Chapter 5. Create the Timetable service

Now you are ready to put everything together and create a REST service. But solving planning problems on REST threads causes HTTP timeout issues. Therefore, the Spring Boot starter injects a SolverManager, which runs solvers in a separate thread pool and can solve multiple datasets in parallel.

package com.example.solver;

import java.util.UUID;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;

import com.example.domain.TimeTable;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverJob;
import org.optaplanner.core.api.solver.SolverManager;
import org.springframework.beans.factory.annotation.Autowired;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.PostMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestBody;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RequestMapping;
import org.springframework.web.bind.annotation.RestController;

@RestController
@RequestMapping("/timeTable")
public class TimeTableController {

    @Autowired
    private SolverManager<TimeTable, UUID> solverManager;

    @PostMapping("/solve")
    public TimeTable solve(@RequestBody TimeTable problem) {
        UUID problemId = UUID.randomUUID();
        // Submit the problem to start solving
        SolverJob<TimeTable, UUID> solverJob = solverManager.solve(problemId, problem);
        TimeTable solution;
        try {
            // Wait until the solving ends
            solution = solverJob.getFinalBestSolution();
        } catch (InterruptedException | ExecutionException e) {
            throw new IllegalStateException("Solving failed.", e);
        }
        return solution;
    }

}

In this example, the initial implementation waits for the solver to finish, which can still cause an HTTP timeout. The complete implementation avoids HTTP timeouts much more elegantly.