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Spring / Spring Retry Interview Questions

What is the use of the recover attribute in @Retryable?

The recover attribute in @Retryable allows you to explicitly name the recovery method that should be invoked when all retry attempts are exhausted. Without this attribute, Spring Retry uses automatic method matching — it looks for a @Recover method in the same bean whose return type and exception parameter type match the failed retryable method.

The automatic matching works in most cases, but can be ambiguous when:

  • Multiple @Recover methods exist with the same return type
  • You want a specific recovery method for a specific @Retryable method without sharing recovery logic

Using the recover attribute to be explicit:

@Retryable(
    retryFor = IOException.class,
    maxAttempts = 3,
    recover = "recoverFromIOError"
)
public String fetchDocument(String id) throws IOException {
    return documentService.get(id);
}

@Recover
public String recoverFromIOError(IOException ex, String id) {
    return "Document " + id + " unavailable";
}

@Recover
public String recoverFromGenericError(Exception ex, String id) {
    return "Generic fallback for " + id;
}

By naming recover = recoverFromIOError" you ensure that fetchDocument always routes to the correct recovery method

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