13.2 The <delayer> Element

The <delayer> element is used to delay the Message flow between two Message Channels. As with the other endpoints, you can provide the "input-channel" and "output-channel" attributes, but the delayer also requires at least the 'default-delay' attribute with the number of milliseconds that each Message should be delayed.

 <delayer input-channel="input" default-delay="3000" output-channel="output"/>

If you need per-Message determination of the delay, then you can also provide the name of a header within the 'delay-header-name' attribute:

 <delayer input-channel="input" output-channel="output"
          default-delay="3000" delay-header-name="delay"/>

In the example above the 3 second delay would only apply in the case that the header value is not present for a given inbound Message. If you only want to apply a delay to Messages that have an explicit header value, then you can set the 'default-delay' to 0. For any Message that has a delay of 0 (or less), the Message will be sent directly. In fact, if there is not a positive delay value for a Message, it will be sent to the output channel on the calling Thread.

[Tip]Tip
The delay handler actually supports header values that represent an interval in milliseconds (any Object whose toString() method produces a value that can be parsed into a Long) as well as java.util.Date instances representing an absolute time. In the former case, the milliseconds will be counted from the current time (e.g. a value of 5000 would delay the Message for at least 5 seconds from the time it is received by the Delayer). In the latter case, with an actual Date instance, the Message will not be released until that Date occurs. In either case, a value that equates to a non-positive delay, or a Date in the past, will not result in any delay. Instead, it will be sent directly to the output channel in the original sender's Thread.

The default scheduler will have a thread pool of size 1. If you want to configure and provide a different scheduler, you can provide the reference through the 'scheduler' attribute:

 <delayer input-channel="input" output-channel="output"
          default-delay="0" delay-header-name="delay"
          scheduler="someScheduledExecutorService"/>