Spring Retry does not work on 2nd level of methods

Question

@Retryable doesn't seem to be working on 2nd level of methods as in sphRemoteCall below. I see that a proxy is created but it is never retried on failures.

Once I moved @Retryable to the 1st level of methods like getSubscriberAccount, it's started working.

Example below:

@Service
public class SphIptvClient extends WebServiceGatewaySupport {
    //Works over here
    @Retryable(maxAttempts=3, backoff=@Backoff(delay=100))
    public GetSubscriberAccountResponse getSubscriberAccount(String loginTocken, String billingServId) {

        GetSubscriberAccountResponse response = (GetSubscriberAccountResponse) sphRemoteCall(sphIptvEndPoint, getSubAcc, "xxxxx");
        return response;
    }

    /*
     * Retryable is not working on the 2nd level methods in the bean. 
     * It works only with methods which are called directly from outside
     * if there is 2nd level method, like this, Retryable is not working.
     */
    //@Retryable
    private Object sphRemoteCall(String uri, Object requestPayload, String soapAction) {
        log.debug("Calling the sph for uri:{} and soapAction:{}", uri, soapAction);
        return getWebServiceTemplate().marshalSendAndReceive(uri, requestPayload, new SoapActionCallback(soapAction));
    }
}

@Configuration
@EnableRetry
public class SphClientConfig {
    @Bean
    public SphIptvClient sphIptvClient() {
        SphIptvClient client = new SphIptvClient();
        return client;
    }
}

Answer 1

So this is a super late answer, but since I've just come here and confronted the same problem (again, after years ago wrestling with transactions) I'll furnish a little more fleshed out solution and hopefully someone will find it useful. Suffice to say that @M. Deinum's diagnosis is correct.

In the above case, and to paraphrase Understanding AOP proxies, any place where SphIptvClient gets autowired will be given a reference to a proxy which Spring Retry will create when @EnableRetry is handled:

"The @EnableRetry annotation creates proxies for @Retryable beans" - Declarative Retry - Spring Retry

Once getSubscriberAccount has been invoked and execution has passed through the proxy and into the @Service instance of the object, no reference to the proxy is known. As a result sphRemoteCall is called as if there were no @Retryable at all.

You could work with the framework by shuffling code around in such a way as to allow getSubscriberAccount to call a proxy-ed sphRemoteCall, which requires a new interface and class implementation.

For example:

public interface SphWebService {
   Object sphRemoteCall(String uri, Object requestPayload, String soapAction);
}

@Component
public class SphWebServiceImpl implements SphWebService {
   @Retryable
   public Object sphRemoteCall(String uri, Object requestPayload, String soapAction) {
       log.debug("Calling the sph for uri:{} and soapAction:{}", uri, soapAction);
       return getWebServiceTemplate().marshalSendAndReceive(uri, requestPayload, new SoapActionCallback(soapAction));
   }
}

@Service
public class SphIptvClient extends WebServiceGatewaySupport {

   @Autowired
   SphWebService sphWebService;

   @Retryable(maxAttempts=3, backoff=@Backoff(delay=100))
   public GetSubscriberAccountResponse getSubscriberAccount(String loginTocken, String billingServId) {
       GetSubscriberAccountResponse response = (GetSubscriberAccountResponse) this.sphWebService.sphRemoteCall(sphIptvEndPoint, getSubAcc, "xxxxx");
       return response;
   }
}

@Configuration
@EnableRetry
public class SphClientConfig {
   // the @Bean method was unnecessary and may cause confusion. 
   // @Service was already instantiating SphIptvClient behind the scenes.
}