The LoadBalancerClient Filter

The LoadBalancerClientFilter looks for a URI in the exchange attribute named ServerWebExchangeUtils.GATEWAY_REQUEST_URL_ATTR. If the URL has a scheme of lb (such as lb://myservice), it uses the Spring Cloud LoadBalancerClient to resolve the name (myservice in this case) to an actual host and port and replaces the URI in the same attribute. The unmodified original URL is appended to the list in the ServerWebExchangeUtils.GATEWAY_ORIGINAL_REQUEST_URL_ATTR attribute. The filter also looks in the ServerWebExchangeUtils.GATEWAY_SCHEME_PREFIX_ATTR attribute to see if it equals lb. If so, the same rules apply. The following listing configures a LoadBalancerClientFilter:

Example 1. application.yml
spring:
  cloud:
    gateway:
      routes:
      - id: myRoute
        uri: lb://service
        predicates:
        - Path=/service/**
By default, when a service instance cannot be found in the LoadBalancer, a 503 is returned. You can configure the Gateway to return a 404 by setting spring.cloud.gateway.loadbalancer.use404=true.
The isSecure value of the ServiceInstance returned from the LoadBalancer overrides the scheme specified in the request made to the Gateway. For example, if the request comes into the Gateway over HTTPS but the ServiceInstance indicates it is not secure, the downstream request is made over HTTP. The opposite situation can also apply. However, if GATEWAY_SCHEME_PREFIX_ATTR is specified for the route in the Gateway configuration, the prefix is stripped and the resulting scheme from the route URL overrides the ServiceInstance configuration.
LoadBalancerClientFilter uses a blocking ribbon LoadBalancerClient under the hood. We suggest you use ReactiveLoadBalancerClientFilter instead. You can switch to it by setting the value of the spring.cloud.loadbalancer.ribbon.enabled to false.