This project provides Consul integrations for Spring Boot apps through autoconfiguration and binding to the Spring Environment and other Spring programming model idioms. With a few simple annotations you can quickly enable and configure the common patterns inside your application and build large distributed systems with Consul based components. The patterns provided include Service Discovery, Control Bus and Configuration. Intelligent Routing and Client Side Load Balancing, Circuit Breaker are provided by integration with other Spring Cloud projects.

Quick Start

This quick start walks through using Spring Cloud Consul for Service Discovery and Distributed Configuration.

First, run Consul Agent on your machine. Then you can access it and use it as a Service Registry and Configuration source with Spring Cloud Consul.

Discovery Client Usage

To use these features in an application, you can build it as a Spring Boot application that depends on spring-cloud-consul-core. The most convenient way to add the dependency is with a Spring Boot starter: org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-discovery. We recommend using dependency management and spring-boot-starter-parent. The following example shows a typical Maven configuration:

pom.xml

<project>
<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>{spring-boot-version}</version>
    <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
  </parent>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-consul-discovery</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-cloud.version}</version>
        <type>pom</type>
        <scope>import</scope>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </dependencyManagement>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

The following example shows a typical Gradle setup:

build.gradle

plugins {
  id 'org.springframework.boot' version ${spring-boot-version}
  id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version ${spring-dependency-management-version}
  id 'java'
}

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
  implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-discovery'
  testImplementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test'
}
dependencyManagement {
  imports {
    mavenBom "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies:${springCloudVersion}"
  }
}

Now you can create a standard Spring Boot application, such as the following HTTP server:

@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class Application {

    @GetMapping("/")
    public String home() {
        return "Hello World!";
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }

}

When this HTTP server runs, it connects to Consul Agent running at the default local 8500 port. To modify the startup behavior, you can change the location of Consul Agent by using application.properties, as shown in the following example:

spring:
  cloud:
    consul:
      host: localhost
      port: 8500

You can now use DiscoveryClient, @LoadBalanced RestTemplate, or @LoadBalanced WebClient.Builder to retrieve services and instances data from Consul, as shown in the following example:

@Autowired
private DiscoveryClient discoveryClient;

public String serviceUrl() {
    List<ServiceInstance> list = discoveryClient.getInstances("STORES");
    if (list != null && list.size() > 0 ) {
        return list.get(0).getUri().toString();
    }
    return null;
}

Distributed Configuration Usage

To use these features in an application, you can build it as a Spring Boot application that depends on spring-cloud-consul-core and spring-cloud-consul-config. The most convenient way to add the dependency is with a Spring Boot starter: org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-config. We recommend using dependency management and spring-boot-starter-parent. The following example shows a typical Maven configuration:

pom.xml

<project>
<parent>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-parent</artifactId>
    <version>{spring-boot-version}</version>
    <relativePath/> <!-- lookup parent from repository -->
  </parent>

  <dependencies>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-consul-config</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
      <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-test</artifactId>
      <scope>test</scope>
    </dependency>
  </dependencies>
  <dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
      <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
        <version>${spring-cloud.version}</version>
        <type>pom</type>
        <scope>import</scope>
      </dependency>
    </dependencies>
  </dependencyManagement>
  <build>
    <plugins>
      <plugin>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-maven-plugin</artifactId>
      </plugin>
    </plugins>
  </build>
</project>

The following example shows a typical Gradle setup:

build.gradle

plugins {
  id 'org.springframework.boot' version ${spring-boot-version}
  id 'io.spring.dependency-management' version ${spring-dependency-management-version}
  id 'java'
}

repositories {
  mavenCentral()
}

dependencies {
  implementation 'org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-starter-consul-config'
  testImplementation 'org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-starter-test'
}
dependencyManagement {
  imports {
    mavenBom "org.springframework.cloud:spring-cloud-dependencies:${springCloudVersion}"
  }
}

Now you can create a standard Spring Boot application, such as the following HTTP server:

@SpringBootApplication
@RestController
public class Application {

    @GetMapping("/")
    public String home() {
        return "Hello World!";
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }

}

The application retrieves configuration data from Consul.

Warning

If you use Spring Cloud Consul Config, you need to set the spring.config.import property in order to bind to Consul. You can read more about it in the Spring Boot Config Data Import section.

