Riposte Microservice Template - Java

This is an example template for quickly creating a new Java-based Riposte project. Riposte is a Netty-based microservice framework for rapid development of production-ready HTTP APIs. It includes robust features baked in like distributed tracing (provided by the Zipkin-compatible Wingtips), error handling and validation (pluggable implementation with the default provided by Backstopper), and circuit breaking (provided by Fastbreak).

IMPORTANT NOTE: Riposte requires a minimum of Java 8, and this template project is configured for Java 11. This project will not build or run unless you use a Java 11 or later JDK. Verify you're using a Java 11 or later JDK with a simple java -version. This project is also ready for Java 17 - if you want to use Java 17 see this section of the readme.

Want a Kotlin Version of this Microservice Template?

You're currently viewing the Java version of this Riposte microservice template. A Kotlin version exists - if you want to create a Kotlin-native Riposte project please see the Kotlin branch of this repository.

TL;DR - Getting Started

• Open a command line shell and cd into the location you want for your new Riposte project.
• Run the following bootstrapping curl command, replacing newprojectname with the new project name you want, and replacing myorgname with the name of your company/org (this is used for package names, i.e. com.myorgname):

curl -s 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nike-Inc/riposte-microservice-template/main/bootstrap_template.sh' \
| bash /dev/stdin newprojectname myorgname

• cd into the newprojectname folder.
• Build and run the new project: ./gradlew clean build run
  • See the running the server section for more run options, including starting up directly in your IDE.
• Hit an example endpoint, like http://localhost:8080/example.
  • See the examples section for info on all the example endpoints.
• To run the functional tests execute the following gradle command: ./gradlew functionalTest -DremoteTestEnv=[environment_id] where [environment_id] is one of the following: local, test, or prod.
  • See the remote tests submodule section for more detailed info on the functional tests.

Table of Contents

• TLDR; Getting Started
• Bootstrapping New Projects
  • Automated bootstrapping
  • Manual bootstrapping
  • Bootstrap command arguments
  • Setting environment-specific properties during bootstrapping
  • Example all-in-one curl command
• Running the server
• Example endpoints
  • Other things to try
• Template Application properties and dependency injection
  • Application properties (Typesafe Config)
    • What if I don't want to use Typesafe Config?
  • Dependency injection (Guice)
    • What if I don't want to use Guice?
• Building endpoints
  • How to build endpoints? Blocking or non-blocking?
  • More on building non-blocking endpoints
  • Project errors and error handling
  • Incoming request content automatic validation
  • Java Bean Validation (JSR 303) on arbitrary objects
• Metrics
• Remote tests submodule
• Component tests
• Removing the example code
• Using Java 17 with this project
• License

Bootstrapping New Projects

Bootstrapping new Riposte projects is straightforward - you can do it in an automated fashion with a one line command and you don't even need to checkout the template project repository. If that doesn't work in your environment you can do the manual method that has a few more steps but is also straightforward.

Automated bootstrapping

Just run the following curl command in a command line shell, replacing and/or removing the <newprojectname>, <myorgname>, </optional/target/dir>, and <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff> arguments as necessary (arguments and options explained below):

curl -s 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nike-Inc/riposte-microservice-template/main/bootstrap_template.sh' \
| bash /dev/stdin <newprojectname> <myorgname> </optional/target/dir> <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff>

After you execute the curl command your new project will be setup and ready to use.

Manual bootstrapping

If the curl command above doesn't work for you then you will need to perform a few more steps to setup your project:

• Download the following archive of this template project repository: https://github.com/Nike-Inc/riposte-microservice-template/archive/main.zip
• Unpack this zipped archive wherever you want your project to live.
• Open a command line shell and cd into the new project folder that was just unpacked.
• Execute the following gradle wrapper command, replacing and/or removing the <newprojectname>, <myorgname>, and <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff> arguments as necessary (arguments and options explained below):

./gradlew replaceTemplate -DnewProjectName="<newprojectname>" -DmyOrgName="<myorgname>" \
-DallowDashes=true <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff>

When the gradlew command finishes your new project will be setup and ready to use.

Bootstrap command arguments

• <newprojectname> - REQUIRED - The name of the new project.
• <myorgname> - REQUIRED - The company/organization name to use - this is used for package naming, e.g. com.myorgname.
• </optional/target/dir> - OPTIONAL - The path to the directory where the template project should be checked out and renamed. Defaults to <newprojectname> if not specified.
• <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff> - OPTIONAL - A series of -D Java System Property flags that will get passed to the setup.groovy script during the renaming process for renaming optional environment-specific properties. See the section on setting environment-specific properties during bootstrapping below for full details of what you can send and what each one does.

