Application Configuration

The following parameters are used by the system. You can define them in either the application.properties or application.yml file.

When you use both application.properties and application.yml, the parameters in application.properties will take precedence.

Key Value (example) Required
application.name Application name Yes
spring.application.name Alias for application name Yes*1
info.app.version major.minor.build (e.g. 1.0.0) Yes
info.app.description Something about your application Yes
web.component.scan your own package path or parent path Yes
server.port e.g. 8083 Yes*1
rest.server.port e.g. 8085 Optional
websocket.server.port Alias for rest.server.port Optional
rest.automation true if you want to enable automation Optional
yaml.rest.automation Config location e.g. classpath:/rest.yaml Optional
yaml.event.over.http Config location classpath:/event-over-http.yaml Optional
yaml.multicast Config location classpath:/multicast.yaml Optional
yaml.journal Config location classpath:/journal.yaml Optional
yaml.route.substitution Config location Optional
yaml.topic.substitution Config location Optional
yaml.cron Config location Optional
yaml.flow.automation Config location. e.g. classpath:/flows.yaml EventScript
static.html.folder classpath:/public/ Yes
spring.web.resources.static-locations (alias for static.html.folder) Yes*1
mime.types Map of file extensions to MIME types
(application.yml only)
Optional
spring.mvc.static-path-pattern /** Yes*1
show.env.variables comma separated list of variable names Optional
show.application.properties comma separated list of property names Optional
cloud.connector kafka, none, etc. Optional
cloud.services e.g. some.interesting.service Optional
snake.case.serialization true (recommended) Optional
protect.info.endpoints true to disable actuators. Default: true Optional
trace.http.header comma separated list. Default "X-Trace-Id" Optional
hsts.feature default is true Optional*
application.feature.route.substitution default is false Optional
application.feature.topic.substitution default is false Optional
kafka.replication.factor 3 Kafka
cloud.client.properties e.g. classpath:/kafka.properties Connector
user.cloud.client.properties e.g. classpath:/second-kafka.properties Connector
default.app.group.id groupId for the app instance.
Default: appGroup
Connector
default.monitor.group.id groupId for the presence-monitor.
Default: monitorGroup
Connector
monitor.topic topic for the presence-monitor.
Default: service.monitor
Connector
app.topic.prefix Default: multiplex (DO NOT change) Connector
app.partitions.per.topic Max Kafka partitions per topic.
Default: 32
Connector
max.virtual.topics Max virtual topics = partitions * topics.
Default: 288
Connector
max.closed.user.groups Number of closed user groups.
Default: 10, range: 3 - 30
Connector
closed.user.group Closed user group. Default: 1 Connector
transient.data.store Default is "/tmp/reactive" Optional
running.in.cloud Default is false (set to true if containerized) Optional
deferred.commit.log Default is false (for unit tests only) Optional
kernel.thread.pool Default 100. Not more than 200. Optional

* - when using the "rest-spring" library

Base configuration files

By default, the system assumes the following application configuration files:

  1. application.properties
  2. application.yml

You can change this behavior by adding the app-config-reader.yml in your project's resources folder.

resources:
  - application.properties
  - application.yml

You can tell the system to load application configuration from different set of files. You can use either PROPERTIES or YAML files. YAML files can use "yml" or "yaml" extension.

For example, you may use only "application.yml" file without scanning application.properties.

Partial support of Spring Active Profiles

When the parameter "spring.profiles.active" is available in application.properties or application.yml, the AppConfigReader will try to load the additional configuration files.

For example, if "spring.profiles.active=dev", the system will load "application-dev.properties" and "application-dev.yml" accordingly.

When more than one active profile is needed, you can use a comma separated list of profiles in "spring.profiles.active".

For Spring Boot compatibility, the filename prefix "application-" is fixed.

Special handling for PROPERTIES file

Since application.properties and application.yml can be used together, the system must enforce keyspace uniqueness because YAML keyspaces are hierarchical.

For example, if you have x.y and x.y.z, x.y is the parent of x.y.z.

Therefore, you cannot set a value for the parent key since the parent is a key-value container.

This hierarchical rule is enforced for PROPERTIES files. If you have x.y=3 and x.y.z=2 in the same PROPERTIES file, x.y will become a parent of x.y.z and its intended value of 3 will be lost.

