can then use methods of the response to consume the body:

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The retrieve() method decodes the ClientResponse object and hands you the ready-made object for your use. It doesn't have a very nice api for handling exceptions.

However on the other hand the exchange() method hands you the ClientResponse object itself along with the response status and headers. With exchange method you get fine grained control over your response objects and a better way to handle the response object and the exceptions.

If you just want to consume some api go with retrieve().

If you want a better control over your response objects, headers and exceptions, go with exchange().

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Update 1

Starting from Spring 5.3, the exchange() method is deprecated due to possible memory/connection leaks. exchangeToMono() or exchangeToFlux() can be used instead.

Thanks @rhubarb for the update.