Setting environment-specific properties during bootstrapping

There are some project-specific config properties in this template project. You can set them up manually after bootstrapping (search for fixme_ in the project), or you can enrich the bootstrapping commands above with extra info (the <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff> properties described above) and have those properties set at bootstrapping time when the project is first created. This is great for repeatability and rapid iteration.

The following table describes the System Property values you can pass in with the automated or manual bootstrap command for the <-DoptionalSystemProps=stuff> argument(s) and what they do. For each prop_key defined below that you want to specify you would pass in -Dprop_key=value. See the Example all-in-one curl command after this table for a concrete example of these properties in action. All of these are optional - any you don't specify will just have the fixme_* value left in the configs, and since they just relate to Eureka and remote testing in test and prod environments it won't affect your ability to explore, build, or run your project locally.

System Property Key	Explanation
fixme_project_remotetest_url_test	The URL to your server(s) deployed in the test environment, e.g. https://myproject.test.myorg.com. Used for executing the remote functional tests against the test environment.
fixme_project_remotetest_url_prod	Same as above, but for prod environment.
fixme_eureka_domain_test	The domain name of the Eureka server in your test environment, e.g. eureka.test.myorg.com. You can safely ignore this if you don't use Eureka.
fixme_eureka_domain_prod	Same as above, but for prod environment.

Example all-in-one curl command

The following curl command is an example for a project named example-riposte-project:

curl -s 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Nike-Inc/riposte-microservice-template/main/bootstrap_template.sh' \
| bash /dev/stdin example-riposte-project someorg \
-Dfixme_project_remotetest_url_test=https://exampleriposteproject.test.someorg.com \
-Dfixme_project_remotetest_url_prod=https://exampleriposteproject.someorg.com \
-Dfixme_eureka_domain_test=eureka.test.someorg.com \
-Dfixme_eureka_domain_prod=eureka.someorg.com

back to top

Running the server

A Riposte application is ultimately just a simple standard public static void main style java app. No container to deal with, no funky setup requirements. The main class is com.myorg.Main. The only thing you have to do when launching the app is to set the following System properties: @appId and @environment. By default this app uses Archaius-style conventions for property/environment management, and it needs those two System properties to know which src/main/resources/*.properties and/or src/main/resources/*.conf files to load (this template actually uses Typesafe Config under the hood by default, not Archaius, but the Archaius naming conventions are useful and allow you to trivially switch to Archaius if you want). @appId is the name of your project (i.e. the rootProject.name you set in settings.gradle), and @environment is the environment you're running in (i.e. local, test, or prod).

For example if your project is named foo and you're running on your local box then you'd set -D@appId=foo -D@environment=local for your System properties when starting the server (see the properties section for more information on how the Archaius-style conventions work).

There are three out-of-the-box ways to launch the app:

1. A simple method for launching the app during development is directly in your IDE. Depending on your development style this may be the most efficient launch method for rapid iteration. For example in IntelliJ you can just right click on the com.myorg.Main class and select either Run 'Main.main()' or Debug 'Main.main()' from the right-click-menu. Selecting the debug option will let you hit breakpoints immediately without launching a remote debug session.

   NOTE: The first time it runs using this launch option it will fail, complaining about the @appId and @environment System properties. You will need to edit the configuration for this launch option to include the -D@appId=foo -D@environment=local System properties. But you only need to do this once - any later launches will remember these settings.

2. The gradle build file is setup with the application plugin, so if you want to launch from the command line you can perform the following command: ./gradlew run. It is already configured with the proper @appId and @environment System properties for local development so it should just work.

   NOTE: If you want to do remote debugging you'll need to launch it with the --debug-jvm flag, e.g.: ./gradlew run --debug-jvm. This will cause the server to pause on startup until you connect a remote debug session on port 5005.

