CookBook

This document describes various recipes for working with Camel

Bean Integration

Camel supports the integration of beans and POJOs in a number of ways

Annotations

If a bean is defined in Spring XML or scanned using the Spring component scanning mechanism and a <camelContext> is used or a CamelBeanPostProcessor then we process a number of Camel annotations to do various things such as injecting resources or producing, consuming or routing messages.

Example
See the POJO Messaging Example for how to use the annotations for routing and messaging.

Bean Component

The Bean component allows one to invoke a particular method. Alternately the Bean component supports the creation of a proxy via ProxyHelper to a Java interface; which the implementation just sends a message containing a BeanInvocation to some Camel endpoint.

Spring Remoting

We support a Spring Remoting provider which uses Camel as the underlying transport mechanism. The nice thing about this approach is we can use any of the Camel transport Components to communicate between beans. It also means we can use Content Based Router and the other Enterprise Integration Patterns in between the beans; in particular we can use Message Translator to be able to convert what the on-the-wire messages look like in addition to adding various headers and so forth.

Bean binding
Whenever Camel invokes a bean method via one of the above methods (Bean component, Spring Remoting or POJO Consuming) then the Bean Binding mechanism is used to figure out what method to use (if it is not explicit) and how to bind the Message to the parameters possibly using the Parameter Binding Annotations or using a method name option.

Annotation Based Expression Language

You can also use any of the Languages supported in Camel to bind expressions to method parameters when using Bean Integration. For example you can use any of these annotations:

AnnotationDescription
@Bean Inject a Bean expression
@BeanShell Inject a BeanShell expression
@Constant Inject a Constant expression
@EL Inject an EL expression
@Groovy Inject a Groovy expression
@Header Inject a Header expression
@JavaScript Inject a JavaScript expression
@MVEL Inject a Mvel expression
@OGNL Inject an OGNL expression
@PHP Inject a PHP expression
@Python Inject a Python expression
@Ruby Inject a Ruby expression
@Simple Inject an Simple expression
@XPath Inject an XPath expression
@XQuery Inject an XQuery expression

Example:

public class Foo {
	
    @MessageDriven(uri = "activemq:my.queue")
    public void doSomething(@XPath("/foo/bar/text()") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }
}

Advanced example using @Bean

And an example of using the the @Bean binding annotation, where you can use a Pojo where you can do whatever java code you like:

public class Foo {
	
    @MessageDriven(uri = "activemq:my.queue")
    public void doSomething(@Bean("myCorrelationIdGenerator") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }
}

And then we can have a spring bean with the id myCorrelationIdGenerator where we can compute the id.

public class MyIdGenerator {

    private UserManager userManager;

    public String generate(@Header(name = "user") String user, @Body String payload) throws Exception {
       User user = userManager.lookupUser(user);
       String userId = user.getPrimaryId();
       String id = userId + generateHashCodeForPayload(payload);
       return id;
   }
}

The Pojo MyIdGenerator has one public method that accepts two parameters. However we have also annotated this one with the @Header and @Body annotation to help Camel know what to bind here from the Message from the Exchange being processed.

Of course this could be simplified a lot if you for instance just have a simple id generator. But we wanted to demonstrate that you can use the Bean Binding annotations anywhere.

public class MySimpleIdGenerator {

    public static int generate()  {
       // generate a unique id
       return 123;
   }
}

And finally we just need to remember to have our bean registered in the Spring Registry:

   <bean id="myCorrelationIdGenerator" class="com.mycompany.MySimpleIdGenerator"/>

Example using Groovy

In this example we have an Exchange that has a User object stored in the in header. This User object has methods to get some user information. We want to use Groovy to inject an expression that extracts and concats the fullname of the user into the fullName parameter.

    public void doSomething(@Groovy("$request.header['user'].firstName $request.header['user'].familyName) String fullName, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }

Groovy supports GStrings that is like a template where we can insert $ placeholders that will be evaluated by Groovy.

Bean Binding

Bean Binding in Camel defines both which methods are invoked and also how the Message is converted into the parameters of the method when it is invoked.

