How to retry consuming message, then stop consuming, when error occurs in listener

Question

I have Kafka listener writing data to a database, in case of database timeout (JdbcException), I'd like to retry, and if timeouts persist, stop consuming Kafka message.

As far as I understand, Spring Kafka 2.9 has 2 CommonErrorHandler implementations:

• DefaultErrorHandler tries to redeliver messages several times and then send failed messages to logs or DLQ
• CommonContainerStoppingErrorHandler stops listener container and message consumption

I would like to chain both of them: first try to redeliver messages several times, then stop container when delivery doesn't succeed.

How can I do that?

Answer 1

Use a DefaultErrorHandler with a custom recoverer that calls a CommonContainerStoppingErrorHandler after the retries are exhausted.

See this answer for an example

How do you exit spring boot application programmatically when retries are exhausted, to prevent kafka offset commit

(It uses the older SeekToCurrentErrorHandler, but the same concept applies.)