Optional Service

The OptionalService annotation may be used with the following class annotations:

  1. BeforeApplication
  2. MainApplication
  3. PreLoad
  4. WebSocketService

When the OptionalService annotation is available, the system will evaluate the annotation value as a conditional statement where it supports one or more simple condition using a key-value in the application configuration.

For examples:

OptionalService("rest.automation") - the class will be loaded when rest.automation=true

OptionalService("!rest.automation") - the class will be loaded when rest.automation is false or non-exist

OptionalService("interesting.key=100") - the system will load the class when "interesting.key" is set to 100 in application configuration.

To specify more than one condition, use a comma separated list as the value like this: OptionalService("web.socket.enabled, rest.automation") - this tells the system to load the class when either web.socket.enabled or rest.automation is true.

Static HTML contents

You can place static HTML files (e.g. the HTML bundle for a UI program) in the "resources/public" folder or in the local file system using the "static.html.folder" parameter.

The system supports a bare minimal list of file extensions to MIME types. If your use case requires additional MIME type mapping, you may define them in the application.yml configuration file under the mime.types section like this:

mime.types:
  pdf: 'application/pdf'
  doc: 'application/msword'

Note that application.properties file cannot be used for the "mime.types" section because it only supports text key-values.

HTTP and websocket port assignment

If rest.automation=true and rest.server.port or server.port are configured, the system will start a lightweight non-blocking HTTP server. If rest.server.port is not available, it will fall back to server.port.

If rest.automation=false and you have a websocket server endpoint annotated as WebsocketService, the system will start a non-blocking Websocket server with a minimalist HTTP server that provides actuator services. If websocket.server.port is not available, it will fall back to rest.server.port or server.port.

If you add Spring Boot dependency, Spring Boot will use server.port to start Tomcat or similar HTTP server.

The built-in lightweight non-blocking HTTP server and Spring Boot can co-exist when you configure rest.server.port and server.port to use different ports.

Note that the websocket.server.port parameter is an alias of rest.server.port.

Transient data store

The system handles back-pressure automatically by overflowing events from memory to a transient data store. As a cloud native best practice, the folder must be under "/tmp". The default is "/tmp/reactive". The "running.in.cloud" parameter must be set to false when your apps are running in IDE or in your laptop. When running in kubernetes, it can be set to true.

The snake.case.serialization parameter

Serialization and de-serialization of events are performed automatically.

If there is a genuine need to programmatically perform serialization, you may use the pre-configured serializer so that the serialization behavior is consistent.

You can get an instance of the serializer with SimpleMapper.getInstance().getMapper().

The serializer may perform snake case or camel serialization depending on the parameter snake.case.serialization.

If you want to ensure snake case or camel, you can select the serializer like this:

SimpleObjectMapper snakeCaseMapper = SimpleMapper.getInstance().getSnakeCaseMapper();
SimpleObjectMapper camelCaseMapper = SimpleMapper.getInstance().getCamelCaseMapper();

The trace.http.header parameter

The trace.http.header parameter sets the HTTP header for trace ID. When configured with more than one label, the system will retrieve trace ID from the corresponding HTTP header and propagate it through the transaction that may be served by multiple services.

If trace ID is presented in an HTTP request, the system will use the same label to set HTTP response traceId header.

X-Trace-Id: a9a4e1ec-1663-4c52-b4c3-7b34b3e33697
or
X-Correlation-Id: a9a4e1ec-1663-4c52-b4c3-7b34b3e33697

Kafka specific configuration

If you use the kafka-connector (cloud connector) and kafka-presence (presence monitor), you may want to externalize kafka.properties like this:

cloud.client.properties=file:/tmp/config/kafka.properties

Note that "classpath" refers to embedded config file in the "resources" folder in your source code and "file" refers to an external config file.

You want also use the embedded config file as a backup like this:

cloud.client.properties=file:/tmp/config/kafka.properties,classpath:/kafka.properties

Distributed trace

To enable distributed trace logging, please set this in log4j2.xml:

<logger name="org.platformlambda.core.services.DistributedTrace" level="INFO" />

Built-in XML serializer

The platform-core includes built-in serializers for JSON and XML in the AsyncHttpClient and Spring RestController. The XML serializer is designed for simple use cases. If you need to handle more complex XML data structure, you can disable the XML serializer by adding the following HTTP request header.

X-Raw-Xml=true


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