Choosing the method to invoke

The binding of a Camel Message to a bean method call can occur in different ways, in the following order of importance:

  • if the message contains the header CamelBeanMethodName then that method is invoked, converting the body to the type of the method's argument.
    • From Camel 2.8 onwards you can qualify parameter types to select exactly which method to use among overloads with the same name (see below for more details).
    • From Camel 2.9 onwards you can specify parameter values directly in the method option (see below for more details).
  • you can explicitly specify the method name in the DSL or when using POJO Consuming or POJO Producing
  • if the bean has a method marked with the @Handler annotation, then that method is selected
  • if the bean can be converted to a Processor using the Type Converter mechanism, then this is used to process the message. The ActiveMQ component uses this mechanism to allow any JMS MessageListener to be invoked directly by Camel without having to write any integration glue code. You can use the same mechanism to integrate Camel into any other messaging/remoting frameworks.
  • if the body of the message can be converted to a BeanInvocation (the default payload used by the ProxyHelper) component - then that is used to invoke the method and pass its arguments
  • otherwise the type of the body is used to find a matching method; an error is thrown if a single method cannot be chosen unambiguously.
  • you can also use Exchange as the parameter itself, but then the return type must be void.
  • if the bean class is private (or package-private), interface methods will be preferred (from Camel 2.9 onwards) since Camel can't invoke class methods on such beans

In cases where Camel cannot choose a method to invoke, an AmbiguousMethodCallException is thrown.

By default the return value is set on the outbound message body.

Parameter binding

When a method has been chosen for invokation, Camel will bind to the parameters of the method.

The following Camel-specific types are automatically bound:

  • org.apache.camel.Exchange
  • org.apache.camel.Message
  • org.apache.camel.CamelContext
  • org.apache.camel.TypeConverter
  • org.apache.camel.spi.Registry
  • java.lang.Exception

So, if you declare any of these types, they will be provided by Camel. Note that Exception will bind to the caught exception of the Exchange - so it's often usable if you employ a Pojo to handle, e.g., an onException route.

What is most interesting is that Camel will also try to bind the body of the Exchange to the first parameter of the method signature (albeit not of any of the types above). So if, for instance, we declare a parameter as String body, then Camel will bind the IN body to this type. Camel will also automatically convert to the type declared in the method signature.

Let's review some examples:

Below is a simple method with a body binding. Camel will bind the IN body to the body parameter and convert it to a String.

public String doSomething(String body)

In the following sample we got one of the automatically-bound types as well - for instance, a Registry that we can use to lookup beans.

public String doSomething(String body, Registry registry)

We can use Exchange as well:

public String doSomething(String body, Exchange exchange)

You can also have multiple types: 

public String doSomething(String body, Exchange exchange, TypeConverter converter)

And imagine you use a Pojo to handle a given custom exception InvalidOrderException - we can then bind that as well: 

public String badOrder(String body, InvalidOrderException invalid)

Notice that we can bind to it even if we use a sub type of java.lang.Exception as Camel still knows it's an exception and can bind the cause (if any exists).

So what about headers and other stuff? Well now it gets a bit tricky - so we can use annotations to help us, or specify the binding in the method name option.
See the following sections for more detail.

Binding Annotations

You can use the Parameter Binding Annotations to customize how parameter values are created from the Message

Examples

For example, a Bean such as:

public class Bar {

    public String doSomething(String body) {
      // process the in body and return whatever you want
      return "Bye World";
   }

Or the Exchange example. Notice that the return type must be void when there is only a single parameter of the type org.apache.camel.Exchange:

public class Bar {

    public void doSomething(Exchange exchange) {
      // process the exchange
      exchange.getIn().setBody("Bye World");
   }

@Handler

You can mark a method in your bean with the @Handler annotation to indicate that this method should be used for Bean Binding.
This has an advantage as you need not specify a method name in the Camel route, and therefore do not run into problems after renaming the method in an IDE that can't find all its references.

public class Bar {

    @Handler
    public String doSomething(String body) {
      // process the in body and return whatever you want
      return "Bye World";
   }

Parameter binding using method option

Available as of Camel 2.9

Camel uses the following rules to determine if it's a parameter value in the method option

  • The value is either true or false which denotes a boolean value
  • The value is a numeric value such as 123 or 7
  • The value is a String enclosed with either single or double quotes
  • The value is null which denotes a null value
  • It can be evaluated using the Simple language, which means you can use, e.g., body, header.foo and other Simple tokens. Notice the tokens must be enclosed with ${ }.

Any other value is consider to be a type declaration instead - see the next section about specifying types for overloaded methods.

