Provide HTTP Binding

[glassfishrobot]

If none is available from another organization, I think the JCP should provide (maybe in a separate JSR) a standard HTTP binding for JMS, given how often these technologies are used together.

Affected Versions

[1.1]

[glassfishrobot]

• Issue Imported From: https://github.com/javaee/jms-spec/issues/7
• Original Issue Raised By:@glassfishrobot
• Original Issue Assigned To: Unassigned

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@glassfishrobot Commented Reported by fribeiro

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@glassfishrobot Commented bsnyder said: This is exactly what I meant with my comment in #5. Providing specifications for binding JMS to other various technologies would really help out users.

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@glassfishrobot Commented clebertsuconic said: Maybe a new message type? for this and spec-5?

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@glassfishrobot Commented fribeiro said: I like the idea of a new message type for HTTP but think it is complementary, not supplementary, to a standard mapping between HTTP and JMS.

Vendors have long used non-standard things like "HTTP-Content-Type", for example, that make it difficult to integrate with other systems.

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@glassfishrobot Commented rdohna said: I don't quite understand. HTTP is a synchronous protocoll, JMS is asynchronous. What is the use case to transport an HTTP request via JMS? Load balancing? Routing? Pipes-And-Filters? Any of the EAI patterns? Can't you do these things with plain vanilla EJBs, for example? And the programming model would be much simpler, wouldn't it?

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@glassfishrobot Commented fribeiro said: I've seen HTTP being properly used more than once to allow communication from platforms without JMS client libraries, for example, not to mention a HTTP request may need to be transformed to JMS as explained in my most recent comment in JMS-SPEC-9.

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@glassfishrobot Commented rdohna said: Did I get your scenario right: You have some client that can't directly produce messages for your JMS system. You provide it a generic adapter that converts any http request into a JMS message. The adapter replies to the client as soon as the message is sent. You use some message routing to get the request to some service. If there is any feedback from the service to the client, it's in a separate channel. The important thing to note is that almost all HTTP header fields could be required for the routing, while the body is simply the HTTP body, i.e. eventually even binary.

I'd prefer a direct feedback for the client, when the request is invalid. But you may have use cases where this is okay.

So I guess that the binding this issue requests is to standardise the mapping of the HTTP field names to the JMS headers/properties, right? I assume most fields would just map one to one, but e.g. the first line would have to be split into properties for the method (e.g. GET), the path (e.g. "/"), and the protocol version (e.g. "HTTP/1.1").

To cut a long story short, I think this is either a bridge between two different messaging solutions or just one specific application protocol. In both cases, I'd say that it should not be part of this spec.

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@glassfishrobot Commented fribeiro said: You got it right, and I can agree if doesn't necessarily fit in the JMS spec itself (which should perhaps focus only on the API), but, if not there, where do you think it should be standardized?

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@glassfishrobot Commented rdohna said: I have no idea other that what you've suggested: Another JSR.

But this issue should be closed, shouldn't it?

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@glassfishrobot Commented fribeiro said: I can't do it myself and also want to wait for Nigel's comments about this matter, he can probably help with the new JSR or point me to another venue for that standard.

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@glassfishrobot Commented abien said: +1 for a separate spec.

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@glassfishrobot Commented @nigeldeakin said: I think that this proposal is is essentially proposing that JMS defines some kind of HTTP binding (protocol, really) to a JMS provider. I can well imagine that this is a common requirement: I know at least two JMS providers that provide a HTTP protocol and I'm sure there are others.

I think there are a number of issues here:

1. Whether a standard HTTP protocol to JMS is required 2. If so, whether it belongs in JMS or in some other specification

Defining a standard HTTP protocol sounds, on the face of it, a good idea. It would be necessary to decide what JMS features could be made available using HTTP - some, like message order or transactions, would probably rely on the concept of there being some kind of client state maintained between requests.

Then there's the question of whether this is should be defined as part of JMS, as a separate JCP specification, or under the auspices of some other body.

As a general rule the JCP is "for developing standard technical specifications for Java technology", but defining a HTTP protocol for JMS is certainly not out of the question. Some would probably recommend that it be defined at OASIS, or even IETF. But if it needs to align strongly with the Java API then that might be enough justification to develop it as part of JMS.

We would need to consider what the compatibility requirements would be for the HTTP protocol? Would all JMS products be required to include a REST server that supported the protocol?

We would also need to consider where the HTTP protocol would sit the JMS architecture. Would the JMS server support the HTTP protocol or would we be defining a separate server that accepted HTTP requests and translated them to the native network protocol for the JMS server, perhaps by just translating them into JMS API calls?

My feeling is that we would never want to make it mandatory for a JMS provider to directly support the HTTP protocol, and that it should be possible to implement it as a separate component interfacing with the JMS provider using the standard JMS API (if it requires proprietary API then it isn't really a JMS binding). This suggests to me that this belongs in a separate JSR.

I'm also mindful that this would be a significant piece of work and there's not going to be time to deliver in the JMS 2.0 timescales in any case.

So my proposal is that we take the decision to not attempt to define a HTTP protocol for JMS 2.0. We can leave the issue open, but it is likely that a HTTP protocol would need to be delivered as a separate JSR.

Irrespective of this, there may be scope to enhance the existing JMS (Java) API to make it easier to deliver a HTTP binding. I think we already have one in #5, and there may be others).

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@glassfishrobot Commented swatdba said: I agree with Nigel that a thorough specification for this is probably not feasible for this release. We may want to consider a couple of items to add that would be basic common features of current REST/JMS implementations such as publishing use POST and consuming using DELETE or GET, etc. These could be specified for those who wish to support REST, not mandated for any JMS provider.

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@glassfishrobot Commented fribeiro said: You may want to go ahead and close the issue.

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@glassfishrobot Commented @nigeldeakin said: Comment noted - but I think this is an issue which deserves further discussion for a further version of JMS. So I'll leave this open. Tagging for review for 2.1.

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@glassfishrobot Commented This issue was imported from java.net JIRA JMS_SPEC-7