Integrating Dubbo with Spring Boot: Project Setup, Configuration, and Service Implementation

Overview

Dubbo is an Alibaba open‑source distributed service framework that adopts a layered architecture to achieve loose coupling between components. The typical RPC call flow involves four modules: Registry (usually Zookeeper), Provider, Consumer, and Monitor.

1. Project Construction

The project uses Spring Boot, JDK 8, Dubbo, and Zookeeper. A quick web project can be generated via http://start.spring.io/. The directory is split into two modules: spring-boot-dubbo (provider) and spring-boot-consumer (consumer).

2. Provider

2.1 pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.dubbo.springboot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-dubbo</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.zookeeper</groupId>
    <artifactId>zookeeper</artifactId>
    <version>3.4.6</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

2.2 Configuration (application.properties)

## Dubbo service provider configuration
spring.dubbo.application.name=provider
spring.dubbo.registry.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181
spring.dubbo.protocol.name=dubbo
spring.dubbo.protocol.port=20880
spring.dubbo.scan=com.jaycekon.dubbo.service

Alternatively, the same settings can be expressed in XML:

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:dubbo="http://code.alibabatech.com/schema/dubbo"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
                           http://code.alibabatech.com/schema/dubbo http://code.alibabatech.com/schema/dubbo/dubbo.xsd">
    <!-- Application info -->
    <dubbo:application name="provider"/>
    <!-- Registry address -->
    <dubbo:registry protocol="zookeeper" address="127.0.0.1" check="false"/>
    <!-- Dubbo protocol -->
    <dubbo:protocol name="dubbo" port="-1" dispather="all" check="false"/>
    <dubbo:provider timeout="10000" threads="10" threadpool="fixed" loadbalance="roundrobin"/>
    <!-- Service interface to expose -->
    <dubbo:service interface="com.jaycekon.dubbo.service" ref="userService"/>
</beans>

2.3 Service Definition and Implementation

Interface:

public interface UserService {
    User saveUser(User user);
}

Implementation (using Dubbo @Service):

import com.alibaba.dubbo.config.annotation.Service;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.domain.User;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.service.UserService;

@Service
public class UserServiceImpl implements UserService {
    @Override
    public User saveUser(User user) {
        user.setId(1);
        System.out.println(user.toString());
        return user;
    }
}

3. Consumer

3.1 pom.xml

<dependency>
    <groupId>io.dubbo.springboot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-dubbo</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.0</version>
</dependency>
<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.zookeeper</groupId>
    <artifactId>zookeeper</artifactId>
    <version>3.4.6</version>
    <exclusions>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
        <exclusion>
            <groupId>log4j</groupId>
            <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
        </exclusion>
    </exclusions>
</dependency>

3.2 Configuration (application.properties)

# Avoid port conflict with provider
server.port=8081
# Dubbo consumer configuration
spring.dubbo.application.name=consumer
spring.dubbo.registry.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181
spring.dubbo.scan=com.jaycekon.dubbo.service

XML alternative is analogous to the provider configuration, with dubbo:application name="consumer" and a dubbo:reference for the service.

3.3 Consumer Service

import com.alibaba.dubbo.config.annotation.Reference;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.domain.City;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.domain.User;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.service.CityDubboService;
import com.jaycekon.dubbo.service.UserService;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

@Component
public class CityDubboConsumerService {
    @Reference
    private CityDubboService cityDubboService;
    @Reference
    private UserService userService;

    public void printCity() {
        String cityName = "广州";
        City city = cityDubboService.findCityByName(cityName);
        System.out.println(city.toString());
    }

    public User saveUser() {
        User user = new User();
        user.setUsername("jaycekon").setPassword("jaycekong824");
        return userService.saveUser(user);
    }
}

3.4 RESTful Controller

import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
public class UserController {
    @Autowired
    private CityDubboConsumerService service;

    @RequestMapping("/save")
    public Object saveUser() {
        return service.saveUser();
    }
}

4. Summary

The article demonstrates how to integrate Dubbo into a Spring Boot environment, covering both provider and consumer sides, configuration options (properties and XML), Maven setup, and a simple REST endpoint for invoking Dubbo services. While Dubbo offers powerful RPC capabilities, the author notes that Spring Cloud provides a richer ecosystem and community support, which may be preferable for future projects.

GitHub repository: https://github.com/jaycekon/SpringBoot