When invoking a Bean you can instruct Camel to invoke a specific method by providing the method name: 

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething")

Here we tell Camel to invoke the doSomething method - Camel handles the parameters' binding. Now suppose the method has 2 parameters, and the 2nd parameter is a boolean where we want to pass in a true value:

public void doSomething(String payload, boolean highPriority) {
   ...
}

This is now possible in Camel 2.9 onwards:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething(*, true)")

In the example above, we defined the first parameter using the wild card symbol *, which tells Camel to bind this parameter to any type, and let Camel figure this out. The 2nd parameter has a fixed value of true. Instead of the wildcard symbol we can instruct Camel to use the message body as shown:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething(${body}, true)")

The syntax of the parameters is using the Simple expression language so we have to use ${ } placeholders in the body to refer to the message body.

If you want to pass in a null value, then you can explicit define this in the method option as shown below:

   .to("bean:orderService?method=doSomething(null, true)")

Specifying null as a parameter value instructs Camel to force passing a null value.

Besides the message body, you can pass in the message headers as a java.util.Map:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomethingWithHeaders(${body}, ${headers})")

You can also pass in other fixed values besides booleans. For example, you can pass in a String and an integer:

   .bean(MyBean.class, "echo('World', 5)")

In the example above, we invoke the echo method with two parameters. The first has the content 'World' (without quotes), and the 2nd has the value of 5.
Camel will automatically convert these values to the parameters' types.

Having the power of the Simple language allows us to bind to message headers and other values such as:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething(${body}, ${header.high})")

You can also use the OGNL support of the Simple expression language. Now suppose the message body is an object which has a method named asXml. To invoke the asXml method we can do as follows:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething(${body.asXml}, ${header.high})")

Instead of using .bean as shown in the examples above, you may want to use .to instead as shown:

   .to("bean:orderService?method=doSomething(${body.asXml}, ${header.high})")

Using type qualifiers to select among overloaded methods

Available as of Camel 2.8

If you have a Bean with overloaded methods, you can now specify parameter types in the method name so Camel can match the method you intend to use.
Given the following bean:

MyBean
public static final class MyBean {

    public String hello(String name) {
        return "Hello " + name;
    }

    public String hello(String name, @Header("country") String country) {
        return "Hello " + name + " you are from " + country;
    }

    public String times(String name, @Header("times") int times) {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++) {
            sb.append(name);
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

    public String times(byte[] data, @Header("times") int times) {
        String s = new String(data);
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++) {
            sb.append(s);
            if (i < times - 1) {
                sb.append(",");
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

    public String times(String name, int times, char separator) {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
        for (int i = 0; i < times; i++) {
            sb.append(name);
            if (i < times - 1) {
                sb.append(separator);
            }
        }
        return sb.toString();
    }

}

Then the MyBean has 2 overloaded methods with the names hello and times. So if we want to use the method which has 2 parameters we can do as follows in the Camel route:

Invoke 2 parameter method
from("direct:start")
    .bean(MyBean.class, "hello(String,String)")
    .to("mock:result");

We can also use a * as wildcard so we can just say we want to execute the method with 2 parameters we do

Invoke 2 parameter method using wildcard
from("direct:start")
    .bean(MyBean.class, "hello(*,*)")
    .to("mock:result");

By default Camel will match the type name using the simple name, e.g. any leading package name will be disregarded. However if you want to match using the FQN, then specify the FQN type and Camel will leverage that. So if you have a com.foo.MyOrder and you want to match against the FQN, and not the simple name "MyOrder", then follow this example:

   .bean(OrderService.class, "doSomething(com.foo.MyOrder)")
Camel currently only supports either specifying parameter binding or type per parameter in the method name option. You cannot specify both at the same time, such as 
doSomething(com.foo.MyOrder ${body}, boolean ${header.high})

This may change in the future.

Bean Injection

We support the injection of various resources using @EndpointInject. This can be used to inject

Parameter Binding Annotations

camel-core
The annotations below are all part of camel-core and thus does not require camel-spring or Spring. These annotations can be used with the Bean component or when invoking beans in the DSL

Annotations can be used to define an Expression or to extract various headers, properties or payloads from a Message when invoking a bean method (see Bean Integration for more detail of how to invoke bean methods) together with being useful to help disambiguate which method to invoke.

If no annotations are used then Camel assumes that a single parameter is the body of the message. Camel will then use the Type Converter mechanism to convert from the expression value to the actual type of the parameter.

