Getting Started With RSocket: Spring Boot Server

Engineering
Ben Wilcock
三月 2, 2020

Time: approximately 15 mins.

In the diverse world of microservices, HTTP is the undisputed leader in agent-to-agent communications. It’s mature, well established, and everywhere. But in some cases, HTTP request-response can be cumbersome. What if you need communication patterns beyond traditional request-response, such as fire-and-forget or streaming? And what if you want to send messages in either direction?

With HTTP, there are ways to achieve this but it’s not what the protocol was built for. Many of the solutions come with additional tradeoffs or shortcomings. Plus, here’s no rulebook that says “thou shalt always use HTTP”, messaging protocols like AMQP proved that already. So, it’s good to know what your options are, and healthy to add a few new technologies to your list every once in a while. This post is about one such alternative—RSocket.