annotation #RibbonClient not work together with RestTemplate - spring-cloud

Question

I am trying Ribbon configuration with RestTemplate based on bookmark service example but without luck, here is my code:
#SpringBootApplication
#RestController
#RibbonClient(name = "foo", configuration = SampleRibbonConfiguration.class)
public class BookmarkServiceApplication {
public static void main(String[] args) {
SpringApplication.run(BookmarkServiceApplication.class, args);
}
#Autowired
RestTemplate restTemplate;
#RequestMapping("/hello")
public String hello() {
String greeting = this.restTemplate.getForObject("http://foo/hello", String.class);
return String.format("%s, %s!", greeting);
}
}
with error page as below:
Whitelabel Error Page
This application has no explicit mapping for /error, so you are seeing this as a fallback.
Tue Mar 22 19:59:33 GMT+08:00 2016
There was an unexpected error (type=Internal Server Error, status=500).
No instances available for foo
but if I remove annotation #RibbonClient, everything will be just ok,
#RibbonClient(name = "foo", configuration = SampleRibbonConfiguration.class)
and here is SampleRibbonConfiguration implementation:
public class SampleRibbonConfiguration {
#Autowired
IClientConfig ribbonClientConfig;
#Bean
public IPing ribbonPing(IClientConfig config) {
return new PingUrl();
}
#Bean
public IRule ribbonRule(IClientConfig config) {
return new AvailabilityFilteringRule();
}
}
Is it because RibbonClient can not work with RestTemplate together?
and another question is that does Ribbon configuration like load balancing rule could be configured via application.yml configuration file?
as from Ribbon wiki, seems we can configure Ribbon parameters like NFLoadBalancerClassName, NFLoadBalancerRuleClassName etc in property file, does Spring Cloud also supports this?

Answer 1

I'm going to assume you're using Eureka for Service Discovery.
Your particular error:
No instances available for foo
can happen for a couple of reasons
1.) All services are down
All of the instances of your foo service could legitimately be DOWN.
Solution: Try visiting your Eureka Dashboard and ensure all the services are actually UP.
If you're running locally, the Eureka Dashboard is at http://localhost:8761/
2.) Waiting for heartbeats
When you very first register a service via Eureka, there's a period of time where the service is UP but not available. From the documentation
A service is not available for discovery by clients until the
instance, the server and the client all have the same metadata in
their local cache (so it could take 3 heartbeats)
Solution: Wait a good 30 seconds after starting your foo service before you try calling it via your client.
In your particular case I'm going to guess #2 is likely what's happening to you. You're probably starting the service and trying to call it immediately from the client.
When it doesn't work, you stop the client, make some changes and restart. By that time though, all of the heartbeats have completed and your service is now available.
For your second question. Look at the "Customizing the Ribbon Client using properties" section in the reference documentation. (link)