The core annotations are as follows

Annotation Meaning Parameter
@Body To bind to an inbound message body  
@ExchangeException To bind to an Exception set on the exchange  
@Header To bind to an inbound message header String name of the header
@Headers To bind to the Map of the inbound message headers  
@OutHeaders To bind to the Map of the outbound message headers  
@Property To bind to a named property on the exchange String name of the property
@Properties To bind to the property map on the exchange  
@Handler Not part as a type parameter but stated in this table anyway to spread the good word that we have this annotation in Camel now. See more at Bean Binding.  

The follow annotations @Headers, @OutHeaders and @Properties binds to the backing java.util.Map so you can alter the content of these maps directly, for instance using the put method to add a new entry. See the OrderService class at Exception Clause for such an example. You can use @Header("myHeader") and @Property("myProperty") to access the backing java.util.Map.

Example

In this example below we have a @Consume consumer (like message driven) that consumes JMS messages from the activemq queue. We use the @Header and @Body parameter binding annotations to bind from the JMSMessage to the method parameters.

public class Foo {
	
    @Consume(uri = "activemq:my.queue")
    public void doSomething(@Header("JMSCorrelationID") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }

}

In the above Camel will extract the value of Message.getJMSCorrelationID(), then using the Type Converter to adapt the value to the type of the parameter if required - it will inject the parameter value for the correlationID parameter. Then the payload of the message will be converted to a String and injected into the body parameter.

You don't necessarily need to use the @Consume annotation if you don't want to as you could also make use of the Camel DSL to route to the bean's method as well.

Using the DSL to invoke the bean method

Here is another example which does not use POJO Consuming annotations but instead uses the DSL to route messages to the bean method

public class Foo {
    public void doSomething(@Header("JMSCorrelationID") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }

}

The routing DSL then looks like this

from("activemq:someQueue").
  to("bean:myBean");

Here myBean would be looked up in the Registry (such as JNDI or the Spring ApplicationContext), then the body of the message would be used to try figure out what method to call.

If you want to be explicit you can use

from("activemq:someQueue").
  to("bean:myBean?methodName=doSomething");

And here we have a nifty example for you to show some great power in Camel. You can mix and match the annotations with the normal parameters, so we can have this example with annotations and the Exchange also:

    public void doSomething(@Header("user") String user, @Body String body, Exchange exchange) {
        exchange.getIn().setBody(body + "MyBean");
    }

Annotation Based Expression Language

You can also use any of the Languages supported in Camel to bind expressions to method parameters when using Bean Integration. For example you can use any of these annotations:

AnnotationDescription
@Bean Inject a Bean expression
@BeanShell Inject a BeanShell expression
@Constant Inject a Constant expression
@EL Inject an EL expression
@Groovy Inject a Groovy expression
@Header Inject a Header expression
@JavaScript Inject a JavaScript expression
@MVEL Inject a Mvel expression
@OGNL Inject an OGNL expression
@PHP Inject a PHP expression
@Python Inject a Python expression
@Ruby Inject a Ruby expression
@Simple Inject an Simple expression
@XPath Inject an XPath expression
@XQuery Inject an XQuery expression

Example:

public class Foo {
	
    @MessageDriven(uri = "activemq:my.queue")
    public void doSomething(@XPath("/foo/bar/text()") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }
}

Advanced example using @Bean

And an example of using the the @Bean binding annotation, where you can use a Pojo where you can do whatever java code you like:

public class Foo {
	
    @MessageDriven(uri = "activemq:my.queue")
    public void doSomething(@Bean("myCorrelationIdGenerator") String correlationID, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }
}

And then we can have a spring bean with the id myCorrelationIdGenerator where we can compute the id.

public class MyIdGenerator {

    private UserManager userManager;

    public String generate(@Header(name = "user") String user, @Body String payload) throws Exception {
       User user = userManager.lookupUser(user);
       String userId = user.getPrimaryId();
       String id = userId + generateHashCodeForPayload(payload);
       return id;
   }
}

The Pojo MyIdGenerator has one public method that accepts two parameters. However we have also annotated this one with the @Header and @Body annotation to help Camel know what to bind here from the Message from the Exchange being processed.

