spring-cloud with RestTemplate//Ribbon/Eureka - retry when server not available

Question

I managed to successfully get my RestTemplate client discover remote service using Eureka and forward calls to it using Ribbon as described in the documentation. Basically,

Answer 1

The RestTemplate support on its own does not know how to do any retrying (whereas the Feign client and the proxy support in Spring Cloud does, as you noticed). I think this is probably a good things because it gives you the option to add it yourself. For instance, using Spring Retry you can do it in a simple declarative style:

@Retryable
public Object doSomething() {
   // use your RestTemplate here
}

(and add @EnableRetry to your @Configuration). It makes a nice combination with @HystrixCommand (from Spring Cloud / Javanica):

@HystrixCommand
@Retryable
public Object doSomething() {
   // use your RestTemplate here
}

In this form, every failure counts towards the circuit breaker metrics (maybe we could change that, or maybe it makes sense to leave it like that), even if the retry is successful.