Spring Boot Actuator

Step 1:
Add the following dependency in your pom file. Don't add version number. It is managed by Spring Boot Starter Parent module (BOM).

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.springframework.boot</groupId>
    <artifactId>spring-boot-starter-actuator</artifactId>
</dependency>

Step 2: Start your Spring Boot application on the given port (refer application.properties | application.yml).

Note: Spring Boot Actuator expose its endpoints based on Spring HATEOAS. It's managed by Spring Boot Starter Parent.

Step 3: By Default Spring Boot Actuator module exposes the following endpoints.
==> All Spring Boot Actuator endpoints are grouped by this path /actuator.

• /actuator/health
• /actuator/health/{*path}
• /actuator/info

==> If you hit this endpoint in your browser http://localhost:<port>/actuator this would give the following JSON response.

{
   "_links":{
      "self":{
         "href":"http://localhost:8081/actuator",
         "templated":false
      },
      "health":{
         "href":"http://localhost:8081/actuator/health",
         "templated":false
      },
      "health-path":{
         "href":"http://localhost:8081/actuator/health/{*path}",
         "templated":true
      },
      "info":{
         "href":"http://localhost:8081/actuator/info",
         "templated":false
      }
   }
}

==> For /actuator/health the following response will be sent by Actuator.

{
   "status":"UP"
}

==> For /actuator/info the following response will be sent by Actuator.

{}

==> There are other /actuator endpoints which is not exposed by default. In order to expose those endpoints you have to configure the following property in your application.properties file. In this way you can expose all * or specific end points using comma separated endpoint names.

management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=*
management.endpoints.web.exposure.include=beans,caches,conditions,env

==> If you want to specify your custom path to access existing Actuator endpoints configure below property to override defaults. After this step, you can access /endpoints/health

management.endpoints.web.base-path=/endpoints

==> If you want to use different path navigation for existing Actuator endpoints configure below property to override defaults. After this step, you can access /endpoints/system/info

management.endpoints.web.path-mapping.env=/system/env

==> If you want to expose all your actuator endpoints in a different server port, use this property.

management.server.port=8082

Actuator Endpoints

Actuator Endpoint	Descriotion
/actuator	Discovery page for endpooints
/autoconfig	Auto-Config Report
/beans	List of Spring Beans
/configprops	List properties from @ConfigurationProperties
/dump	Display thread dump
/env	Environment Properties
/flyway	List applied flyway DB migrations
/health	Display application health info
/info	Application info
/loggers	Show and edit loggers
/liquibase	Show applied Liquibase DB migrations. Need neccessary dependency in the classpath
/metrics	Show metrics information
/mappings	Show request mappings (REST controller request/response information)
/shutdown	Gracefully shutdown - not enabled by default
/trace	Show last 100 request
/docs	Spring MVC: Shows Actuator documentation
/heapdump	Provides hprof head dump file
/jolokia	Expose JMX beans via http with Jolokia
/logfile	Returns log file

Custom Endpoints

Spring Boot does offers to expose your custom service endpoint as Spring Boot Actuator specific to your use case.
In order to expose your custom endpoint,

1. Create your class annotated with @Endpoint and @Component.
2. Expose your actuator endpoint name as @Endpoint id attribute.
3. Based on your usecase, you can mark this @Endpoint enableByDefault true or false
4. Any methods annotated with @ReadOperation, @WriteOperation, or @DeleteOperation are automatically exposed over JMX and, in a web application, over HTTP as well.
5. Run your application and hit /actuator/mycustom-endpoint

import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.Endpoint;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.endpoint.annotation.ReadOperation;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import java.util.List;

@Endpoint(id = "mycustom-endpoint", enableByDefault = true)
@Component
public class MyCustomEndpoint {

    @ReadOperation
    public List<String> getNames() {
        return List.of("Karthikeyan", "Pascal", "Thomas");
    }

}

Json Response

[
   "Karthikeyan",
   "Pascal",
   "Thomas"
]

Auto Configured Health Indicators

• Cassandra Health Indicator: Verifies Cassandra Database is up
• Disk Space Health Indicator: Checks for low disk space
• DataSource Health Indicator: Checks the connection to the Database
• Elastic Search Health Indicator: Checks the connection to Elastic Search cluster
• JMS Health Indicator: Checks the connection to the JMS Broker
• Mail Health Check Indicator: Checks the connection to the Mail server
• Mongo Health Indicator: Checks the MongoDB database connection
• RabbitMQ Health Indicator: Checks the RabbitMQ is working properly.
• Redis Health Indicator: Check the database connection to the Redis is working properly.
• Solr Health Indicator: Checks the Solr server is up.

