Overview

A sample demonstrating capabilities in the Spring Framework to build WebSocket-style messaging applications. The application uses STOMP (over WebSocket) for messaging between browsers and server and SockJS for WebSocket fallback options.

Client-side libraries used:

• stomp-websocket
• sockjs-client
• Twitter Bootstrap
• Knockout.js

Server-side runs on Tomcat 8, Jetty 9.0.4, or Glassfish 4.0. Other servlet containers should also function correctly via fallback options (assuming Servlet 3.0) but they don't support WebSocket yet.

Also see the blog post introducing these features.

Tomcat 8

The app has been tested with this Tomcat 8 snapshot. We are also expecting an RC2 release soon as well as a backport to Tomcat 7.

After unzipping Tomcat 8, set TOMCAT8_HOME as an environment variable and use deployTomcat8.sh and shutdownTomcat8.sh in this directory.

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080/spring-websocket-portfolio/index.html

Jetty 9

The easiest way to run on Jetty 9 (currently 9.0.5):

mvn jetty:run

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080/spring-websocket-portfolio/index.html

Note: To deploy to a Jetty installation, add this to Jetty's start.ini:

OPTIONS=plus
etc/jetty-plus.xml
OPTIONS=annotations
etc/jetty-annotations.xml

Glassfish

After unzipping Glassfish 4 start the server:

<unzip_dir>/glassfish4/bin/asadmin start-domain

Set GLASSFISH4_HOME as an environment variable and use deployGlassfish.sh in this directory.

Open a browser and go to http://localhost:8080/spring-websocket-portfolio/index.html

Using a Message Broker

Out of the box, a "simple" message broker is used to send messages to subscribers (e.g. stock quotes) but you can optionally use a fully featured STOMP message broker such as RabbitMQ, ActiveMQ, and others, by following these steps:

1. Install and start the message broker. For RabbitMQ make sure you've also installed the RabbitMQ STOMP plugin. For ActiveMQ you need to configure a STOMP transport connnector.
2. Use the MessageBrokerConfigurer in WebSocketConfig.java to enable the STOMP broker relay instead of the simple broker.
3. You may also need to configure additional STOMP broker relay properties such as relayHost, relayPort, systemLogin, systemPassword, depending on your message broker. The default settings should work for RabbitMQ and ActiveMQ.

Logging

To see all logging, enable TRACE for org.springframework.messaging and org.springframework.samples in log4j.xml.

Keep in mind that will generate a lot of information as messages flow through the application. The QuoteService for example generates a lot of messages frequently. You can modify it to send quotes less frequently or simply comment out the @Scheduled annotation.