Of course this could be simplified a lot if you for instance just have a simple id generator. But we wanted to demonstrate that you can use the Bean Binding annotations anywhere.

public class MySimpleIdGenerator {

    public static int generate()  {
       // generate a unique id
       return 123;
   }
}

And finally we just need to remember to have our bean registered in the Spring Registry:

   <bean id="myCorrelationIdGenerator" class="com.mycompany.MySimpleIdGenerator"/>

Example using Groovy

In this example we have an Exchange that has a User object stored in the in header. This User object has methods to get some user information. We want to use Groovy to inject an expression that extracts and concats the fullname of the user into the fullName parameter.

    public void doSomething(@Groovy("$request.header['user'].firstName $request.header['user'].familyName) String fullName, @Body String body) {
		// process the inbound message here
    }

Groovy supports GStrings that is like a template where we can insert $ placeholders that will be evaluated by Groovy.

@Consume

To consume a message you use the @Consume annotation to mark a particular method of a bean as being a consumer method. The uri of the annotation defines the Camel Endpoint to consume from.

e.g. lets invoke the onCheese() method with the String body of the inbound JMS message from ActiveMQ on the cheese queue; this will use the Type Converter to convert the JMS ObjectMessage or BytesMessage to a String - or just use a TextMessage from JMS

public class Foo {

  @Consume(uri="activemq:cheese")
  public void onCheese(String name) {
    ...
  }
}

The Bean Binding is then used to convert the inbound Message to the parameter list used to invoke the method .

What this does is basically create a route that looks kinda like this

from(uri).bean(theBean, "methodName");
When using more than one CamelContext
When you use more than 1 CamelContext you might end up with each of them creating a POJO Consuming; therefore use the option context on @Consume that allows you to specify which CamelContext id/name you want it to apply for.

Using context option to apply only a certain CamelContext

See the warning above.

You can use the context option to specify which CamelContext the consumer should only apply for. For example:

  @Consume(uri="activemq:cheese", context="camel-1")
  public void onCheese(String name) {

The consumer above will only be created for the CamelContext that have the context id = camel-1. You set this id in the XML tag:

<camelContext id="camel-1" ...>

Using an explicit route

If you want to invoke a bean method from many different endpoints or within different complex routes in different circumstances you can just use the normal routing DSL or the Spring XML configuration file.

For example

from(uri).beanRef("myBean", "methodName");

which will then look up in the Registry and find the bean and invoke the given bean name. (You can omit the method name and have Camel figure out the right method based on the method annotations and body type).

Use the Bean endpoint

You can always use the bean endpoint

from(uri).to("bean:myBean?method=methodName");

Using a property to define the endpoint

Available as of Camel 2.11

The following annotations @Consume, @Produce, @EndpointInject, now offers a property attribute you can use to define the endpoint as a property on the bean. Then Camel will use the getter method to access the property.

This applies for them all
The explanation below applies for all the three annotations, eg @Consume, @Produce, and @EndpointInject

For example

public class MyService {
  private String serviceEndpoint;
  
  public void setServiceEndpoint(String uri) {
     this.serviceEndpoint = uri;
  }

  public String getServiceEndpoint() {
     return serviceEndpoint
  }

  @Consume(property = "serviceEndpoint")
  public void onService(String input) {
     ...
  }
}

The bean MyService has a property named serviceEndpoint which has getter/setter for the property. Now we want to use the bean for POJO Consuming, and hence why we use @Consume in the onService method. Notice how we use the property = "serviceEndpoint to configure the property that has the endpoint url.

If you define the bean in Spring XML or Blueprint, then you can configure the property as follows:

<bean id="myService" class="com.foo.MyService">
  <property name="serviceEndpoint" value="activemq:queue:foo"/>
</bean>

This allows you to configure the bean using any standard IoC style.

Camel offers a naming convention which allows you to not have to explicit name the property.
Camel uses this algorithm to find the getter method. The method must be a getXXX method.

1. Use the property name if explicit given
2. If no property name was configured, then use the method name
3. Try to get the property with name*Endpoint* (eg with Endpoint as postfix)
4. Try to get the property with the name as is (eg no postfix or postfix)
5. If the property name starts with on then omit that, and try step 3 and 4 again.

So in the example above, we could have defined the @Consume annotation as

  @Consume(property = "service")
  public void onService(String input) {

Now the property is named 'service' which then would match step 3 from the algorithm, and have Camel invoke the getServiceEndpoint method.

