CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javaspringrestapispring-mvc
Andremoniy
Andremoniy

Reputation: 34900

Prevent REST clients of simultaneous executing same methods with same arguments

Consider Spring MVC java web-application, which provides some REST API.

Let's say it has many methods, one of them is DELETE /api/foo/{id}, which obviously deletes foo entity from the DB with given id.

The problem is that due to big data in the DB, this operation is not immediate, so if client tries perform simultaneously multiply delete operations on same entity, say

DELETE /api/foo/123 x N times (by mistake in client software of course),

it causes some unpleasant side effects in the DB (you know, if you try delete same entity in several transactions, that's not generally nice).

My question is: what is the best practice in Spring MVC to prevent such situations?

I can certainly introduce synchronisation on Foo id in each such update method (PUT/DELETE). I will need to do it for all entities and all PUT/DELETE API methods though, which I really don't want to do. I suppose it should be some elegant and nice solution, how to perform such type of synchronisation on interceptor/servlet level, i.e. not on service of controller level.

I can also create specific interceptor and perform there waiting for duplicated requests (requests with same URL and parameters). But again, it doesn't sound as an elegant solution (until I will be ensured that it is not possible to configure in Spring MVC somehow in more beauty way).

Upvotes: 2

Views: 354

Answers (1)

Serge Ballesta
Serge Ballesta

Reputation: 149075

That is a problem of concurrency that shall be handled by using the appropriate transaction and locking level. Unfortunately, there is no single size fits all way here and depending on your actual requirements, you could have to implement optimistic or pessimistic locking, as well as one of the possible transaction level (from no transaction at all to serializable transactions).

In general, handling such questions at the web level is a bad idea, because you will end in questions like what to do in on request wants to delete some data that another one is displaying at the same time? In SpringMVC, the common way is to use transactional methods in the service layer. Additionaly, you should declare an optimistic or pessimistic locking system in the persistence layer.

Optimistic layer normally give a higher throughput, at the cost of some transaction ending in exceptions. In that case, current best practices are now to report the problem to the user asking him/her to send his/her request again.

Upvotes: 1

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