Feign Client: Powerful and clean Spring Boot APIs

Building microservices is a powerful approach, but interacting with external APIs often becomes repetitive. Developers using RestTemplate must write code for every step, from building URLs to handling responses, leading to a slow process that is error-prone and, frankly, frustrating. Fortunately, there is a better way to handle this problem and help developers manage large amounts of API calls — using the Feign Client in Spring Boot. This blog will explain how the Feign Client in microservices streamlines Spring Boot API interactions.

What is Spring cloud Feign Client?

Feign Client is a tool for developers, especially those using Java with Spring Boot. It simplifies creating connections to web services by letting you define an interface. Imagine having a to-do list app and needing to communicate with a separate service for user accounts. With Feign, users design an interface outlining how to interact with the user service. Feign handles behind-the-scenes communication, such as sending requests and processing responses, freeing developers to focus on the core logic of their applications. Feign is like a translator that speaks the language of web services, allowing apps to communicate with them easily.

Dependency for Feign Client

Steps to configure the Feign Client

Step 1: Enable the Feign Client inside the main class using @EnableFeign Clientsannotation and import the Feign auto-configuration annotation. ‘@ImportAutoConfiguration({Feign AutoConfiguration.class})’.

Step 2. Create an interface inside the project that will act as the client for this API, c. Add URLs that need to be called from third-party services.

Step 3: To handle custom error response, use the Error Decoder and custom exception.

Step 4: Configure the bean creation (read more..)