We could also have omitted the property attribute, to make it implicit

  @Consume
  public void onService(String input) {

Now Camel matches step 5, and loses the prefix on in the name, and looks for 'service' as the property. And because there is a getServiceEndpoint method, Camel will use that.

Which approach to use?

Using the @Consume annotations are simpler when you are creating a simple route with a single well defined input URI.

However if you require more complex routes or the same bean method needs to be invoked from many places then please use the routing DSL as shown above.

There are two different ways to send messages to any Camel Endpoint from a POJO

@EndpointInject

To allow sending of messages from POJOs you can use the @EndpointInject annotation. This will inject a ProducerTemplate so that the bean can participate in message exchanges.

e.g. lets send a message to the foo.bar queue in ActiveMQ at some point


public class Foo {
  @EndpointInject(uri="activemq:foo.bar")
  ProducerTemplate producer;

  public void doSomething() {
    if (whatever) {
      producer.sendBody("<hello>world!</hello>");
    }
  }
}

The downside of this is that your code is now dependent on a Camel API, the ProducerTemplate. The next section describes how to remove this

See POJO Consuming for how to use a property on the bean as endpoint configuration, eg using the property attribute on @Produce, @EndpointInject.

Hiding the Camel APIs from your code using @Produce

We recommend Hiding Middleware APIs from your application code so the next option might be more suitable.
You can add the @Produce annotation to an injection point (a field or property setter) using a ProducerTemplate or using some interface you use in your business logic. e.g.

public interface MyListener {
    String sayHello(String name);
}

public class MyBean {
    @Produce(uri = "activemq:foo")
    protected MyListener producer;

    public void doSomething() {
        // lets send a message
        String response = producer.sayHello("James");
    }
}

Here Camel will automatically inject a smart client side proxy at the @Produce annotation - an instance of the MyListener instance. When we invoke methods on this interface the method call is turned into an object and using the Camel Spring Remoting mechanism it is sent to the endpoint - in this case the ActiveMQ endpoint to queue foo; then the caller blocks for a response.

If you want to make asynchronous message sends then use an @InOnly annotation on the injection point.

@RecipientList Annotation

We support the use of @RecipientList on a bean method to easily create a dynamic Recipient List using a Java method.

Simple Example using @Consume and @RecipientList

package com.acme.foo;

public class RouterBean {

    @Consume(uri = "activemq:foo")
    @RecipientList
    public String[] route(String body) {
        return new String[]{"activemq:bar", "activemq:whatnot"};
    }
}

For example if the above bean is configured in Spring when using a <camelContext> element as follows

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
    ">

  <camelContext xmlns="http://activemq.apache.org/camel/schema/spring"/>

  <bean id="myRecipientList" class="com.acme.foo.RouterBean"/>

</beans>

then a route will be created consuming from the foo queue on the ActiveMQ component which when a message is received the message will be forwarded to the endpoints defined by the result of this method call - namely the bar and whatnot queues.

How it works

The return value of the @RecipientList method is converted to either a java.util.Collection / java.util.Iterator or array of objects where each element is converted to an Endpoint or a String, or if you are only going to route to a single endpoint then just return either an Endpoint object or an object that can be converted to a String. So the following methods are all valid 

@RecipientList 
public String[] route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public List<String> route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public Endpoint route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public Endpoint[] route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public Collection<Endpoint> route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public URI route(String body) { ... }

@RecipientList 
public URI[] route(String body) { ... }

Then for each endpoint or URI the message is forwarded a separate copy to that endpoint.

You can then use whatever Java code you wish to figure out what endpoints to route to; for example you can use the Bean Binding annotations to inject parts of the message body or headers or use Expression values on the message.

More Complex Example Using DSL

In this example we will use more complex Bean Binding, plus we will use a separate route to invoke the Recipient List

public class RouterBean2 {

    @RecipientList
    public String route(@Header("customerID") String custID String body) {
    	if (custID == null)  return null;
        return "activemq:Customers.Orders." + custID;
    }
}

public class MyRouteBuilder extends RouteBuilder {
    protected void configure() {
        from("activemq:Orders.Incoming").recipientList(bean("myRouterBean", "route"));
    }
}

Notice how we are injecting some headers or expressions and using them to determine the recipients using Recipient List EIP.
See the Bean Integration for more details.

