What’s New in Dubbo Admin 0.1? A Deep Dive into the Refactored Backend

Why Dubbo Admin Is Released as an Independent Project

To improve the experience of Dubbo 2.7.0, a refactoring plan for Dubbo Admin was started in mid‑last year and released as version 0.1. The backend framework was switched from Webx to Spring Boot, the frontend now uses Vue and Vuetify.js, Velocity templates were removed, and Swagger was integrated for API management.

Configuration Specification

Dubbo 2.7 separates the configuration center and the registry center and adds a metadata center, so the configuration method of Dubbo Admin has been updated. The application.properties file now includes:

admin.registry.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181
admin.config-center=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181
admin.metadata.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181

It can also specify metadata and registry addresses in the configuration center, e.g. for ZooKeeper:

# /dubbo/config/dubbo/dubbo.properties
dubbo.registry.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181
dubbo.metadata-report.address=zookeeper://127.0.0.1:2181

Addresses defined in the configuration center override the local application.properties settings.

Feature Overview

The current version retains most functions of previous releases, such as service query and governance, and adds many improvements from Dubbo 2.7, which are exposed through Dubbo Admin.

Tag Routing

Tag routing is a new feature introduced in Dubbo 2.7. It allows labeling different servers with tags at the application level. The configuration is illustrated below:

Application‑Level Service Governance

Dubbo 2.7 adds application‑level service governance, allowing rules such as condition routing, black‑white lists, dynamic configuration (weight, load‑balancing) to be applied per application. The configuration can be written in YAML and is shown in the diagram:

Compatibility Notes

Service‑level configurations are written in both Dubbo 2.6 (URL) and Dubbo 2.7 (config file) formats to ensure backward compatibility.

Application‑level configurations, including tag routing, are written only in Dubbo 2.7 format because Dubbo 2.6 does not support them.

Dubbo Admin reads configurations only in Dubbo 2.7 format; legacy Dubbo 2.6 URL rules cannot be read.

Only one rule per service or application is allowed; newer rules overwrite older ones.

Configuration Management

Dubbo 2.7 introduces global and application‑level configurations. Global settings can specify registry and metadata center addresses, timeout values, etc., and are effective across the whole system. The following diagram shows the global configuration view:

Metadata and Service Testing

Metadata, a new element in Dubbo 2.7, is mainly used in Dubbo Admin for service detail display and service testing. The service detail view now includes full method signatures, parameters, and return types.

Author: min子观, Apache Dubbo Committer, Alibaba Senior Development Engineer, responsible for Dubbo Admin development and community maintenance.