Consul overview

Features of Consul

• Distributed configuration

• Service registration and discovery

• Distributed events

• Distributed locking and sessions

• Supports multiple data centers

• Built in, user-friendly user interface

See the intro for more information.

Spring Cloud Consul Features

• Spring Cloud DiscoveryClient implementation

  • supports Spring Cloud Gateway

  • supports Spring Cloud LoadBalancer

• Consul based PropertySource loaded during the 'bootstrap' phase.

• Spring Cloud Bus implementation based on Consul events

Running the sample

1. Run docker-compose up

2. Verify consul is running by visiting http://localhost:8500

3. Run mvn package this will bring in the required spring cloud maven repositories and build

4. Run java -jar spring-cloud-consul-sample/target/spring-cloud-consul-sample-${VERSION}.jar

5. visit http://localhost:8080, verify that {"serviceId":"<yourhost>:8080","host":"<yourhost>","port":8080} results

6. run java -jar spring-cloud-consul-sample/target/spring-cloud-consul-sample-${VERSION}.jar --server.port=8081

7. visit http://localhost:8080 again, verify that {"serviceId":"<yourhost>:8081","host":"<yourhost>","port":8081} eventually shows up in the results in a round robbin fashion (may take a minute or so).

Building

Basic Compile and Test

To build the source you will need to install JDK 17.

Spring Cloud uses Maven for most build-related activities, and you should be able to get off the ground quite quickly by cloning the project you are interested in and typing

$ ./mvnw install

Note	You can also install Maven (>=3.3.3) yourself and run the mvn command in place of ./mvnw in the examples below. If you do that you also might need to add -P spring if your local Maven settings do not contain repository declarations for spring pre-release artifacts.

Note

Be aware that you might need to increase the amount of memory available to Maven by setting a MAVEN_OPTS environment variable with a value like -Xmx512m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m. We try to cover this in the .mvn configuration, so if you find you have to do it to make a build succeed, please raise a ticket to get the settings added to source control.

The projects that require middleware (i.e. Redis) for testing generally require that a local instance of [Docker](https://www.docker.com/get-started) is installed and running.

Documentation

The spring-cloud-build module has a "docs" profile, and if you switch that on it will try to build asciidoc sources from src/main/asciidoc. As part of that process it will look for a README.adoc and process it by loading all the includes, but not parsing or rendering it, just copying it to ${main.basedir} (defaults to ${basedir}, i.e. the root of the project). If there are any changes in the README it will then show up after a Maven build as a modified file in the correct place. Just commit it and push the change.

Working with the code

If you don’t have an IDE preference we would recommend that you use Spring Tools Suite or Eclipse when working with the code. We use the m2eclipse eclipse plugin for maven support. Other IDEs and tools should also work without issue as long as they use Maven 3.3.3 or better.

Activate the Spring Maven profile

Spring Cloud projects require the 'spring' Maven profile to be activated to resolve the spring milestone and snapshot repositories. Use your preferred IDE to set this profile to be active, or you may experience build errors.

Importing into eclipse with m2eclipse

We recommend the m2eclipse eclipse plugin when working with eclipse. If you don’t already have m2eclipse installed it is available from the "eclipse marketplace".

Note

Older versions of m2e do not support Maven 3.3, so once the projects are imported into Eclipse you will also need to tell m2eclipse to use the right profile for the projects. If you see many different errors related to the POMs in the projects, check that you have an up to date installation. If you can’t upgrade m2e, add the "spring" profile to your settings.xml. Alternatively you can copy the repository settings from the "spring" profile of the parent pom into your settings.xml.

Importing into eclipse without m2eclipse

If you prefer not to use m2eclipse you can generate eclipse project metadata using the following command:

$ ./mvnw eclipse:eclipse

The generated eclipse projects can be imported by selecting import existing projects from the file menu.

Contributing

Spring Cloud is released under the non-restrictive Apache 2.0 license, and follows a very standard Github development process, using Github tracker for issues and merging pull requests into master. If you want to contribute even something trivial please do not hesitate, but follow the guidelines below.

