Adding Additional Configuration Properties to RabbitAutoConfiguration

[coreyjv]

In our environment there are a number of configuration properties that we set on a com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory that are not exposed via RabbitAutoConfiguration and RabbitProperties. This prevents us from using the RabbitAutoConfiguration. The properties that we're interested in are automaticRecovery and networkRecoveryInterval.

I can submit a PR with the changes (as well as any other properties you may want to expose through the auto-configuration) but I wanted to ask prior to submitting the PR.

[snicoll]

ping @garyrussell

[philwebb]

@coreyjv They sound like sensible additions to me. A PR would be most welcome, thanks! Please also remember to sign the CLA if you haven't already.

[coreyjv]

Thanks @philwebb. One followup question. Would it be possible to expand the scope of this PR to include other com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory settings like Client Properties or would you prefer another issue be created?

[garyrussell]

Spring AMQP is not compatible with RabbitMQ auto recovery.

Spring AMQP has had its own recovery mechanism (that predated the (now) inbuilt recovery) since day 1.

The problem is that the listener container consumers terminate when the connection is lost; when rabbit recovers the consumers, there is no code using them so they just sit idle.

To avoid this problem, the container physically closes its channels when the connection is lost, effectively disabling auto recovery (on the consumer side).

Changing Spring AMQP to use the native recovery will need a complete rewrite of the listener container (which we are considering for a release next year).

There might be some benefit to auto recovery on the producer side, but Spring AMQP's solution there is to configure a RetryTemplate (from spring-retry) into the RabbitTemplate.

[coreyjv]

Hi @garyrussell --

Thanks for providing this insight I appreciate it. I understand that Spring AMQP is not compatible with RabbitMQ auto recovery, however I was hoping to include this functionality in a RabbitMQ specific class (RabbitConnectionFactoryBean) which is used by the Spring Boot RabbitAutoConfiguration.

Just so I'm clear are you saying these changes won't be accepted or is further discussion needed?

Thanks!

[wilkinsona]

@coreyjv RabbitAutoConfiguration auto-configures a number of Spring AMQP features. As such, it isn't appropriate for it to enable the configuration of RabbitMQ functionality that doesn't work as expected with Spring AMQP.

[coreyjv]

Thanks for the clarification @wilkinsona. It seems a bit odd to me that we have a RabbitAutoConfiguration which configures a connection using a RabbitConnectionFactoryBean but we can't use any Rabbit specific features.

Have there been any thoughts to pushing AMQP compliant configuration to AmqpAutoConfiguration and AmqpConnectionFactoryBean classes and allowing Rabbit specific configuration in its classes?

Please feel free to close this issue (and the other one) if these additional configuration options will not be integrated.

[wilkinsona]

It seems a bit odd to me that we have a RabbitAutoConfiguration which configures a connection using a RabbitConnectionFactoryBean but we can't use any Rabbit specific features.

I think @garyrussell already explained the reasons for that above. It's a limitation of the current Spring AMQP implementation.

Have there been any thoughts to pushing AMQP compliant configuration to AmqpAutoConfiguration and AmqpConnectionFactoryBean classes and allowing Rabbit specific configuration in its classes?

Having logic that's Rabbit-specific in a class that doesn't mention Rabbit in its name might just confuse things further.

I think I'm now a bit confused about what the original purpose of this issue was. Can you share what you're currently configuring manually and how you're using Rabbit and Spring AMQP (assuming that you're using the latter at all). From what @garyrussell has said above, I'm guessing that you're not using the listener container as it doesn't work as expected with RabbitMQ's recovery mechanism.

[coreyjv]

Thanks for asking for additional clarification @wilkinsona. In our producer code we configure an instance of com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory and set the automaticRecoveryEnabled and networkRecoveryInterval as necessary and then it's wrapped in a org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.CachingConnectionFactory.

It's essentially identical to what the RabbitAutoConfiguration does but we also set those two properties mentioned above.