Spring-Integration Default Retry Configuration - spring-integration

Question

I have a spring-integration project which does the following
1.) Read messages from a queue
2.) Transform messages
3.) Send transformed messages to an Api
Relevant Config for Step 1
<bean id="cachingConnectionFactory" class="org.springframework.jms.connection.CachingConnectionFactory">
<property name="targetConnectionFactory" ref="MQConnectionFactory" />
<property name="sessionCacheSize" value="10"/>
</bean>
<bean id="requestQueue" class="com.ibm.mq.jms.MQQueue">
<constructor-arg index="0" value="${queuemanager}"/>
<constructor-arg index="1" value="${incoming.queue}"/>
</bean>
<integration:poller id="poller" default="true" fixed-delay="1000"/>
<jms:message-driven-channel-adapter id="jmsIn"
destination="requestQueue"
channel="inputJsonConversionChannel"
connection-factory="cachingConnectionFactory" />
Step 3 is a Service Activator, and in case of a failure (not 201 HTTP status) I am throwing a custom exception.
Relevant config for step 3
<int:service-activator input-channel="ApiChannel" ref="EventApiClient" method="post"/>
<int:service-activator input-channel="errorChannel" ref="PListenerExceptionHandler" method="handleFailure"/>
The behaviour that occurs is that, it keeps trying to connect and gets the same errors over and over again.
I wanted to know if someone could explain to me
how is this default retry being configured/triggered?
how can I redirect the errors to an error channel, because right now errors in Step 1 use the global error channel and the default error handler I created. But errors from the Service Activator are not.
Cheers
Kris

Answer 1

It's retrying because the message-driven channel adapter is transactional by default, which means the exception causes the message to be rolled back onto the queue.
You can add an error-channel to the adapter and any exceptions will be sent in the form of an ErrorMessage which has a payload MessagingException which has properties failedMessage and cause.
If the integration flow downstream of the error channel "consumes" the error, the transaction will be committed and the message removed. If the error flow throws an exception, the transaction will be rolled back, as before.
There is a default errorChannel which just logs the exception by default.
error-channel="errorChannel"
or you can use a custom channel and put your own logic in a subscriber to that channel.