How to Configure Alibaba Sentinel Dynamic Rules with Nacos in Spring Cloud

For details on the data source types supported by Sentinel, refer to the Alibaba Sentinel dynamic rules (dynamic file data source) link.

1. Add Maven dependencies in pom.xml

<properties>
    <java.version>1.8</java.version>
    <spring-cloud.version>Hoxton.SR1</spring-cloud.version>
    <spring-cloud-alibaba-dependencies.version>0.9.0.RELEASE</spring-cloud-alibaba-dependencies.version>
</properties>

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.alibaba.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-alibaba-sentinel</artifactId>
        <version>2.2.3.RELEASE</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.alibaba</groupId>
        <artifactId>fastjson</artifactId>
        <version>1.2.12</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.alibaba.csp</groupId>
        <artifactId>sentinel-datasource-nacos</artifactId>
        <version>1.8.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

<dependencyManagement>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
            <artifactId>spring-cloud-dependencies</artifactId>
            <version>${spring-cloud.version}</version>
            <type>pom</type>
            <scope>import</scope>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</dependencyManagement>

This dependency is required.

2. Configure application.yml

server:
  port: 9400
---
spring:
  application:
    name: my-app
---
management:
  endpoints:
    web:
      exposure:
        include: '*'
---
spring:
  cloud:
    sentinel:
      eager: true # disable lazy loading
      filter:
        enabled: true # enable/disable protection of Spring MVC endpoints
      transport:
        port: 8730
        dashboard: localhost:8080 # Sentinel dashboard address
        heartbeatIntervalMs: 3000
        clientIp: 127.0.0.1
---
spring:
  cloud:
    sentinel:
      datasource:
        ds:
          nacos:
            serverAddr: localhost:8848 
            dataId: ${spring.application.name}.sentinel.rule
            groupId: study
            namespace: 3d857485-5f81-4f1b-9a7e-86586d05261f
            username: dev
            password: 123123
            ruleType: flow

Explanation: ds is the name of the ReadableDataSource and can be any identifier; nacos denotes the specific data source, and the following fields configure that source.

serverAddr : address of the Nacos server

dataId : identifier of the configuration item in Nacos

groupId : group identifier in Nacos

namespace : namespace ID for separating environments

username and password : credentials for Nacos access

ruleType : type of Sentinel rule (flow, degrade, authority, system, param-flow, gw-flow, gw-api-group)

Note: If the same rule exists in multiple data sources, only one will take effect; in the example, the Nacos‑based rule overrides a file‑based rule.

Example Nacos configuration (image):

After starting the service, the configuration from Nacos appears in the Sentinel dashboard (images):