Connecting to a Server message queue using Reactor Netty

Question

I am trying to connect to a message queue running on a docker container using Reactor Netty. I am doing this as standalone, not using SpringFlux because of dependency issues.

From the examples in the Reactor Netty documentation I saw there is a way to connect to the Server and get a response:

public static void main(String[] args) {
        String response =
                HttpClient.create()
                          .headers(h -> h.add("my header", my_header)
                          .get()
                          .uri(my_uri)
                          .responseContent() 
                          .aggregate()       
                          .asString()        
                          .block();
    }

but when I try afterwards to display the output via System.out.println() nothing happens.

I also tried to understand how to use:

Flux<V> response(BiFunction<HttpClientResponse,ByteBufFlux,Publisher<V>> receiver)

But I am not sure exactly what to do. I saw in the documentation there is a class called Connection, which uses a TCPClient and has a method subscribe.

I am kind of lost, can you possibly point me in the right direction of implementing this in Reactor Netty without the use of spring-flux?

Thank you

EDIT:

After some experimentation i got this:

private Disposable subscribe() {
    return HttpClient.create()
               .headers(h -> h.add("my header", my_header)
               .get()
               .uri(my_uri)
               .response((res, bytes) - > {
                   System.out.println(bytes.asString());
                   return bytes.asString();})
               .subscribe();
}

This gives me a FluxHandle, how can I use that to actually read the body of the response?

Answer 1

So I figured out how to subscibe and read the data recieved from the Server and even transform the data to JSON, using the jackson library, to be more easily read by my code.

private Disposable subscribe() {
    return HttpClient.create()
               .headers(h -> h.add("my header", my_header)
               .get()
               .uri(my_uri)
               .response((resp, bytes) -> {
                    return bytes.asString();
                })
                .subscribe(response -> {
                    try {
                        consumeData(new ObjectMapper()
                                .readValue(response, MyData.class));
                    } catch (IOException ex) {
                        System.out.println("ERROR converting to json: " + ex);
                    }
                    });
}

it seems that when using the subscribe() method i can listen to incoming responses and do something with them. I still need to add a way for the connection to close when the server stops, or the message queue is shut down, so the client doesn't hang on non-existent message queue.