3. When the gradle build runs, it creates a "shadow jar" (a.k.a. "fat jar") at [projectroot]/build/libs/[appId]-[version].jar. This shadow jar is a single executable jar file that contains the entire application, including third party libraries. The only classpath it needs is itself, so to launch the application using this shadow jar you would do something like the following:

   java -jar -D@appId=foo -D@environment=local build/libs/*.jar

   This is usually how you would want to launch a Riposte app on a production server. Note that you can add standard JVM args to this command to support remote debugging, change memory or garbage collection options, etc. There is a debugShadowJar.sh script at the root of the project that already contains this command and configures remote debugging on port 5005.

back to top

Example endpoints

The following example endpoints are available in this template project. By default they are available at http://localhost:8080/[path]. It's recommended that you use a REST client like Postman for making the requests so you can easily specify HTTP method, payloads, headers, etc, and fully inspect the response:

• GET|POST /example - Basic GET/POST behavior with validation. The GET call just returns an example payload. You can copy/paste this payload and POST it back to explore the validation and exception behavior. The input_val_1 and input_val_2 fields are required and have length limitations, and validation is controlled by JSR 303 annotations - remove these fields or make them blank or really long (> 60 chars) for your POST call to see the validation in action. Set the throwManualError field to true to see the result of a thrown exception from inside an endpoint. Implemented by the ExampleEndpoint.Get and ExampleEndpoint.Post classes.
• ANY-METHOD /exampleDownstreamHttpAsync - An example of performing a downstream HTTP network call using an async/nonblocking NIO client to avoid using any threads for the entirety of the endpoint. Since we want the example endpoints to be fully self-contained we simply make a downstream call to our own /example endpoint described above. To show how you can do additional work on the response from the downstream call we insert a "viaAsyncHttpClient": "true" JSON field into the downstream response before returning. You can inspect the logs to see two requests to the server for each single request from an outside caller. Implemented by the ExampleDownstreamHttpAsyncEndpoint class.
• ANY-METHOD /exampleProxy - An example of using Riposte's proxy/router endpoint feature. These endpoints allow you to match an incoming request and define where the downstream call goes, optionally adjusting query params, headers, etc before sending to the downstream target. The response from the downstream system will be automatically piped back to the caller. This all happens in the background with the HTTP request/response chunks being streamed, keeping memory usage level and lag time minimal even while streaming gigabyte payloads, and the async/nonblocking NIO keeps thread usage static as well. In this case this proxy endpoint works similarly to /exampleDownstreamHttpAsync in that the downstream system is our own /example endpoint in order to keep the example project fully self-contained. You can inspect the logs to see two requests to the server for each single request from an outside caller. Implemented by the ExampleProxyRouterEndpoint class.
• GET|POST /exampleBasicAuth - A set of example endpoints that show Riposte's security validation system in action. The POST endpoint is protected by basic auth, so if you call it without the proper auth header you will get a 401 error. The GET endpoint is not protected and you can call it without any auth header. The response you get will be a JSON object with a description of the auth header you can add in order to successfully to call the protected POST /exampleBasicAuth endpoint. Implemented by the ExampleBasicAuthProtectedEndpoint.Get and ExampleBasicAuthProtectedEndpoint.Post classes.

Note that in a real production application you might want to protect all endpoints except /healthcheck. For the examples above only POST /exampleBasicAuth is protected. See the comments and implementation of AppSecurityGuiceModule.authProtectedEndpoints(Set) to see how to switch to protect all endpoints except /healthcheck.

Other things to try

In addition to the example endpoints there is some core Riposte functionality to investigate:

• Trigger a 404 by making a request to a path that does not exist like /foobar.
• Trigger a 405 by making a request to a path that exists but using a HTTP method that is not allowed for that path, like DELETE /example.
• When triggering errors (including validation or intentional errors from the example endpoints) make sure you copy the error_id from the response and search for it in the app logs to see how easy it is to correlate individual errors with the single log message that contains all the debugging info about the request and error. Different error types may contain different information relevant to that particular error.
• Every request, whether it is an error or not, will include a X-B3-TraceId response header. You can copy this and search for it in your app logs. Every log message that was output for that request will be tagged with that trace ID, making it trivial to find all the logs associated with a given request.

back to top

Template Application properties and dependency injection

Application properties (Typesafe Config using Archaius conventions)

By default the template application is setup to use Typesafe Config with Archaius-style conventions for property file/environment management. If you look in [projectroot]/[appId]-core-code/src/main/resources you'll see several *.conf files. When the app server is launched it requires two System properties to be set: @appId and @environment. These System properties are used by Typesafe Config to determine which properties files to load. [appId].conf is always loaded - it acts as the default set of properties. The other properties files are named in the format [appId]-[environment].conf, so after loading the default properties file Typesafe Config will use the @environment System property to construct the correct properties filename for the environment you're currently in and load that file as an addition and override of the default properties file.

