Spring Reactive MVC vs @EnableAsync

Question

I'm a newbie to Spring Reactive Modules. What I got is basically, at its core it enable reactive programming and we can develop end to end reactive service.

But, suppose I just want to make my controller as Async, so that I can do work on multiple threads and send a reply like "Task Started" (not particularly this) and have my work going on and close the HTTP link.

I also got to know about @EnableAsync and @Async to make a method Async.

What if I just use @Async above my controller method that I want to make async. It worked but, is this a good practice? And can we use this in production codes?

Answer 1

I do not see any problem using @Asyncas this will release the request thread. But this is a simple approach and it has a lot of limitations. Note that if you want to deal with reactive streams, you do not have an API capable of that. For instance, if an @Async method calls another, the second will not be async.

The Webflux instead will bring the most complete API (in Java) to deal with things the reactive way. What you cannot do with only @Async. With Flux, for instance, you can process or access with multiple layers reactively and this you cannot reach the way you doing.

Nevertheless, it will bring a new universe for you, so if you just want to release the thread of the request, your approach is just fine, but if you need more you will have to deal with it in a more complex way.

Now, if you want to answer the HTTP request and then do the work asyncly, this is not what you want. I recommend that you have a JMS provider (like ActiveMQ), where your controller sends the message to be processed by a job and answers the request.

Hope it helps!