Error handling with @KafkaListener

Question

I'm using spring-kafka with the following configuration:

package com.danigu.fancypants.infrastructure;

import com.fasterxml.jackson.databind.ObjectMapper;
import lombok.Data;
import org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.ConsumerConfig;
import org.apache.kafka.common.serialization.StringDeserializer;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Bean;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Configuration;
import org.springframework.context.annotation.Import;
import org.springframework.kafka.annotation.EnableKafka;
import org.springframework.kafka.config.ConcurrentKafkaListenerContainerFactory;
import org.springframework.kafka.core.ConsumerFactory;
import org.springframework.kafka.core.DefaultKafkaConsumerFactory;
import org.springframework.kafka.support.converter.StringJsonMessageConverter;
import org.springframework.retry.RetryPolicy;
import org.springframework.retry.backoff.BackOffPolicy;
import org.springframework.retry.backoff.ExponentialBackOffPolicy;
import org.springframework.retry.policy.SimpleRetryPolicy;
import org.springframework.retry.support.RetryTemplate;

import javax.inject.Inject;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

/**
 * @author dani
 */
@Data
@EnableKafka
@Configuration
@Import({KafkaConfigurationProperties.class})
public class KafkaConfiguration {
    @Inject KafkaConfigurationProperties kcp;

    protected Map<String, Object> consumerProperties() {
        Map<String, Object> props = new HashMap();
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS_CONFIG, kcp.getBrokerAddress());
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.GROUP_ID_CONFIG, kcp.getGroupId());
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.ENABLE_AUTO_COMMIT_CONFIG, false);
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.SESSION_TIMEOUT_MS_CONFIG, 15000);
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.KEY_DESERIALIZER_CLASS_CONFIG, StringDeserializer.class);
        props.put(ConsumerConfig.VALUE_DESERIALIZER_CLASS_CONFIG, StringDeserializer.class);
        return props;
    }

    public ConsumerFactory<String, String> consumerFactory() {
        return new DefaultKafkaConsumerFactory<>(consumerProperties());
    }

    @Bean
    public StringJsonMessageConverter stringJsonMessageConverter(ObjectMapper mapper) {
        return new StringJsonMessageConverter(mapper);
    }

    @Bean
    public ConcurrentKafkaListenerContainerFactory<String, String> kafkaListenerContainerFactory(
            StringJsonMessageConverter messageConverter) {
        ConcurrentKafkaListenerContainerFactory<String, String> factory = new ConcurrentKafkaListenerContainerFactory();

        factory.setMessageConverter(messageConverter);
        factory.setConsumerFactory(consumerFactory());
        factory.setConcurrency(1);
        factory.setRetryTemplate(retryTemplate());

        return factory;
    }

    /*
     * Retry template.
     */

    protected RetryPolicy retryPolicy() {
        SimpleRetryPolicy policy = new SimpleRetryPolicy();
        policy.setMaxAttempts(3);
        return policy;
    }

    protected BackOffPolicy backOffPolicy() {
        ExponentialBackOffPolicy policy = new ExponentialBackOffPolicy();
        policy.setInitialInterval(1000);
        return policy;
    }

    protected RetryTemplate retryTemplate() {
       RetryTemplate template = new RetryTemplate();

       template.setRetryPolicy(retryPolicy());
       template.setBackOffPolicy(backOffPolicy());

       return template;
    }
}

And my listener looks like this:

package com.danigu.fancypants.integration.inbound.dress;

import com.danigu.fancypants.integration.inbound.InvalidRequestException;
import com.danigu.fancypants.integration.inbound.dress.payload.DressRequest;
import org.apache.kafka.clients.consumer.ConsumerRecord;
import org.springframework.kafka.annotation.KafkaListener;
import org.springframework.kafka.listener.AcknowledgingMessageListener;
import org.springframework.kafka.support.Acknowledgment;
import org.springframework.messaging.handler.annotation.Payload;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import javax.inject.Inject;
import javax.validation.ConstraintViolation;
import javax.validation.Validator;
import java.util.Set;

/**
 * @author dani
 */
@Component
public class DressListener {

    @Inject protected Validator validator;

    @KafkaListener(topics = {"${kafka.dressesTopic}"})
    public void onMessage(@Payload DressRequest request, Acknowledgment acknowledgment) {
        assertValidRequest(request);

        System.out.println(request);

        acknowledgment.acknowledge();
    }

    protected void assertValidRequest(DressRequest request) {
        final Set<ConstraintViolation<DressRequest>> violations = validator.validate(request);

        if(!violations.isEmpty()) {
            throw new InvalidRequestException(violations, request);
        }
    }
}

So far i've been looking at the tests and reference documentation of spring-kafka, there the docs say that the ErrorHandler for the appropriate type should be configured, this test imply that i should configure it on ContainerProperties, although, that's only one error handler, in my use case, i would like to define multiple (for different payload types), is that possible, in case yes, how?

Also, is there a way maybe to describe which error handler to use on the annotated listener void?

Also, is there a way to describe a RecoveryCallback per @KafkaListener or maybe per different topics or there has to be different ListenerContainerFactorys for that?

I might get this completely wrong, could someone point me in the right direction how i could configure multiple ErrorHandlers for different payload types the right way please?

Answer 1

I am not sure what you mean by "different payload types" since you only have a single @KafkaListener. @KafkaListener at the class level can have @KafkaHandler at the method level for different payload types.

In any case, there is only one error handler per container so you would need a different container factory for each error handler (same thing for the recovery callback).

We recently added an errorHandler on the @RabbitListener in spring-amqp ...

/**
 * Set an {@link RabbitListenerErrorHandler} to invoke if the listener method throws
 * an exception.
 * @return the error handler.
 * @since 2.0
 */
String errorHandler() default "";

...so each method can have its own error handler there.

We will probably do something similar for the next release of spring-kafka. But it would still only be one for each @KafkaListener so it won't help for class-level @KafkaListeners.