Pabodha Wanniarachchi

Posted on May 28

How Microservices Talk to Each Other Using WebClient

#webdev #beginners #microservices #backend

What is a Microservice?

Instead of building one big app that does everything, you split it into small independent services. Each service does one job and runs separately.

I have two services:

product-service - manages products (port 8081)
order-service - manages orders (port 8082)

These two services live in separate Spring Boot apps with separate databases. But when a customer places an order, order-service needs to know about the product — so they need to talk to each other.

The Problem

Order-service doesn't have product data. It only knows the productId from the request. So before saving an order it needs to ask product-service:

"Hey, does this product exist? How much stock do you have?"

The Solution - WebClient

WebClient is Spring's HTTP client that lets one service call another service's REST API.

Step 1 - Configure WebClient as a Bean

@Configuration
public class WebClientConfig {

    @Bean
    public WebClient productWebClient() {
        return WebClient.builder()
                .baseUrl("http://localhost:8081/api/products")
                .build();
    }
}

You set the base URL once here. Now anywhere you inject productWebClient it already knows where product-service lives. Notice the bean is named productWebClient — this matches the field name in the service so Spring knows which WebClient to inject.

Step 2 - Inject and Use It in OrderService

@Service
@RequiredArgsConstructor
public class OrderService {

    private final OrderRepository orderRepository;
    private final OrderMapper orderMapper;
    private final WebClient productWebClient; // injected from config

@RequiredArgsConstructor from Lombok automatically creates the constructor and injects all final fields — including productWebClient.

Step 3 - Call product-service to fetch product

ProductResponse product = productWebClient.get()
        .uri(uriBuilder -> uriBuilder.path("/{id}").build(itemId))
        .retrieve()
        .bodyToMono(ProductResponse.class)
        .block();

Breaking this down line by line:

productWebClient.get()

Make a GET request. Combined with baseUrl it calls GET http://localhost:8081/api/products/{id}

.uri(uriBuilder -> uriBuilder.path("/{id}").build(itemId))

Append the product id to the URL path safely. itemId replaces {id}.

.retrieve()

Actually send the request and get the response.

.bodyToMono(ProductResponse.class)

Convert the JSON response body into a ProductResponse object. Mono means "a single value coming in the future" — WebClient is async by nature.

.block()

Wait for the result synchronously. Since we need the product data before continuing, we block here.

Step 4 - Use the product data to build the order

// check if enough stock
if (product.getStockQuantity() < orderRequest.getQuantity()) {
    throw new Exception("Insufficient stock Available: " + product.getStockQuantity());
}

// calculate total price from product price × quantity
BigDecimal totalPrice = product.getPrice()
        .multiply(BigDecimal.valueOf(orderRequest.getQuantity()));

// save order
Order order = orderMapper.toEntity(orderRequest);
order.setTotalPrice(totalPrice);
order.setStatus(Order.OrderStatus.PENDING);
order.setCreatedAt(LocalDateTime.now());
order.setUpdatedAt(LocalDateTime.now());

return orderMapper.toResponse(orderRepository.save(order));

The totalPrice is calculated automatically from product-service data — the client only sends productId and quantity. Everything else comes from the inter-service call.

The Full Flow Visualized

Client (Postman)
      |
      | POST /api/orders
      ↓
 order-service (8082)
      |
      | GET /api/products/{id}   ← WebClient call
      ↓
 product-service (8081)
      |
      | returns ProductResponse (name, price, stock)
      ↓
 order-service
      |
      | checks stock, calculates price, saves order
      ↓
 returns OrderResponse to client ✅

About the ENUM — @JdbcTypeCode(SqlTypes.NAMED_ENUM)

PostgreSQL supports custom ENUM types. In your migration you created:

CREATE TYPE order_status AS ENUM ('PENDING', 'CONFIRMED', 'CANCELLED');

By default Hibernate saves enums as plain strings, but PostgreSQL's custom ENUM type is stricter, it refuses plain strings. The annotation tells Hibernate to treat this field as a PostgreSQL named ENUM type so they speak the same language:

@Enumerated(EnumType.STRING)
@JdbcTypeCode(SqlTypes.NAMED_ENUM)
private OrderStatus status;

Key Things to Remember

WebClient needs a base URL - set it once in config, reuse everywhere.

.block() makes it synchronous - we need the product data before saving, so we wait.

Services only share DTOs - order-service doesn't import product-service's entity or repository, only its ProductResponse DTO. Each service owns its own data.

Each service has its own database - order-service never directly queries product-service's database. It always goes through the REST API.

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