Enriching in parallel after a split - spring-integration

Question

This is a continuation of the shopping cart sample, where we have an external API that allows checkout from a shopping cart. To recap, we have a flow where we create an empty shopping, add line item(s) and finally checkout. All the operations above, happen as enrichments through HTTP calls to an external service. We would like to add line items concurrently (as part of the add line items) call. Our current configuration looks like this:
#Bean
public IntegrationFlow fullCheckoutFlow() {
return f -> f.channel("inputChannel")
.transform(fromJson(ShoppingCart.class))
.enrich(e -> e.requestChannel(SHOPPING_CART_CHANNEL))
.split(ShoppingCart.class, ShoppingCart::getLineItems)
.enrich(e -> e.requestChannel(ADD_LINE_ITEM_CHANNEL))
.aggregate(aggregator -> aggregator
.outputProcessor(g -> g.getMessages()
.stream()
.map(m -> (LineItem) m.getPayload())
.map(LineItem::getName)
.collect(joining(", "))))
.enrich(e -> e.requestChannel(CHECKOUT_CHANNEL))
.<String>handle((p, h) -> Message.called("We have " + p + " line items!!"));
}
#Bean
public IntegrationFlow addLineItem(Executor executor) {
return f -> f.channel(MessageChannels.executor(ADD_LINE_ITEM_CHANNEL, executor).get())
.handle(outboundGateway("http://localhost:8080/api/add-line-item", restTemplate())
.httpMethod(POST)
.expectedResponseType(String.class));
}
#Bean
public Executor executor(Tracer tracer, TraceKeys traceKeys, SpanNamer spanNamer) {
return new TraceableExecutorService(newFixedThreadPool(10), tracer, traceKeys, spanNamer);
}
To add line items in parallel, we are using an executor channel. However, they still seem to be getting processed sequentially when seen in zipkin:
What are we doing wrong? The source for the whole project is on github for reference.
Thanks!

Answer 1

First of all the main feature of Spring Integration is MessageChannel, but it still isn't clear to me why people are missing .channel() operator in between endpoint definitions.
I mean that for your case it must be like:
.split(ShoppingCart.class, ShoppingCart::getLineItems)
.channel(c -> c.executor(executor()))
.enrich(e -> e.requestChannel(ADD_LINE_ITEM_CHANNEL))
Now about your particular problem.
Look, ContentEnricher (.enrich()) is request-reply component: http://docs.spring.io/spring-integration/reference/html/messaging-transformation-chapter.html#payload-enricher.
Therefore it sends request to its requestChannel and waits for reply. And it is done independently of the requestChannel type.
I raw Java we can demonstrate such a behavior with this code snippet:
for (Object item: items) {
Data data = sendAndReceive(item);
}
where you should see that ADD_LINE_ITEM_CHANNEL as an ExecutorChannel doesn't have much value because we are blocked within loop for the reply anyway.
A .split() does exactly similar loop, but since by default it is with the DirectChannel, an iteration is done in the same thread. Therefore each next item waits for the reply for the previous.
That's why you definitely should parallel exactly as an input for the .enrich(), just after .split().