Sign the Contributor License Agreement

Before we accept a non-trivial patch or pull request we will need you to sign the Contributor License Agreement. Signing the contributor’s agreement does not grant anyone commit rights to the main repository, but it does mean that we can accept your contributions, and you will get an author credit if we do. Active contributors might be asked to join the core team, and given the ability to merge pull requests.

Code of Conduct

This project adheres to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct. By participating, you are expected to uphold this code. Please report unacceptable behavior to spring-code-of-conduct@pivotal.io.

Code Conventions and Housekeeping

None of these is essential for a pull request, but they will all help. They can also be added after the original pull request but before a merge.

• Use the Spring Framework code format conventions. If you use Eclipse you can import formatter settings using the eclipse-code-formatter.xml file from the Spring Cloud Build project. If using IntelliJ, you can use the Eclipse Code Formatter Plugin to import the same file.

• Make sure all new .java files to have a simple Javadoc class comment with at least an @author tag identifying you, and preferably at least a paragraph on what the class is for.

• Add the ASF license header comment to all new .java files (copy from existing files in the project)

• Add yourself as an @author to the .java files that you modify substantially (more than cosmetic changes).

• Add some Javadocs and, if you change the namespace, some XSD doc elements.

• A few unit tests would help a lot as well — someone has to do it.

• If no-one else is using your branch, please rebase it against the current master (or other target branch in the main project).

• When writing a commit message please follow these conventions, if you are fixing an existing issue please add Fixes gh-XXXX at the end of the commit message (where XXXX is the issue number).

Checkstyle

Spring Cloud Build comes with a set of checkstyle rules. You can find them in the spring-cloud-build-tools module. The most notable files under the module are:

spring-cloud-build-tools/

└── src
    ├── checkstyle
    │   └── checkstyle-suppressions.xml (3)
    └── main
        └── resources
            ├── checkstyle-header.txt (2)
            └── checkstyle.xml (1)

1. Default Checkstyle rules

2. File header setup

3. Default suppression rules

Checkstyle configuration

Checkstyle rules are disabled by default. To add checkstyle to your project just define the following properties and plugins.

pom.xml

<properties>
<maven-checkstyle-plugin.failsOnError>true</maven-checkstyle-plugin.failsOnError> (1)
        <maven-checkstyle-plugin.failsOnViolation>true
        </maven-checkstyle-plugin.failsOnViolation> (2)
        <maven-checkstyle-plugin.includeTestSourceDirectory>true
        </maven-checkstyle-plugin.includeTestSourceDirectory> (3)
</properties>

<build>
        <plugins>
            <plugin> (4)
                <groupId>io.spring.javaformat</groupId>
                <artifactId>spring-javaformat-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
            <plugin> (5)
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>

    <reporting>
        <plugins>
            <plugin> (5)
                <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
                <artifactId>maven-checkstyle-plugin</artifactId>
            </plugin>
        </plugins>
    </reporting>
</build>

1. Fails the build upon Checkstyle errors

2. Fails the build upon Checkstyle violations

3. Checkstyle analyzes also the test sources

4. Add the Spring Java Format plugin that will reformat your code to pass most of the Checkstyle formatting rules

5. Add checkstyle plugin to your build and reporting phases

If you need to suppress some rules (e.g. line length needs to be longer), then it’s enough for you to define a file under ${project.root}/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppressions.xml with your suppressions. Example:

projectRoot/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppresions.xml

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE suppressions PUBLIC
		"-//Puppy Crawl//DTD Suppressions 1.1//EN"
		"https://www.puppycrawl.com/dtds/suppressions_1_1.dtd">
<suppressions>
	<suppress files=".*ConfigServerApplication\.java" checks="HideUtilityClassConstructor"/>
	<suppress files=".*ConfigClientWatch\.java" checks="LineLengthCheck"/>
</suppressions>

It’s advisable to copy the ${spring-cloud-build.rootFolder}/.editorconfig and ${spring-cloud-build.rootFolder}/.springformat to your project. That way, some default formatting rules will be applied. You can do so by running this script:

$ curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-build/master/.editorconfig -o .editorconfig
$ touch .springformat

IDE setup

Intellij IDEA

In order to setup Intellij you should import our coding conventions, inspection profiles and set up the checkstyle plugin. The following files can be found in the Spring Cloud Build project.

