Driver setup (version 6)

Setup with default configuration, this automatically loads a properties file arangodb.properties if exists in the classpath:

// this instance is thread-safe
ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder().build();

The driver is configured with some default values:

To customize the configuration the parameters can be changed in the code…

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .host("192.168.182.50", 8888)
  .build();

… or with a custom properties file (my.properties)

InputStream in = MyClass.class.getResourceAsStream("my.properties");
ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .loadProperties(in)
  .build();

Example for arangodb.properties:

arangodb.hosts=127.0.0.1:8529,127.0.0.1:8529
arangodb.user=root
arangodb.password=

Network protocol

The driver’s default network protocol is the binary VelocyStream protocol. It is no longer support by ArangoDB from version 3.12.0 onward. To use the HTTP protocol instead, you have to set the configuration with the useProtocol method to Protocol.HTTP_JSON for HTTP with JSON content, or Protocol.HTTP_VPACK for HTTP with VelocyPack  content.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .useProtocol(Protocol.HTTP_VPACK)
  .build();

In addition to set the configuration for HTTP, you have to add the apache httpclient to your classpath.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
  <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
  <version>4.5.1</version>
</dependency>

SSL

To use SSL, you have to set the configuration useSsl to true and set a SSLContext (see example code ).

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .useSsl(true)
  .sslContext(sc)
  .build();

No additional configuration is required to use TLSv1.3 (if available on the server side), but a JVM that supports it is required (OpenJDK 11 or later, or distributions of Java 8 with TLSv1.3 support).

Connection Pooling

The driver supports connection pooling for VelocyStream with a default of 1 and HTTP with a default of 20 maximum connections per host. To change this value, use the method maxConnections(Integer) in ArangoDB.Builder.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .maxConnections(8)
  .build();

The driver does not explicitly release connections. To avoid exhaustion of resources when no connection is needed, you can clear the connection pool (close all connections to the server) or use connection TTL.

arangoDB.shutdown();

Thread Safety

The driver can be used concurrently by multiple threads. All the following classes are thread safe:

• com.arangodb.ArangoDB
• com.arangodb.ArangoDatabase
• com.arangodb.ArangoCollection
• com.arangodb.ArangoGraph
• com.arangodb.ArangoVertexCollection
• com.arangodb.ArangoEdgeCollection
• com.arangodb.ArangoView
• com.arangodb.ArangoSearch

Any other class should not be considered thread safe. In particular classes representing request options (package com.arangodb.model) and response entities (package com.arangodb.entity) are not thread safe.

Fallback hosts

The driver supports configuring multiple hosts. The first host is used to open a connection to. When this host is not reachable the next host from the list is used. To use this feature just call the method host(String, int) multiple times.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .host("host1", 8529)
  .host("host2", 8529)
  .build();

The driver is also able to acquire a list of known hosts in a cluster. For this the driver has to be able to successfully open a connection to at least one host to get the list of hosts. Then it can use this list when fallback is needed. You can enable this feature as follows:

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .acquireHostList(true)
  .build();

Load Balancing

Since version 4.3 the driver supports load balancing for cluster setups in two different ways.

The first one is a round robin load balancing where the driver iterates through a list of known hosts and performs every request on a different host than the request before.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .loadBalancingStrategy(LoadBalancingStrategy.ROUND_ROBIN)
  .build();

Just like the Fallback hosts feature the round robin load balancing strategy can use the acquireHostList configuration to acquire a list of all known hosts in the cluster. Do so only requires the manually configuration of only one host. Because this list is updated frequently it makes load balancing over the whole cluster very comfortable.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .loadBalancingStrategy(LoadBalancingStrategy.ROUND_ROBIN)
  .acquireHostList(true)
  .build();

The second load balancing strategy allows to pick a random host from the configured or acquired list of hosts and sticks to that host as long as the connection is open. This strategy is useful for an application - using the driver - which provides a session management where each session has its own instance of ArangoDB build from a global configured list of hosts. In this case it could be wanted that every sessions sticks with all its requests to the same host but not all sessions should use the same host. This load balancing strategy also works together with acquireHostList.

ArangoDB arangoDB = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .loadBalancingStrategy(LoadBalancingStrategy.ONE_RANDOM)
  .acquireHostList(true)
  .build();

Connection time to live

Since version 4.4 the driver supports setting a TTL (time to life) in milliseconds for connections managed by the internal connection pool.

ArangoDB arango = new ArangoDB.Builder()
  .connectionTtl(5 * 60 * 1000)
  .build();

In this example all connections will be closed/reopened after 5 minutes.

Connection TTL can be disabled setting it to null:

.connectionTtl(null)

The default TTL is null (no automatic connection closure).