Whenever there are property name collisions with the default and environment-specific properties files, the environment-specific ones will win since they are loaded after the default properties file. You can also add new properties in the environment file that don't exist in the default file and they will be loaded into Typesafe Config as well when that environment is specified. NOTE: You can pass in System properties to the application and they will be available for use in Typesafe Config, and System properties will override file-based properties if they have the same name.

You may notice there is one properties file that doesn't follow this [appId]-[environment].conf convention: [appId]-local-overrides.conf. If you look in [appId]-local.conf you'll see the last line says: include "[appId]-local-overrides.conf". This tells Typesafe Config to load the local-overrides properties file after it loads the local properties file. Since the local-overrides properties file is in .gitignore it is ignored by git which allows you to setup any temporary custom configuration for your local box without worrying about modifying anything that is checked into git.

What if I don't want to use Typesafe Config?

The way Typesafe Config is used provides an easy and convenient way to have environment-specific properties, and we have a helper Guice module that knows how to extract the Typesafe Config properties and register them with Guice so you can inject property values into your code trivially without any setup (see the Guice section below). That said, you are not required to use Typesafe Config in your project. To replace it with something else you would need to do the following:

1. If you want to use Archaius instead, change your Main class from extending TypesafeConfigServer to ArchaiusServer (found in the com.nike.riposte:riposte-archaius dependency). If you don't want Typesafe Config or Archaius you can write your own class that mimics what TypesafeConfigServer and ArchaiusServer do but have your own property loading strategy.

2. By default Guice expects to find certain properties from your properties files registered with it so that they can be injected into GuiceProvidedServerConfigValues (which is used by the template application's AppServerConfig class). This is done by passing a PropertiesRegistrationGuiceModule to AppServerConfig, and by default a module that extracts the properties from Typesafe Config is used. So if you remove Typesafe Config you'll need to either:

   a. Create AppServerConfig with a different PropertiesRegistrationGuiceModule that knows about your application's properties, and make sure those properties include all the config bits expected by GuiceProvidedServerConfigValues (see [appId].conf for the recommended default values).

   b. --OR-- Modify your AppGuiceModule to expose all the necessary config bits manually as @Named injectable beans. To create this manually in one of your Guice modules you'd do something like:

    	@Provides
    	@Singleton
    	@Named("endpoints.port")
    	public int endpointsPort() { return 4242; }
   

   c. --OR-- A combination of the above. Again, Guice just needs to be able to inject everything marked @Inject in GuiceProvidedServerConfigValues. How you set it up is up to you, so you could have some of them provided via PropertiesRegistrationGuiceModule and others via manual bean definition.

Of course, if you also rip out Guice (see below) and start the app using your own custom implementation of ServerConfig then some of the above won't be necessary, but you're on your own at that point. Ultimately all you have to do is figure out how to pass a valid instance of ServerConfig to the Riposte server when it is created in com.myorg.Main.

Dependency injection (Guice)

By default this template application uses Guice for dependency injection. The guts of Riposte do not use dependency injection and get all the configuration and objects needed to run the server infrastructure through the ServerConfig that is passed into the server when it is created. But since the ServerConfig.appEndpoints() method provides the endpoint objects that will be registered with the server, and those endpoints are where the vast bulk of your application will reside, all you have to do is make sure your endpoints are Guice enabled and your app will effectively be fully dependency-injection-capable.

AppGuiceModule is the main Guice module for the application. It exposes the @Named("appEndpoints") bean that returns the list of endpoints for your app to use, so whenever you create a new endpoint just make sure you add it to the argument list for this method and return it in the return list for the method, and your endpoint will have full dependency injection support (by adding it to the argument list for the method Guice will auto-create an instance for you and perform all the requested injection in that class).

Other potentially interesting info regarding how this application's Guice setup is done:

• By default AppServerConfig uses a TypesafeConfigPropertiesRegistrationGuiceModule. This module is auto-added to the Guice modules used by the app when it starts up, and causes all the Typesafe Config properties to be registered with Guice so that they can be injected by simply adding @Inject @Named("my.prop.key") annotations to the field/argument you want the property value injected into.
• AppServerConfig.getAppGuiceModules(Config) specifies all the other modules that should be available to Guice. This includes the main AppGuiceModule, but it also includes BackstopperRiposteConfigGuiceModule, which is responsible for wiring up the default error handling and validation implementations into the application. If you want other custom modules to be available to your app you can add them to the list returned by AppServerConfig.getAppGuiceModules(Config).

