Key Features of Spring WebFlux
- Non-blocking I/O: Uses asynchronous and non-blocking I/O to avoid blocking threads, enabling high concurrency.
- Reactive streams support: Fully implements Reactive Streams specification using Project Reactor for reactive programming.
- Functional programming model: Controllers return Mono/Flux publishers instead of blocking responses, favoring functional style.
- Server-sent events: Supports server-sent events out of the box for real-time full-duplex communication.
- WebSockets: Built-in support for WebSockets to enable real-time bidirectional communication.
- Reactive database access: Seamless integration with reactive databases like MongoDB, Cassandra, Redis etc.
- Caching support: Supports caching responses using Cache API in a non-blocking manner.
Basic Introduction to Spring WebFlux
Spring WebFlux is a reactive, non-blocking web framework that uses Project Reactor’s reactive streams API to enable highly concurrent and asynchronous processing of web requests in a non-blocking and event-driven way. It is fully asynchronous and non-blocking using reactive streams and callbacks.
- It uses Project Reactor as the underlying reactive library for composable asynchronous and event-based programming.
- The core abstraction is around reactive streams – publishers that provide push-based asynchronous streams of data.
- Controllers return Publisher or Mono types instead of ModelAndView. Responses are streamed back incrementally.
- It is optimized for non-blocking and event-driven applications on modern servers like Netty and Undertow.
In this article, we will explore the advantages and disadvantages of Spring WebFlux – a non-blocking web framework.
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