How does the RetryListener interface work in Spring Retry?

RetryListener is a callback interface that lets you hook into retry lifecycle events without modifying the retried method or recovery logic. It is useful for metrics collection, structured logging, and alerting.

The RetryListener interface defines three methods:

public interface RetryListener {
    <T, E extends Throwable> boolean open(RetryContext context, RetryCallback<T, E> callback);
    <T, E extends Throwable> void onError(RetryContext context, RetryCallback<T, E> callback, Throwable throwable);
    <T, E extends Throwable> void close(RetryContext context, RetryCallback<T, E> callback, Throwable throwable);
}

• open: Called before the first attempt. Returning false suppresses all retries for this operation.
• onError: Called after each failed attempt with the thrown exception and current RetryContext.
• close: Called after the retry sequence ends — whether by success, exhaustion, or exception.

Registering a listener on RetryTemplate:

retryTemplate.setListeners(new RetryListener[] { new MyMetricsListener() });

For annotation-based retry, register the listener bean by name in the listeners attribute of @Retryable:

@Retryable(listeners = {"metricsRetryListener"})

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