What if I don't want to use Guice?

You're not required to use Guice in your application. The only strict requirement is that your application passes a valid ServerConfig into the Riposte server when it is created in com.myorg.Main. ServerConfig is just an interface, so you're free to use other dependency injection implementations if you want to wire up your endpoints, and as long as your ServerConfig returns the wired-up objects you're good to go.

And if you don't like dependency injection at all just rip it out. Again, as long as you provide a valid ServerConfig implementation to the Riposte server when it is created in com.myorg.Main it doesn't matter what technologies you do or don't use under the hood.

back to top

Building endpoints

Building endpoints is fairly straightforward. Just add classes that extend StandardEndpoint or ProxyRouterEndpoint and make sure they are returned via the AppGuiceModule.appEndpoints(...) method. The StandardEndpoint and ProxyRouterEndpoint base classes define abstract methods that you have to override, and the Riposte server uses those methods to route requests to the correct endpoints and execute the endpoint on the incoming request when appropriate.

See the Example*Endpoint classes for examples of both the standard non-blocking and proxy-style endpoints, and examples of using the error handling and validation system.

Don't forget to add new endpoint classes to AppGuiceModule.appEndpoints(...) or they will not be registered with the server and you'll get 404 errors when trying to hit them!

How to build endpoints? Blocking or non-blocking?

Even though the StandardEndpoint endpoints are inherently geared toward being used in a non-blocking style, it is possible to build endpoints in a blocking way by setting up the returned CompletableFuture to use the longRunningTaskExecutor to spin up a thread and do blocking stuff in that thread (e.g. calling a database or downstream system and waiting in the thread for the response). This is fine for a quick proof of concept app or if there's simply no other way to do it, but if at all possible you'll want to do things in a non-blocking style by using async non-blocking drivers for database calls, downstream HTTP calls, etc, that return a future.

Why? Blocking-style endpoints have the performance characteristics of traditional thread-per-request synchronous Servlet-based applications. This means every concurrent request requires a new thread that sits around until the blocking work is done, and when you have too many threads going at once you'll take a noticeable performance hit due to context switching. The longRunningTaskExecutor is (by default) set up to be an unlimited thread pool where new threads are spun up as necessary and reclaimed after 60 seconds of being idle, so at least you wouldn't need to manually fiddle with thread pool sizes, but at the same time under load it would have the general performance characteristics of a blocking Servlet-based app where the app may fall over long before CPU, memory, and other resources have been used up on the machine. By building things in non-blocking style using proper async non-blocking drivers (e.g. for database and downstream HTTP calls) so that thread counts do not increase as more concurrent requests enter the system, you'll find that the app is able to fully utilize the CPU/memory/network/etc resources of the machine before performance drops.

Of course sometimes extra threads are non-negotiable. For example if you have to do complex calculations that take a long time, those calculations have to be executed somewhere, and in these cases you will need to use the longRunningTaskExecutor to spin up threads to do the work (or use your own custom thread pool). But for anything that interfaces with another application on the machine (e.g. database calls on the local box) or another system entirely (e.g. downstream HTTP calls to another server) there is often a non-blocking driver that doesn't require extra threads.

TLDR: Waiting for downstream systems to do work? Use an async nonblocking driver to prevent extra threads. Doing serious crunching in the app server itself? You'll need to spin up an extra thread (use the longRunningTaskExecutor). See below for more info on how to identify the best way to build a given endpoint.

More on building non-blocking endpoints

The StandardEndpoint endpoints are implementation-agnostic. Their execute method returns a CompletableFuture, which just means the endpoint is saying "I'll finish what I'm doing at some point in the future and will be ready to give you the response to send to the client at that time". And since it's a CompletableFuture, Riposte simply registers a listener on that future so it gets automatically notified when the job is done and will send the response at that point. CompletableFutures are composable so you can parallelize your work.

