Logging Spring WebClient Calls

1. Overview

In this tutorial, we are going to show how to customize Spring's WebClient – a reactive HTTP client – to log requests and responses.

2. WebClient

3. Logging Requests and Responses

The default HttpClient used by WebClient is the Netty implementation, so after we change the reactor.netty.http.client logging level to DEBUG, we can see some request logging, but if we need a customized log, we can configure our loggers via WebClient#filters:

WebClient
  .builder()
  .filters(exchangeFilterFunctions -> {
      exchangeFilterFunctions.add(logRequest());
      exchangeFilterFunctions.add(logResponse());
  })
  .build()

In this code snippet, we've added two separate filters to log the request and the response.

Let's implement logRequest by using ExchangeFilterFunction#ofRequestProcessor:

ExchangeFilterFunction logRequest() {
    return ExchangeFilterFunction.ofRequestProcessor(clientRequest -> {
        if (log.isDebugEnabled()) {
            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder("Request: \n");
            //append clientRequest method and url
            clientRequest
              .headers()
              .forEach((name, values) -> values.forEach(value -> /* append header key/value */));
            log.debug(sb.toString());
        }
        return Mono.just(clientRequest);
    });
}

logResponse is the same, but we have to use ExchangeFilterFunction#ofResponseProcessor instead.

Now we can change the reactor.netty.http.client log level to INFO or ERROR to have a cleaner output.

4. Logging Request and Response with Body

HTTP clients have features to log the bodies of requests and responses. Thus, to achieve the goal, we are going to use a log-enabled HTTP client with our WebClient.

We can do this by manually setting WebClient.Builder#clientConnector – let's see with Jetty and Netty HTTP clients.

4.1. Logging with Jetty HttpClient

First, let's add the Maven dependency for jetty-reactive-httpclient to our pom:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.eclipse.jetty</groupId>
    <artifactId>jetty-reactive-httpclient</artifactId>
    <version>1.0.3</version>
</dependency>

Then we're going to create a customized Jetty HttpClient:

SslContextFactory.Client sslContextFactory = new SslContextFactory.Client();
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(sslContextFactory) {
    @Override
    public Request newRequest(URI uri) {
        Request request = super.newRequest(uri);
        return enhance(request);
    }
};

Here, we've overridden HttpClient#newRequest, then wrapped the Request in a log enhancer. Next, we need to register events with the request so that we can log as each part of the request becomes available:

Request enhance(Request request) {
    StringBuilder group = new StringBuilder();
    request.onRequestBegin(theRequest -> {
        // append request url and method to group
    });
    request.onRequestHeaders(theRequest -> {
        for (HttpField header : theRequest.getHeaders()) {
            // append request headers to group
        }
    });
    request.onRequestContent((theRequest, content) -> {
        // append content to group
    });
    request.onRequestSuccess(theRequest -> {
        log.debug(group.toString());
        group.delete(0, group.length());
    });
    group.append("\n");
    request.onResponseBegin(theResponse -> {
        // append response status to group
    });
    request.onResponseHeaders(theResponse -> {
        for (HttpField header : theResponse.getHeaders()) {
            // append response headers to group
        }
    });
    request.onResponseContent((theResponse, content) -> {
        // append content to group
    });
    request.onResponseSuccess(theResponse -> {
        log.debug(group.toString());
    });
    return request;
}

Finally, we have to build the WebClient instance:

WebClient
  .builder()
  .clientConnector(new JettyClientHttpConnector(httpClient))
  .build()

Of course, as we did before, we'll need to set the log level of RequestLogEnhancer to DEBUG.

4.2. Logging with Netty HttpClient

First, let's create a Netty HttpClient:

HttpClient httpClient = HttpClient
  .create()
  .wiretap(true)

Having enabled the wiretap, each request and response will be logged in full detail.

Next, we have to set the log level of Netty's client package reactor.netty.http.client to DEBUG:

logging.level.reactor.netty.http.client=DEBUG

Now, let's build the WebClient:

WebClient
  .builder()
  .clientConnector(new ReactorClientHttpConnector(httpClient))
  .build()

Our WebClient will log every request and response in full detail, but the default format of Netty built-in logger contains both Hex and Text representation of bodies and also a lot of data about request and response events.

So, if we need a customized logger for Netty, we can configure the HttpClient:

HttpClient httpClient = HttpClient
  .create()
  .tcpConfiguration(
    tc -> tc.bootstrap(
      b -> BootstrapHandlers.updateLogSupport(b, new CustomLogger(HttpClient.class))))
  .build()

Last, let's implement our CustomLogger that extends LoggingHandler:

public class CustomLogger extends LoggingHandler {
    public CustomLogger(Class<?> clazz) {
        super(clazz);
    }

    @Override
    protected String format(ChannelHandlerContext ctx, String event, Object arg) {
        if (arg instanceof ByteBuf) {
            ByteBuf msg = (ByteBuf) arg;
            return decode(
              msg, msg.readerIndex(), msg.readableBytes(), defaultCharset());
        }
        return super.format(ctx, event, arg);
    }
    
    // further code omitted for brevity
}

5. Conclusion

In this tutorial, we've used several techniques for logging request and response data while using Spring WebClient.

As always the code is available at our GitHub.