Using Exchange Pattern Annotations

When working with POJO Producing or Spring Remoting you invoke methods which typically by default are InOut for Request Reply. That is there is an In message and an Out for the result. Typically invoking this operation will be synchronous, the caller will block until the server returns a result.

Camel has flexible Exchange Pattern support - so you can also support the Event Message pattern to use InOnly for asynchronous or one way operations. These are often called 'fire and forget' like sending a JMS message but not waiting for any response.

From 1.5 onwards Camel supports annotations for specifying the message exchange pattern on regular Java methods, classes or interfaces.

Specifying InOnly methods

Typically the default InOut is what most folks want but you can customize to use InOnly using an annotation.

public interface Foo {
  Object someInOutMethod(String input);
  String anotherInOutMethod(Cheese input);
  
  @InOnly
  void someInOnlyMethod(Document input);
}

The above code shows three methods on an interface; the first two use the default InOut mechanism but the someInOnlyMethod uses the InOnly annotation to specify it as being a oneway method call.

Class level annotations

You can also use class level annotations to default all methods in an interface to some pattern such as

@InOnly
public interface Foo {
  void someInOnlyMethod(Document input);
  void anotherInOnlyMethod(String input);
}

Annotations will also be detected on base classes or interfaces. So for example if you created a client side proxy for 

public class MyFoo implements Foo {
  ...
}

Then the methods inherited from Foo would be InOnly.

Overloading a class level annotation

You can overload a class level annotation on specific methods. A common use case for this is if you have a class or interface with many InOnly methods but you want to just annote one or two methods as InOut

@InOnly
public interface Foo {
  void someInOnlyMethod(Document input);
  void anotherInOnlyMethod(String input);
  
  @InOut
  String someInOutMethod(String input); 
}

In the above Foo interface the someInOutMethod will be InOut

Using your own annotations

You might want to create your own annotations to represent a group of different bits of metadata; such as combining synchrony, concurrency and transaction behaviour.

So you could annotate your annotation with the @Pattern annotation to default the exchange pattern you wish to use.

For example lets say we want to create our own annotation called @MyAsyncService

@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD})

// lets add the message exchange pattern to it
@Pattern(ExchangePattern.InOnly)

// lets add some other annotations - maybe transaction behaviour?

public @interface MyAsyncService {
}

Now we can use this annotation and Camel will figure out the correct exchange pattern...

public interface Foo {
  void someInOnlyMethod(Document input);
  void anotherInOnlyMethod(String input);
  
  @MyAsyncService
  String someInOutMethod(String input); 
}

When writing software these days, its important to try and decouple as much middleware code from your business logic as possible.

This provides a number of benefits...

  • you can choose the right middleware solution for your deployment and switch at any time
  • you don't have to spend a large amount of time learning the specifics of any particular technology, whether its JMS or JavaSpace or Hibernate or JPA or iBATIS whatever

For example if you want to implement some kind of message passing, remoting, reliable load balancing or asynchronous processing in your application we recommend you use Camel annotations to bind your services and business logic to Camel Components which means you can then easily switch between things like

  • in JVM messaging with SEDA
  • using JMS via ActiveMQ or other JMS providers for reliable load balancing, grid or publish and subscribe
  • for low volume, but easier administration since you're probably already using a database you could use
  • use JavaSpace

How to decouple from middleware APIs

The best approach when using remoting is to use Spring Remoting which can then use any messaging or remoting technology under the covers. When using Camel's implementation you can then use any of the Camel Components along with any of the Enterprise Integration Patterns.

Another approach is to bind Java beans to Camel endpoints via the Bean Integration. For example using POJO Consuming and POJO Producing you can avoid using any Camel APIs to decouple your code both from middleware APIs and Camel APIs!

Visualisation

Camel supports the visualisation of your Enterprise Integration Patterns using the GraphViz DOT files which can either be rendered directly via a suitable GraphViz tool or turned into HTML, PNG or SVG files via the Camel Maven Plugin.

Here is a typical example of the kind of thing we can generate

If you click on the actual generated htmlyou will see that you can navigate from an EIP node to its pattern page, along with getting hover-over tool tips ec.

How to generate

See Camel Dot Maven Goal or the other maven goals Camel Maven Plugin

For OS X users

If you are using OS X then you can open the DOT file using graphviz which will then automatically re-render if it changes, so you end up with a real time graphical representation of the topic and queue hierarchies!