IMPORTANT NOTE: It's up to the CompletableFuture to handle threading issues. This means you can get yourself in trouble if you're not careful. Carefully read the javadoc on the NonblockingEndpoint.execute(RequestInfo, Executor, ChannelHandlerContext) method to familiarize yourself with some of the pitfalls and best practices, but in general the rules are:

• If the work you need to do is trivial and likely measured in nanoseconds or microseconds (seriously, even milliseconds might be too long for high traffic servers), go ahead and use the synchronous methods to create and compose your CompletableFuture or allow it to use the default Executor for the async methods (which uses the default JVM fork-join pool under the hood and only has a handful of threads, so again be careful with this and make sure the work is truly trivial). You can even do the work in the execute method itself and use CompletableFuture.completedFuture() to create an already-finished CompletableFuture to pass back.
• Otherwise you need to run your task in such a way that it won't suffer from or cause bottlenecks. You have several options, and each one is useful in different situations - there is no one-size-fits-all solution if you want maximum performance!
  1. If the task you need to do has an async non-blocking solution that doesn't eat up a bunch of threads when a lot of concurrent requests are happening, then use that.
     • For example Cassandra has an async driver that can handle Cassandra requests concurrently with only a few threads, so if you're doing Cassandra stuff use that.
     • Similarly if you're making downstream HTTP calls you can leverage Netty to do it in an efficient async nonblocking way without spawning a new thread to make the call (see ExampleDownstreamHttpAsyncEndpoint for an example of this).
  2. If there's no way to do the task in a low-thread-count-for-many-requests async nonblocking way then you'll need to use a separate thread for the task. The StandardEndpoint.execute() method is passed an Executor intended to be used as the "kitchen sink" for this purpose. By default this Executor is unbounded and will create threads as necessary. Those threads will be reused if idle, and any thread idle for more than 60 seconds is reclaimed. To use this Executor just remember that you need to use the CompletableFuture.*async() method signatures that allow you to pass the Executor you want used as the last argument in the method call. If you use the versions of the CompletableFuture.*async() methods that don't take an Executor then it will use the default JVM fork-join pool, which is usually not what you want unless the task is measured in a few milliseconds.
  3. If you don't want to use the default Executor passed into the non-blocking execute method then you are free to use your own custom Executor to fully control the threading behavior. Just make sure you understand what you're doing and why - it's easy to hamstring yourself by accident.

As you are composing your CompletableFutures you may find yourself stuck with similar future-type objects that aren't directly compatible. For example Google Guava's ListenableFuture. It's a very similar object, but you can't return it directly from a StandardEndpoint.execute() method call. In these cases you can transform these other structures into a CompletableFuture using a simple library. In the Guava ListenableFuture example you just need to pull in the net.javacrumbs.future-converter:future-converter-java8-guava dependency and call the FutureConverter.toCompletableFuture(ListenableFuture) method. Similar libraries are available from the same developer for converting RxJava's Observable and for converting Spring's ListenableFuture. See the developer's page for details.

Project errors and error handling

Error handling and validation is the same no matter which endpoint type you use. For errors, the template app is wired up with Backstopper via the BackstopperRiposteConfigGuiceModule Guice module registration (see AppServerConfig). It is designed to guarantee that any error will be shown to the user in the same error contract, with all errors matching up with one of the enum values in SampleCoreApiError or your application's ProjectApiError. If the error handler doesn't recognize the exception it will generate a generic 500 error for the user (mapped from SampleCoreApiError.GENERIC_SERVICE_ERROR if you want to see the code and message sent to the user). If it does recognize the exception it will intelligently convert it to one or more of the SampleCoreApiError or ProjectApiError enum values, which are in turn converted into the error contract for the user.

The main way to manually throw an error in the application so that it will be handled the way you want is to throw a com.nike.backstopper.exception.ApiException. There's a builder for this exception that lets you specify the ApiError instances you want returned to the user (ApiError is the interface that SampleCoreApiError and ProjectApiError implement), and you can also include the exception message you want, any Throwable that caused the error, and a list of extra key/value pairs that you want to be logged along with the error when it is handled. It is also possible to add some extra dynamic metadata to the error contract shown to the user by wrapping one or more of the ApiError instances with new ApiErrorWithMetadata(originalApiError, metadataMap).

The error handling system is also linked with the validation system to make translating from validation errors to the proper user-facing response as easy and invisible to the developer as possible. See the next two sections on validation for details.

NOTE: When an error is handled it is logged with as much information about the request as possible. It is also logged with a UUID that is returned to the user in both the response body and response headers, so if a customer gives you an error ID you can easily look up that particular error instance in your logs to get all the details of the request that triggered the error and what went wrong.

