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spring-integration/spring-integration-reference/src/splitter.xml
Mark Fisher d9fe7cf3db INT-676
2009-07-04 02:49:43 +00:00

159 lines
7.2 KiB
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
"http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd">
<chapter id="splitter">
<title>Splitter</title>
<section id="splitter-annotation">
<title>Introduction</title>
<para>The Splitter is a component whose role is to partition a message in
several parts, and send the resulting messages to be processed
independently. Very often, they are upstream producers in a pipeline that
includes an Aggregator.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Programming model</title>
<para>The API for performing splitting consists from one base class,
AbstractMessageSplitter, which is a MessageHandler implementation,
encapsulating features which are common to splitters, such as filling in
the appropriate message headers CORRELATION_ID, SEQUENCE_SIZE, and
SEQUENCE_NUMBER on the messages that are produced. This allows to track
down the messages and the results of their processing (in a typical
scenario, these headers would be copied over to the messages that are
produced by the various transforming endpoints), and use them, for
example, in a Composed Message Processor scenario.</para>
<para>An excerpt from AbstractMessageSplitter can be seen below:</para>
<programlisting lang="java">public abstract class AbstractMessageSplitter
extends AbstractReplyProducingMessageConsumer {
...
protected abstract Object splitMessage(Message&lt;?&gt; message);
}</programlisting>
<para>For implementing a specific Splitter in an application, a developer
can extend AbstractMessageSplitter and implement the splitMessage method,
thus defining the actual logic for splitting the messages. The return
value can be one of the following:</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>a Collection (or subclass thereof) or an array of Message
objects - in this case the messages will be sent as such (after the
CORRELATION_ID, SEQUENCE_SIZE and SEQUENCE_NUMBER are populated).
Using this approach gives more control to the developer, for example
for populating custom message headers as part of the splitting
process.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>a Collection (or subclass thereof) or an array of non-Message
objects - works like the prior case, except that each collection
element will be used as a Message payload. Using this approach allows
developers to focus on the domain objects without having to consider
the Messaging system and produces code that is easier to test.</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>a Message or non-Message object (but not a Collection or an
Array) - it works like the previous cases, except that there is a
single message to be sent out.</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<para>In Spring Integration, any POJO can implement the splitting
algorithm, provided that it defines a method that accepts a single
argument and has a return value. In this case, the return value of the
method will be interpreted as described above. The input argument might
either be a Message or a simple POJO. In the latter case, the splitter
will receive the payload of the incoming message. Since this decouples
the code from the Spring Integration API and will typically be easier
to test, it is the recommended approach.</para>
</section>
<section>
<title>Configuring a Splitter using XML</title>
<para>A splitter can be configured through XML as follows:<programlisting>&lt;channel id="inputChannel"/&gt;
&lt;splitter id="splitter" <co id="split1" />
ref="splitterBean" <co id="split2" />
method="split" <co id="split3" />
input-channel="inputChannel" <co id="split4" />
output-channel="outputChannel" <co id="split5" />/&gt;
&lt;channel id="outputChannel"/&gt;
&lt;beans:bean id="splitterBean" class="sample.PojoSplitter"/&gt;</programlisting><calloutlist>
<callout arearefs="split1">
<para>The id of the splitter is
<emphasis>optional</emphasis>.</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs="split2">
<para>A reference to a bean defined in the application context. The
bean must implement the splitting logic as described in the section
above. <emphasis>Optional</emphasis>.
If reference to a bean is not provided, then it is assumed that the <emphasis>payload</emphasis> of the Message that arrived on the <code>input-channel</code> is
an implementation of <emphasis>java.util.Collection</emphasis> and the default splitting logic will be applied on such Collection,
incorporating each individual element into a Message and depositing it on the <code>output-channel</code>.
</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs="split3">
<para>The method (defined on the bean specified above) that
implements the splitting logic.
<emphasis>Optional</emphasis>.</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs="split4">
<para>The input channel of the splitter.
<emphasis>Required</emphasis>.</para>
</callout>
<callout arearefs="split5">
<para>The channel where the splitter will send the results of
splitting the incoming message. <emphasis>Optional (because incoming
messages can specify a reply channel themselves)</emphasis>.</para>
</callout>
</calloutlist></para>
<para>
Using a "ref" attribute is generally recommended if the custom splitter handler implementation can be reused in other
<code>&lt;splitter&gt;</code> definitions. However if the custom splitter handler implementation should be scoped to a
single definition of the <code>&lt;splitter&gt;</code>, you can configure an inner bean definition:
<programlisting language="xml"><![CDATA[<splitter id="testSplitter" input-channel="inChannel" method="split"
output-channel="outChannel">
<beans:bean class="org.foo.TestSplitter"/>
</spliter>]]></programlisting>
</para>
<note>
<para>
Using both a "ref" attribute and an inner handler definition in the same <code>&lt;splitter&gt;</code>
configuration is not allowed, as it creates an ambiguous condition and will result in an Exception being thrown.
</para>
</note>
</section>
<section>
<title>Configuring a Splitter with Annotations</title>
<para>The <interfacename>@Splitter</interfacename> annotation is
applicable to methods that expect either the
<interfacename>Message</interfacename> type or the message payload type,
and the return values of the method should be a collection of any type. If
the returned values are not actual <interfacename>Message</interfacename>
objects, then each of them will be sent as the payload of a message. Those
messages will be sent to the output channel as designated for the endpoint
on which the <interfacename>@Splitter</interfacename> is defined.
<programlisting language="java">@Splitter
List&lt;LineItem&gt; extractItems(Order order) {
return order.getItems()
}</programlisting></para>
</section>
</chapter>