Service Registration and Discovery in Practice

Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Service registration and discovery are the foundation of microservice architecture. Dubbo abstracts the registry as the Registry interface, so you can switch smoothly between ZooKeeper, Nacos, Consul and others without changing business code.

Connecting a Registry

Using Nacos as an example, you only need to declare the registry address and protocol in configuration. On startup Dubbo automatically exports (export) and subscribes (subscribe) services:

dubbo:
 application:
 name: order-service
 registry:
 address: nacos://127.0.0.1:8848
 protocol:
 name: dubbo
 port: 20880

After a provider starts, it writes its metadata (interface, IP, port, weight, etc.) into the registry. When a consumer starts, it subscribes to the interface node, fetches the available provider list and caches it locally; subsequent calls go directly to the local cache, reducing registry pressure.

Service Discovery on Zhuifeng Notes

Service Registration and Discovery in Practice

Connecting a Registry