Incoming request content automatic validation

Your endpoints can have automatic validation done on the incoming request body before the endpoint's execute method is ever called. In order for this validation to be done the following three things must happen:

1. Your ServerConfig.requestContentValidationService() must return a non-null instance that performs the validation. By default the app wires this up to Backstopper's JSR 303 validation system for seamless translation of validation errors to user-facing errors using SampleCoreApiError and ProjectApiError enum values as the go-between mapping. But if you want to use a different validation system you can - just have ServerConfig.requestContentValidationService() return your own custom validation service.
2. Your endpoint must return a non-null TypeReference from its requestContentType() method. This causes Riposte to deserialize the raw incoming request body bytes to whatever object type you specify, which is in turn passed into the validation service. NOTE: This should be handled for you automatically by subclasses of StandardEndpoint<I, O> as long as you specify the <I> generics argument when defining your subclass. Under normal circumstances you do not need to override requestContentType().
3. Your endpoint's isValidateRequestContent(RequestInfo) method must return true to tell Riposte that you want validation performed on the request body content for that endpoint. This method defaults to true so you shouldn't need to do anything with this method unless you want to turn validation off for that endpoint or if you only want to do validation sometimes depending on the RequestInfo passed in.

Since all the above steps are either one-time-setup or part of standard endpoint creation you shouldn't need to do anything under normal circumstances and you simply need to annotate your model objects with JSR 303 Bean Validation annotations, but knowing how it all fits together can be helpful if something isn't working as expected.

See the ExampleEndpoint.Post endpoint class for a concrete example showing how all this works together. To see it in action start your server and send a POST to http://localhost:8080/example with the request body:

	{
	  "input_val_1": 1,
	  "input_val_2": "whee",
	  "throwManualError": false
	}

It should respond with a 201 and echo your request body back to you. To see the validation work, send this instead (note the missing "input_val_*" fields):

	{
	  "throwManualError": false
	}

You'll get back a 400 with two errors, one for each JSR 303 violation. Take a look at ExampleEndpoint.ErrorHandlingEndpointArgs and notice how each JSR 303 annotation's message is a string representing one of the ProjectApiError's enum values. This is how the error handling system knows how to map a validation violation to a proper user-facing error response.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Since the JSR 303 annotation's message field must be a string, and those strings must map to a SampleCoreApiError or ProjectApiError enum, there is the potential for typos, copy/paste errors, or other problems that prevent the JSR 303 annotation's message from lining up properly. The VerifyJsr303ContractTest class is a unit test already set up in the template application designed to prevent these errors. It trolls through your application classes looking for JSR 303 annotations and makes sure that each one's message can be successfully mapped to a SampleCoreApiError or ProjectApiError. Do not disable or delete this unit test!

Java Bean Validation (JSR 303) on arbitrary objects

You are not limited to the automatic request content validation for using the JSR 303 validation services. If you want to run the same JSR 303 validation on arbitrary objects at arbitrary times, and have any violations automatically kicked to the error handling system and handled the same way, you can do so. Simply @Inject a ClientDataValidationService or a FailFastServersideValidationService into your code and call one of the validate* methods.

ClientDataValidationService is intended for validating user-supplied data in a way that will map to a HTTP status 4xx error with details given to the user on what went wrong. This is what the automatic incoming request body validation uses.

FailFastServersideValidationService is intended for validating serverside data in a way that will map to a HTTP status 5xx error with a generic message for the user, but logged in the system with the details of the specific JSR 303 violations that occurred. You would use this (for example) to make sure you're sending downstream services valid objects and receiving valid objects back. Under normal circumstances no violations would occur, but if they do then we don't leak details about our server internals to the user while still logging all the relevant information so the developers can investigate and fix the bugs.

back to top

Metrics

Codahale Metrics are supported out of the box, and several useful Riposte server metrics are gathered including detailed throughput and latency info about each endpoint (either per-endpoint, or grouped by HTTP method, or grouped by HTTP response code), and several other metrics. You can also enable JVM metrics by setting the metrics.reportJvmMetrics property to true in your properties files or passing it in as a System Property on app launch.

There are several reporting options you can choose from to retrieve the metrics, each enabled or disabled with a property from your application properties files:

