Managing ExhaustedRetryException in Spring Batch : Unleashing the Power of Spring Retry

Hello all! Today, let’s set out to explore a commonly faced exception in the Spring landscape - the ExhaustedRetryException. This is a regular haunt for anyone who’s been working within the realms of the Spring Batch and Spring Retry libraries.

To give you a sneak preview, we’re going to dissect the exception, understand its underlying cause, and delve into effective ways of managing it. Now, let’s dive right in!

Understanding ExhaustedRetryException

Simply put, an ExhaustedRetryException is an exception thrown when all retry attempts fail. Typically, this can occur within the Spring Batch framework while processing a large chunk of data in a batch where retries are implemented. The Spring Retry library handles these exceptions and retries the operation. If still unsuccessful after all retry attempts, the Spring Retry library throws the ExhaustedRetryException.

import org.springframework.retry.ExhaustedRetryException;
...
try {
...
} catch (ExhaustedRetryException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

The Spring Retry Library

Before we delve into resolving the ExhaustedRetryException, let’s quickly touch upon Spring Retry. As the name suggests, Spring Retry offers declarative retry support. This usually happens when there are transient failures such as temporary network glitches.

Reasons Behind ExhaustedRetryException

The most prevalent cause for an ExhaustedRetryException is maximum retry attempts being exhausted with continuing failures. Let’s consider a brief example.

import org.springframework.retry.annotation.Retryable;
...
@Retryable(maxAttempts = 5)
public void callService() { ... }

In the above code, the callService() method will retry a maximum of 5 times before giving up if an error occurs during execution. If the service call continues to fail even after all these retries, then an ExhaustedRetryException will be thrown.

Handling ExhaustedRetryException

When it comes to handling ExhaustedRetryException, Spring provides several options out of which we will be focusing on two.

1. Setting a Recovery Method

By establishing a recovery method, you can ensure an alternative method execution, should all retry attempts of a method fail.

import org.springframework.retry.annotation.Recover;
...
@Recover
public void recover(ExhaustedRetryException e) {
    // recovery mechanism
}

Here, the recover() method will be invoked when all callService() method retries fail.

2. Implementing a Backoff Policy

Spring Retry also provides a backoff policy option which sets a delay interval for retrying the failed operation.

import org.springframework.retry.backoff.FixedBackOffPolicy;
...
FixedBackOffPolicy backOffPolicy = new FixedBackOffPolicy();
backOffPolicy.setBackOffPeriod(1000);
retryTemplate.setBackOffPolicy(backOffPolicy);

In the above example, a delay of 1 second (1000 milliseconds) is set for each retry.

Conclusion

That’s all for today’s deep dive folks! We went from understanding the causes of the ExhaustedRetryException in Spring Batch to figuring out effective ways to manage it. The key takeaway is that although an ExhaustedRetryException might initially seem daunting, Spring provides a plethora of ways to successfully handle it and ensure the smooth operation of your Spring application.

References

For more insights on the discussed concepts, here are some helpful references:

• Official Spring Retry Documentation
• Spring @Retryable and @Recover