GridGain Developers Hub

Building Microservices With Micronaut and Apache Ignite

Former Head of Developer Relations at GridGain
Apache Ignite Committer and PMC Member

This tutorial walks you through the process of creating a simple Micronaut microservice that uses Apache® Ignite™ as an in-memory database. The service provides information about the world’s most populated cities by processing user HTTP requests and querying data from a distributed Ignite cluster. At the end of the tutorial, you deploy the microservice in Docker in your local environment. You can then easily launch the solution, with minimal changes, in a cloud environment.

You can find a complete implementation of the microservice in the GitHub repository. Depending on your preference, you can build the service from the ground up, learning about all the nuances, or you can download the GitHub project and run the finished implementation.

What You Need

Generate the Application Project

Start by creating a Maven project for the microservice implementation and accompanying Docker files.

To expedite this step, open a terminal window and use Micronaut CLI to generate a project structure:

mn create-app org.gridgain.demo.ignite-micronaut-demo -b=maven -l=java

Open the project with your favorite IDE and edit the {project}/pom.xml file by adding the ignite-core library to the list of the project dependencies:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.ignite</groupId>
  <artifactId>ignite-core</artifactId>
  <version>2.8.1</version>
</dependency>

Create the Ignite Thin Client Singleton

Micronaut implements the JSR-330: Dependency Injection for Java specification, which supports the @Singleton annotation. With that annotation, you can easily create a single instance of an Ignite thin client connection and share it across all your Micronaut controllers.

Add the following singleton implementation to the {project}/src/main/java/org/gridgain/demo folder:

package org.gridgain.demo;

@Singleton
public class IgniteClientConnection {

    private IgniteClient client;

    @PostConstruct
    public void init() {
        ClientConfiguration cfg = new ClientConfiguration();

        cfg.setAddresses(Application.IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS);
        cfg.setPartitionAwarenessEnabled(true);

        client = Ignition.startClient(cfg);
    }

    public IgniteClient getClient() {
        return client;
    }

    @PreDestroy
    public void close() {
        try {
            client.close();
        }
        catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}
  • The first inquiry to the singleton automatically calls the init() method. The method creates an instance of the Ignite thin client.

  • The cfg.setAddresses(Application.IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS) parameter passes the IP address of an Ignite server node that the client needs to connect to. Application.IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS represents the environment variable that you are about to add to the application logic.

  • The cfg.setPartitionAwarenessEnabled(true) setting enables the partition-awareness feature of Ignite that allows the thin client to send query requests directly to the node that owns the requested record. If your network is configured so that the client can communicate only to the server with the Application.IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS address, disable this property.

Open {project}/src/main/java/org/gridgain/demo/Application.java class that Micronaut CLI generated and change its default implementation by adding the logic that is related to the Application.IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS variable:

package org.gridgain.demo;

import io.micronaut.runtime.Micronaut;

public class Application {
    public static String IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS = "127.0.0.1:10800";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        if (System.getenv("igniteServerAddress") != null)
            IGNITE_SERVER_ADDRESS = System.getenv("igniteServerAddress");

        Micronaut.run(Application.class, args);
    }
}

Introduce the Micronaut Controller

The controller needs to respond to user requests that are in the http://localhost:8080/cities?population=800000 format by returning all cities with a population that is equal to or greater than the population parameter.

Add org.gridgain.demo.City POJO class into the {project}/src/main/java/org/gridgain/demo folder that will be used by the controller’s logic:

package org.gridgain.demo;

import io.micronaut.core.annotation.Introspected;

@Introspected
public class City {
    private Integer id;

    private String name;

    private String countryCode;

    private String district;

    private Integer population;

    public Integer getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Integer id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public String getCountryCode() {
        return countryCode;
    }

    public void setCountryCode(String countryCode) {
        this.countryCode = countryCode;
    }

    public String getDistrict() {
        return district;
    }

    public void setDistrict(String district) {
        this.district = district;
    }

    public int getPopulation() {
        return population;
    }

    public void setPopulation(int population) {
        this.population = population;
    }
}

Complete the microservice implementation by adding the controller class into the {project}/src/main/java/org/gridgain/demo location:

package org.gridgain.demo;

@Controller("/cities")
public class CityController {
    @Inject
    IgniteClientConnection client;

    @Get
    @Produces(MediaType.TEXT_JSON)
    public List<City> listCities(int population) {
        if (population <= 0)
            return null;

        FieldsQueryCursor<List<?>> cursor = client.getClient().query(
            new SqlFieldsQuery(
                "SELECT name, countryCode, population FROM City " +
                "WHERE population >= ? ORDER BY population DESC")
                .setSchema("PUBLIC")
                .setArgs(population));

        List<City> response = new ArrayList<>(cursor.getColumnsCount());

        for (List<?> row: cursor.getAll()) {
            City city = new City();

            city.setName((String)row.get(0));
            city.setCountryCode((String)row.get(1));
            city.setPopulation((Integer)row.get(2));

            response.add(city);
        }

        return response;
    }
}
  • The @Inject IgniteClientConnection client directive injects an instance of your Ignite thin client singleton during the controller-creation process.