Custom Health Indicator

In order to develop your custom HealthIndicator refer below code.

import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.Health;
import org.springframework.boot.actuate.health.HealthIndicator;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Component;

import java.util.Random;

@Component
public class MyCustomHealthIndicator implements HealthIndicator {

    @Override
    public Health health() {
        Random random = new Random();

        if(random.nextBoolean()) {
            return Health.down().withDetail("MSG-001", "Random Failure").build();
        }
        return Health.up().build();
    }
}

By default, the health endpoint shows cumulative health information from many components in your application. However, you can enable a detailed view by setting a property

management.endpoint.health.show-details=always

To test your custom Health Indicator endpoint hit the following endpoint.

http://localhost:8081/actuator/health
http://localhost:8081/actuator/health/myCustom

Spring Framework Application Information

Spring Boot Actuator: Auto-Configured Information Contributors

• Environment Information Contributor - Display All Environment Properties starting with info
• Git Information Contributor - Displays Git Information from git.properties
• Build Information Contributor - Display Build Information from META-INF/build-info.properties
• Also possible to build your custom contributor based on your use case.

In order to get application information via Actuator endpoint you can use /info. By default it doesn't return any response. Inorder to get response from /info you can configure below properties in your applicatin.properties

info.app.encoding=UTF-8
info.app.java.source=1.8
info.app.java.target=1.8

Hit the /info path and you will get below response.

{
   "app":{
      "encoding":"UTF-8",
      "java":{
         "source":"1.8",
         "target":"1.8"
      }
   }
}

Adding Git Commit Information

Add the following maven build plugin.

<plugin>
    <groupId>pl.project13.maven</groupId>
    <artifactId>git-commit-id-plugin</artifactId>
</plugin>

Execute mvn clean package. During this execution the above plugin will add git.properties in your target/classes folder.

git.commit.id=a2e593aac5a00459dc31f812ae20f68616d074b6
git.commit.id.abbrev=a2e593a
git.commit.id.describe=a2e593a-dirty
git.commit.id.describe-short=a2e593a-dirty

After applied above steps, when you hit the /info it will display Git information.

{
   "git":{
      "branch":"master",
      "commit":{
         "id":"a2e593a",
         "time":"2020-04-11T13:43:27Z"
      }
   }
}

Spring Boot Actuator Metrics

Metrics endpoint is available in /actuator/metrics

System Metrics:

• Total System Memory: In KB - mem
• Free Memory: In KB - mem.free
• Number of Processors as - processors
• System Uptime In Milliseconds - uptime
• Application Context Uptime as - instance.uptime
• Average System Load as - systemload.avearage
• Heap Information as - heap, heap.committed, heap.init, heap.used
• Thread Information as - threads, thread.peak, thread.daemon
• Class Load Information as - classes, classes.loaded, classes.unloaded
• Garbage Collection Information as - gc.xxx.count, gc.xxx.time
• Datasource Information - datasource.xxx.active, datasource.xxx.usage
• Cache Metrics - cache.xxx.size, cache.xxx.hit.ratio, cache.xxx.miss.ratio
  • Default Cache Statics for: EhCache, Hazelcast, Infinispan, jCache, Caffine
  • For other Cache Provider implement: CacheStatisicsProvider
• Tomcat Sessions: httpsessions.active, httpsessions.max

How to write your custom Counter metrics?

Suppose, you have a business service which you want to calculate the it hit count? How do you implement this scenario in Spring Boot 2.0 using Actuator?
Yes, it is possible using micrometer library. This dependency is already included in Spring Boot Actuator. For more information please refer Production Ready Metrics and MicroMeter - Application Monitoring

For the following business service /product/{id}, you would want to calculate the hit count then. Refer below code. Using MeterRegistry you have to create a your new counter endpoint and inside your getProduct method call Counter.count for auto increment.

import io.micrometer.core.instrument.Counter;
import io.micrometer.core.instrument.MeterRegistry;

@Service
public class ProductServiceImpl implements ProductService {
    private Counter productCounter;
    
    @Autowired
    public ProductServiceImpl(ProductRepository productRepository, JmsTextMessageService jmsTextMessageService,
                              MeterRegistry registry) {
        this.productCounter = registry.counter("com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.getproduct");
    }
    
    @Override
    public Product getProduct(Integer id) {
        productCounter.increment();
        return productRepository.findById(id).get();
    }

}

How to test the above logic using /actuator/metrics?
Along with other metrics endpoints, it would display your custom one as shown below.