• JMX Reporting - The metrics are reported via JMX by default. If you want to turn this off you can set metrics.jmx.reporting.enabled to false, however under most circumstances you can leave it on. You can use standard JMX tools like JConsole to retrieve or view the metrics.
• SLF4J Reporting - You can spit out the raw Codahale Metrics data to your SLF4J log file periodically by setting metrics.slf4j.reporting.enabled to true. This is spammy so it's turned off by default.
• Graphite Reporting - Graphite reporting is also possible. Make sure the metrics.graphite.url and metrics.graphite.port properties are set correctly and set the metrics.graphite.reporting.enabled property to true and the metrics will be reported to Graphite. This is disabled by default as not everyone uses Graphite.
• SignalFx Reporting - There is Riposte support for SignalFx if you use that. It's not shown in this template project, but if you'd like to use it then you'll need to do the following:
  • Pull in the "com.nike.riposte:riposte-metrics-codahale-signalfx:$riposteVersion" dependency.
  • Create and expose a singleton SignalFxReporterFactory configured the way you want it. Inject it into AppGuiceModule.metricsReporters() and include it in the returned List<ReporterFactory>.
  • Inject that same SignalFxReporterFactory into AppGuiceModule.metricsListener() and configure the returned CodahaleMetricsListener like so:

return CodahaleMetricsListener
    .newBuilder(metricsCollector)
    .withEndpointMetricsHandler(
        new SignalFxEndpointMetricsHandler(signalFxReporterFactory, 
                                           metricsCollector.getMetricRegistry())
    )
    .withServerStatsMetricNamingStrategy(
        CodahaleMetricsListener.MetricNamingStrategy.defaultNoPrefixImpl()
    )
    .withServerConfigMetricNamingStrategy(
        CodahaleMetricsListener.MetricNamingStrategy.defaultNoPrefixImpl()
    )
    .withRequestAndResponseSizeHistogramSupplier(
        () -> new Histogram(new SlidingTimeWindowReservoir(signalFxReporterFactory.getInterval(), 
                                                           signalFxReporterFactory.getTimeUnit()))
    )
    .build();

These options are not mutually exclusive. You can have multiple metrics reporters enabled at the same time, and you can add your own custom reporters - just follow the pattern in AppGuiceModule.metricsReporters(...).

Riposte contains a convenience object for tracking and reporting on custom metrics in addition to the automatically-handled server metrics. Inject CodahaleMetricsCollector into your code and use getMetricRegistry() to retrieve the Codahale MetricRegistry and register any metrics you want. CodahaleMetricsCollector also contains convenience helper methods for timers, meters, and counters - simply pass lambdas to the timed(...), metered(...), or counted(...) methods to have those lambdas measured.

back to top

Remote tests submodule

The remote-tests submodule is intended for functional tests, performance tests, and other remote tests where you're making HTTP calls against a fully independent outside environment application stack. These types of tests don't make sense to run at compiletime and are intended to run against a specified environment so they are segregated from the main application's tests found in the core-code submodule. As an example, the remote-tests submodule comes with a functional test for verifying that basic auth is working correctly (BasicAuthVerificationFunctionalTest). You execute the functional tests with the following gradle command: ./gradlew functionalTest -DremoteTestEnv=[environment]

The value of the -DremoteTestEnv=[environment] System property can be local, test, or prod, and is used to determine which of the *-functionaltest-[environment].conf properties files to load when running the tests. Running against your local environment should work properly as long as the application is running locally. To run against a deployed test or prod environment you'll need to fix the host property in the *-functionaltest-test.conf and *-functionaltest-prod.conf files for your deployed project.

back to top

Component tests

Since Riposte servers start up quickly (usually less than 1 second) and don't require a container to run, they can be launched during unit tests in order to test your application from a black-box perspective. They can be thought of as integration or end-to-end tests, but they run at compile time along with the rest of your unit tests so you know immediately when something breaks rather than waiting until you've deployed your application into a test environment and run functional tests against it. See VerifyExampleEndpointComponentTest and VerifyBasicAuthIsConfiguredCorrectlyComponentTest for examples. This is a powerful technique that can give you high confidence that major refactors did not break your application's API contracts (or functionality in general).

back to top

Removing the example code

Once you're satisfied that you understand how to build endpoints and use the error handling & validation system you're free to delete the example stuff from the template project. Simply search for TODO: EXAMPLE CLEANUP in the project and follow the instructions in each comment to remove the example stuff from that area. The main important pieces are:

• Delete the Example*Endpoint classes.
• Remove references to the example endpoint classes in AppGuiceModule.
• Remove the example error enum values from ProjectApiError.

There are a few other things you might want to clean up depending on your needs - again just do a search for TODO: EXAMPLE CLEANUP in the project.

back to top

Using Java 17 with this project

This project is Java 17 ready. Simply find the two references to JavaVersion.VERSION_11 in build.gradle and replace them with JavaVersion.VERSION_17. Then build and run with a Java 17 JDK. No other changes are needed.

License

This Riposte microservice template is released under the Apache License, Version 2.0