  • The List<City> listCities(int population) method intercepts user requests, queries data from Ignite and sends backs a sorted result.

Start the Ignite Cluster and Load the Sample Database

In the last few sections of the tutorial, you deploy the whole solution, including an Ignite cluster and the just-completed Micronaut microservice in Docker. Start by adding the ignite-cluster.yaml Docker Compose configuration file into the project root folder:

version: '3.7'
services:
  ignite_server_node:
    image: apacheignite/ignite:2.8.1
    environment:
      - IGNITE_WORK_DIR=/opt/ignite/work
    networks:
      - ignite_net
    volumes:
      - ../work:/opt/ignite/work

networks:
  ignite_net:
    driver: bridge

Bootstrap a two-node Ignite cluster and load the World database records:

  1. Open a terminal window, navigate to the project root, and use the following Docker Compose command to launch the cluster:

    docker-compose -p cluster -f ignite-cluster.yaml up --scale ignite_server_node=2 -d
  2. Connect to the first server node’s container:

    docker exec -it cluster_ignite_server_node_1 bash
  3. Once inside of the container, go to the bin folder of the Ignite installation directory:

    cd apache-ignite/bin/
  4. Connect to the cluster with the SQLLine tool that was shipped with Ignite

    ./sqlline.sh --verbose=true -u jdbc:ignite:thin://127.0.0.1/
  5. Create the World database schema and load the sample data by using the script that is shipped with every Ignite release:

    !run ../examples/sql/world.sql
  6. Exit the container by closing the SQLLine connection (!q) and the bash session (exit).

Build and Deploy the Micronaut Microservice

As with the cluster, you deploy the microservice in the Docker environment.

First, create a Docker image:

  1. Go to the project’s root folder and build the microservice with Maven:

    mvn clean package
  2. Create a Docker image named ignite-micronaut-app(note, the project has the required Dockerfile, which was generated by Micronaut CLI):

    docker build -t ignite-micronaut-app .

Second, start the microservice from the image:

  1. Get the IP address of the first server node:

    docker inspect -f '{{range .NetworkSettings.Networks}}{{.IPAddress}}{{end}}' cluster_ignite_server_node_1
  2. Replace the <YOUR_IP_ADDRESS> parameter in the following command with the first server node’s IP address and launch the service in Docker:

    docker run -p 8080:8080 --env igniteServerAddress=<YOUR_IP_ADDRESS>:10800 --name ignite-micronaut-app --network cluster_ignite_net ignite-micronaut-app

Query Most Populated Cities

Congratulations! Now, your cluster and microservice are up-and-running and ready to process user requests.

Go ahead and request a list of the cities with a population equal to or greater than eight million by opening the following URL in a browser or with curl:

curl http://localhost:8080/cities?population=8000000

The response should be as follow:

[{"name":"Mumbai (Bombay)","countryCode":"IND","population":10500000},
{"name":"Seoul","countryCode":"KOR","population":9981619},
{"name":"São Paulo","countryCode":"BRA","population":9968485},
{"name":"Shanghai","countryCode":"CHN","population":9696300},
{"name":"Jakarta","countryCode":"IDN","population":9604900},
{"name":"Karachi","countryCode":"PAK","population":9269265},
{"name":"Istanbul","countryCode":"TUR","population":8787958},
{"name":"Ciudad de México","countryCode":"MEX","population":8591309},
{"name":"Moscow","countryCode":"RUS","population":8389200},
{"name":"New York","countryCode":"USA","population":8008278}]

Play with the population parameter to get cities with different populations.

Terminate the Microservice and the Cluster

Use the following commands to shut down the demo and free up resources:

  • Stop the Micronaut microservice:

    docker container stop ignite-micronaut-app
  • If you’re not planning to bring the service back later, remove the application container:

    docker container rm ignite-micronaut-app
  • Shutdown the Ignite cluster:

    docker-compose -p cluster -f ignite-cluster.yaml down

Bonus Task

Create a similar application but deploy it as a serverless function in your favorite cloud environment. When the solution is workable, upload it to GitHub and claim an award by sending a direct message to the tutorial author.