{
   "names":[
      "com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.getproduct"
   ]
}

If you hit this /actuator/metrics/com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.getproduct it would display the response.

{
  "name": "com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.getproduct",
  "description": null,
  "baseUnit": null,
  "measurements": [
    {
      "statistic": "COUNT",
      "value": 2.0
    }
  ],
  "availableTags": []
}

Spring Boot Actuator /httptrace

Spring Boot Actuator /actuator/httptrace endpoint. It will store last 100 request and response of your HTTP request.
If you are using Spring Boot 2.2.x Actuator, by default it will not expose /trace endpoint.
You have to configure as shown below.

@Configuration
public class ActuatorConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public HttpTraceRepository httpTraceRepository() {
        return new InMemoryHttpTraceRepository();
    }
}

Refer: Actuator Migration Tips: For /trace

Runtime Interaction with Running Spring Boot Applications using Actuators

JMX / Jolokia

In the Java world JMX is a very popular method used to connect to running JVMs. Via JMX you are able to connect to JVM to view properties. But also you are able to go and set properties too.
The common use case is to go and change your log levels for different logger for debugging something.
For using something like ActiveMQ JMX also be used to see different queses to interact with the actual Message Queues as well.

• Drawbacks of JMX:
  • Security is cumbersome on a very large enterprise

Jolokia: is a library which supports to access your JMX beans. You can access your JMX beans via HTML page from Spring Boot Admin UI. For more information refer below links.

• Spring Boot Admin - JMX Bean Management
• Jolokia - Reference

Setting up Logging

By default Spring Boot application is setting up with INFO level logging. Let's look at below service class.
Inorder to execute your @Scheduled service, you have to @EnableScheduling in your Spring Boot application.

import org.slf4j.Logger;
import org.slf4j.LoggerFactory;
import org.springframework.scheduling.annotation.Scheduled;
import org.springframework.stereotype.Service;

@Service
public class LogOutputGeneratorService {

    private static Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(LogOutputGeneratorService.class);

    @Scheduled(fixedDelay = 5000)
    public void createLogEntries(){
        log.trace("This is a TRACE message");
        log.debug("This is a DEBUG message");
        log.info("This is a INFO message");
        log.warn("This is a WARN message");
        log.error("This is an ERROR message");
    }
}

The above method would print the following log messages in your console.

2020-04-13 15:54:31.036  INFO 4252 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a INFO message
2020-04-13 15:54:31.036  WARN 4252 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a WARN message
2020-04-13 15:54:31.036 ERROR 4252 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is an ERROR message

How to change log level?

In order to change your application logging level

• You can setup log level in application.properties
• You can put it in system properties
• You can use JVM properties

logging.level.com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.LogOutputGeneratorService=trace

Note: Application restart is required.

2020-04-13 16:00:28.635 TRACE 4273 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a TRACE message
2020-04-13 16:00:28.635 DEBUG 4273 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a DEBUG message
2020-04-13 16:00:28.635  INFO 4273 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a INFO message
2020-04-13 16:00:28.635  WARN 4273 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is a WARN message
2020-04-13 16:00:28.635 ERROR 4273 --- [   scheduling-1] c.t.l.a.s.LogOutputGeneratorService      : This is an ERROR message

How to Change Logging Properties during Runtime?

Let see the current logging level for your configured log

http://localhost:8081/actuator
http://localhost:8081/actuator/loggers/com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.LogOutputGeneratorService

{
    "configuredLevel": "TRACE",
    "effectiveLevel": "TRACE"
}

In order to change your application log level for your application, you can hit POST method

curl -i -X POST -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"configuredLevel": "INFO"}' http://localhost:8081/actuator/loggers/com.techstack.learn.actuator.services.LogOutputGeneratorService