Asynchronous HTTP Request Processing is a relatively new technique that allows the processing of a single HTTP request using non-blocking I/O and, if desired in separate threads. Some refer to it as COMET capabilities. The primary use case for Asynchronous HTTP is in the case where the client is polling the server for a delayed response. The usual example is an AJAX chat client where you want to push/pull from both the client and the server. These scenarios have the client blocking a long time on the server’s socket waiting for a new message. In synchronous HTTP where the server is blocking on incoming and outgoing I/O is that you have a thread consumed per client connection. This eats up memory and valuable thread resources. Not such a big deal in 90% of applications (in fact using asynchronous processing may actually hurt performance in most common scenarios), but when there are a lot of concurrent clients that are blocking like this, there is a lot of wasted resources and the server does not scale that well.
@Suspended
annotation
The Jakarta RESTful Web Services specification includes asynchronous HTTP support via two classes. The @Suspended
annotation,
and AsyncResponse interface.
Injecting an AsyncResponse as a parameter to a Jakarta RESTful Web Services methods tells RESTEasy that the HTTP request/response should be detached from the currently executing thread and that the current thread should not try to automatically process the response.
The AsyncResponse is the callback object. The act of calling one of the resume() methods will cause a response to be sent back to the client and will also terminate the HTTP request. Here is an example of asynchronous processing:
import jakarta.ws.rs.Suspend;
import jakarta.ws.rs.container.AsyncResponse;
@Path("/")
public class SimpleResource
{
@GET
@Path("basic")
@Produces("text/plain")
public void getBasic(@Suspended final AsyncResponse response) throws Exception
{
Thread t = new Thread()
{
@Override
public void run()
{
try
{
Response jaxrs = Response.ok("basic").type(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN).build();
response.resume(jaxrs);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
response.resume(e);
}
}
};
t.start();
}
}
AsyncResponse also has other methods to cancel the execution. See javadoc for more details.
NOTE:
In RESTEasy version 4.0.0.Final proprietary annotation
org.jboss.resteasy.annotations.Suspend
was removed
and replaced by jakarta.ws.rs.container.Suspended
and class
org.jboss.resteasy.spi.AsynchronousResponse
was removed and replaced by
jakarta.ws.rs.container.AsyncResponse
.
jakarta.ws.rs.container.Suspended
replaces javax.ws.rs.container.Suspended
.
Note that @Suspended does not have a value field,
which represented a timeout limit. Instead, AsyncResponse.setTimeout()
may be called.
The Jakarta RESTful Web Services 2.1 specification adds support for declaring asynchronous resource methods by
returning a CompletionStage
instead of using the @Suspended
annotation.
Whenever a resource method returns a CompletionStage
, it will be subscribed to,
the request will be suspended, and only resumed when the CompletionStage
is
resolved either to a value (which is then treated as the return value for the method), or
as an error case, in which case the exception will be processed as if it were thrown by the
resource method.
Here is an example of asynchronous processing using CompletionStage
:
import jakarta.ws.rs.Suspend;
import jakarta.ws.rs.container.AsyncResponse;
@Path("/")
public class SimpleResource
{
@GET
@Path("basic")
@Produces("text/plain")
public CompletionStage<Response> getBasic() throws Exception
{
final CompletableFuture<Response> response = new CompletableFuture<>();
Thread t = new Thread()
{
@Override
public void run()
{
try
{
Response jaxrs = Response.ok("basic").type(MediaType.TEXT_PLAIN).build();
response.complete(jaxrs);
}
catch (Exception e)
{
response.completeExceptionally(e);
}
}
};
t.start();
return response;
}
}
RESTEasy supports more reactive types for asynchronous programming.
It is possible to write filters that also make the request asynchronous. Whether filters make the request asynchronous before execution of a method makes absolutely no difference to a method: it does not need to be declared asynchronous in order to function as specified. Synchronous methods and asynchronous methods will work as specified by the spec.
Some backends support asynchronous IO operations (Servlet, Undertow, Vert.x, Quarkus, Netty), which are exposed using the
AsyncOutputStream
subtype of OutputStream
. It includes async variants for writing and flushing
the stream.
Some backends have what is called an "Event Loop Thread", which is a thread responsible for doing all IO operations. Those backends require the Event Loop Thread to never be blocked, because it does IO for every other thread. Those backends typically require Jakarta RESTful Web Services endpoints to be invoked on worker threads, to make sure they never block the Event Loop Thread.
Sometimes, with Async programming, it is possible for asynchronous Jakarta RESTful Web Services requests to be resumed from the Event Loop Thread.
As a result, Jakarta RESTful Web Services will attempt to serialise the response and send it to the client. But Jakarta RESTful Web Services is written using "Blocking IO"
mechanics, such as OutputStream
(used by MessageBodyWriter
and WriterInterceptor
), which
means that sending the response will block the current thread until the response is received. This would work on a worker thread,
but if it happens on the Event Loop Thread it will block it and prevent it from sending the response, resulting in a deadlock.
As a result, we've decided to support and expose Async IO interfaces in the form of AsyncOutputStream
,
AsyncMessageBodyWriter
and AsyncWriterInterceptor
, to allow users to write Async IO applications
in RESTEasy.
Most built-in MessageBodyWriter
and WriterInterceptor
support Async IO, with the notable exceptions of:
HtmlRenderableWriter
, which is tied to servlet APIs
ReaderProvider
StreamingOutputProvider
: use AsyncStreamingOutput
instead
Async IO will be preferred if the following conditions are met:
The backend supports it
The writer supports it
All writer interceptors support it
If those conditions are not met, and you attempt to use Blocking IO on an Event Loop Thread (as determined by the backend), then an exception will be thrown.