Store Spring Cloud Alibaba Sentinel Flow Rules in Apollo – Step‑by‑Step Guide

Using Apollo to Store Sentinel Flow Rules

After introducing how to store flow‑control rules with Nacos, we now demonstrate how to persist Sentinel rules in Apollo, a widely used configuration center in China.

Supported Sentinel Data Sources

File configuration

Nacos configuration

ZooKeeper configuration

Apollo configuration

We will focus on the Apollo option.

Preparation

Make sure both Apollo and the Sentinel Dashboard are running.

Step 1 – Add Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-web</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.springframework.cloud</groupId>
        <artifactId>spring-cloud-starter-alibaba-sentinel</artifactId>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>com.alibaba.csp</groupId>
        <artifactId>sentinel-datasource-apollo</artifactId>
        <version>1.4.0</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Step 2 – Create Apollo Environment File

local.meta=http://192.168.0.201:8080
dev.meta=http://192.168.0.202:8080

Adjust the addresses to match your environment.

Step 3 – Add Spring Cloud Configuration

spring.application.name=sentinel-datasource-apollo
server.port=8002
# Apollo configuration
app.id=${spring.application.name}
# Sentinel dashboard address
spring.cloud.sentinel.transport.dashboard=localhost:8080
# Apollo datasource settings
spring.cloud.sentinel.datasource.ds.apollo.namespaceName=application
spring.cloud.sentinel.datasource.ds.apollo.flowRulesKey=sentinel.flowRules

Step 4 – Create Application Main Class and REST Endpoint

@EnableApolloConfig
@SpringBootApplication
public class TestApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(TestApplication.class, args);
    }

    @RestController
    static class TestController {
        @GetMapping("/hello")
        public String hello() {
            return "didispace.com";
        }
    }
}

The @EnableApolloConfig annotation activates Apollo configuration loading.

Step 5 – Define Flow Rule in Apollo

[
  {
    "resource": "/hello",
    "limitApp": "default",
    "grade": 1,
    "count": 5,
    "strategy": 0,
    "controlBehavior": 0,
    "clusterMode": false
  }
]

Field explanations:

resource : the protected resource name.

limitApp : caller source; default means all callers.

grade : 0 for concurrency, 1 for QPS.

count : threshold value.

strategy : relationship‑based limiting strategy.

controlBehavior : 0‑direct reject, 1‑warm‑up, 2‑rate‑limit queue.

clusterMode : whether cluster mode is enabled.

Step 6 – Run the Application

When the application starts you should see logs similar to:

INFO  SentinalDataSourceHandler: datasource start to loadConfig
INFO  SentinalDataSourceHandler: datasource load 1 FlowRule

Test the endpoint with curl localhost:8002/hello – it returns didispace.com. The rule will appear in the Sentinel Dashboard under the Apollo datasource.

Important Note

Modifying rules in the Sentinel console only changes the in‑memory state; Apollo’s persisted configuration remains unchanged and will be restored after a restart.

Changes made in Apollo (or Nacos) are loaded into the service and survive restarts.

Reference Code Repository

GitHub: https://github.com/dyc87112/SpringCloud-Learning/

Gitee: https://gitee.com/didispace/SpringCloud-Learning/