spring-cloud-build-tools/

└── src
    ├── checkstyle
    │   └── checkstyle-suppressions.xml (3)
    └── main
        └── resources
            ├── checkstyle-header.txt (2)
            ├── checkstyle.xml (1)
            └── intellij
                ├── Intellij_Project_Defaults.xml (4)
                └── Intellij_Spring_Boot_Java_Conventions.xml (5)

1. Default Checkstyle rules

2. File header setup

3. Default suppression rules

4. Project defaults for Intellij that apply most of Checkstyle rules

5. Project style conventions for Intellij that apply most of Checkstyle rules

Figure 1. Code style

Go to File → Settings → Editor → Code style. There click on the icon next to the Scheme section. There, click on the Import Scheme value and pick the Intellij IDEA code style XML option. Import the spring-cloud-build-tools/src/main/resources/intellij/Intellij_Spring_Boot_Java_Conventions.xml file.

Figure 2. Inspection profiles

Go to File → Settings → Editor → Inspections. There click on the icon next to the Profile section. There, click on the Import Profile and import the spring-cloud-build-tools/src/main/resources/intellij/Intellij_Project_Defaults.xml file.

Checkstyle

To have Intellij work with Checkstyle, you have to install the Checkstyle plugin. It’s advisable to also install the Assertions2Assertj to automatically convert the JUnit assertions

Go to File → Settings → Other settings → Checkstyle. There click on the + icon in the Configuration file section. There, you’ll have to define where the checkstyle rules should be picked from. In the image above, we’ve picked the rules from the cloned Spring Cloud Build repository. However, you can point to the Spring Cloud Build’s GitHub repository (e.g. for the checkstyle.xml : https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-build/master/spring-cloud-build-tools/src/main/resources/checkstyle.xml). We need to provide the following variables:

• checkstyle.header.file - please point it to the Spring Cloud Build’s, spring-cloud-build-tools/src/main/resources/checkstyle-header.txt file either in your cloned repo or via the https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-build/master/spring-cloud-build-tools/src/main/resources/checkstyle-header.txt URL.

• checkstyle.suppressions.file - default suppressions. Please point it to the Spring Cloud Build’s, spring-cloud-build-tools/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppressions.xml file either in your cloned repo or via the https://raw.githubusercontent.com/spring-cloud/spring-cloud-build/master/spring-cloud-build-tools/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppressions.xml URL.

• checkstyle.additional.suppressions.file - this variable corresponds to suppressions in your local project. E.g. you’re working on spring-cloud-contract. Then point to the project-root/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppressions.xml folder. Example for spring-cloud-contract would be: /home/username/spring-cloud-contract/src/checkstyle/checkstyle-suppressions.xml.

Important

Remember to set the Scan Scope to All sources since we apply checkstyle rules for production and test sources.

Duplicate Finder

Spring Cloud Build brings along the basepom:duplicate-finder-maven-plugin, that enables flagging duplicate and conflicting classes and resources on the java classpath.

Duplicate Finder configuration

Duplicate finder is enabled by default and will run in the verify phase of your Maven build, but it will only take effect in your project if you add the duplicate-finder-maven-plugin to the build section of the projecst’s pom.xml.

pom.xml

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.basepom.maven</groupId>
            <artifactId>duplicate-finder-maven-plugin</artifactId>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

For other properties, we have set defaults as listed in the plugin documentation.

You can easily override them but setting the value of the selected property prefixed with duplicate-finder-maven-plugin. For example, set duplicate-finder-maven-plugin.skip to true in order to skip duplicates check in your build.

If you need to add ignoredClassPatterns or ignoredResourcePatterns to your setup, make sure to add them in the plugin configuration section of your project:

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>org.basepom.maven</groupId>
            <artifactId>duplicate-finder-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <configuration>
                <ignoredClassPatterns>
                    <ignoredClassPattern>org.joda.time.base.BaseDateTime</ignoredClassPattern>
                    <ignoredClassPattern>.*module-info</ignoredClassPattern>
                </ignoredClassPatterns>
                <ignoredResourcePatterns>
                    <ignoredResourcePattern>changelog.txt</ignoredResourcePattern>
                </ignoredResourcePatterns>
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>