Also if you want to edit the layout a little before adding it to a wiki to distribute to your team, open the DOT file with OmniGraffle then just edit away

Business Activity Monitoring

The Camel BAM module provides a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) framework for testing business processes across multiple message exchanges on different Endpoint instances.

Consider, for example, a simple system in which you submit Purchase Orders into system A and then receive Invoices from system B. You might want to test that, for a given Purchase Order, you receive a matching Invoice from system B within a specific time period.

How Camel BAM Works

Camel BAM uses a Correlation Identifier on an input message to determine the Process Instance to which it belongs. The process instance is an entity bean which can maintain state for each Activity (where an activity typically maps to a single endpoint - such as the submission of Purchase Orders or the receipt of Invoices).

You can then add rules to be triggered when a message is received on any activity - such as to set time expectations or perform real time reconciliation of values across activities.

Simple Example

The following example shows how to perform some time based rules on a simple business process of 2 activities - A and B - which correspond with Purchase Orders and Invoices in the example above. If you would like to experiment with this scenario, you may edit this Test Case, which defines the activities and rules, and then tests that they work.

return new ProcessBuilder(jpaTemplate, transactionTemplate) {
    public void configure() throws Exception {

        // let's define some activities, correlating on an XPath on the message bodies
        ActivityBuilder a = activity("seda:a").name("a")
                .correlate(xpath("/hello/@id"));

        ActivityBuilder b = activity("seda:b").name("b")
                .correlate(xpath("/hello/@id"));

        // now let's add some rules
        b.starts().after(a.completes())
                .expectWithin(seconds(1))
                .errorIfOver(seconds(errorTimeout)).to("mock:overdue");
    }
};

As you can see in the above example, we first define two activities, and then rules to specify when we expect them to complete for a process instance and when an error condition should be raised.p. The ProcessBuilder is a RouteBuilder and can be added to any CamelContext.

Complete Example

For a complete example please see the BAM Example, which is part of the standard Camel Examples

Use Cases

In the world of finance, a common requirement is tracking trades. Often a trader will submit a Front Office Trade which then flows through the Middle Office and Back Office through various systems to settle the trade so that money is exchanged. You may wish to test that the front and back office trades match up within a certain time period; if they don't match or a back office trade does not arrive within a required amount of time, you might signal an alarm.

Extract Transform Load (ETL)

The ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) is a mechanism for loading data into systems or databases using some kind of Data Format from a variety of sources; often files then using Pipes and Filters, Message Translator and possible other Enterprise Integration Patterns.

So you could query data from various Camel Components such as File, HTTP or JPA, perform multiple patterns such as Splitter or Message Translator then send the messages to some other Component.

To show how this all fits together, try the ETL Example

Mock Component

Testing of distributed and asynchronous processing is notoriously difficult. The Mock, Test and DataSet endpoints work great with the Camel Testing Framework to simplify your unit and integration testing using Enterprise Integration Patterns and Camel's large range of Components together with the powerful Bean Integration.

The Mock component provides a powerful declarative testing mechanism, which is similar to jMock in that it allows declarative expectations to be created on any Mock endpoint before a test begins. Then the test is run, which typically fires messages to one or more endpoints, and finally the expectations can be asserted in a test case to ensure the system worked as expected.

This allows you to test various things like:

  • The correct number of messages are received on each endpoint,
  • The correct payloads are received, in the right order,
  • Messages arrive on an endpoint in order, using some Expression to create an order testing function,
  • Messages arrive match some kind of Predicate such as that specific headers have certain values, or that parts of the messages match some predicate, such as by evaluating an XPath or XQuery Expression.

Note that there is also the Test endpoint which is a Mock endpoint, but which uses a second endpoint to provide the list of expected message bodies and automatically sets up the Mock endpoint assertions. In other words, it's a Mock endpoint that automatically sets up its assertions from some sample messages in a File or database, for example.

Mock endpoints keep received Exchanges in memory indefinitely
Remember that Mock is designed for testing. When you add Mock endpoints to a route, each Exchange sent to the endpoint will be stored (to allow for later validation) in memory until explicitly reset or the JVM is restarted. If you are sending high volume and/or large messages, this may cause excessive memory use. If your goal is to test deployable routes inline, consider using NotifyBuilder or AdviceWith in your tests instead of adding Mock endpoints to routes directly.

From Camel 2.10 onwards there are two new options retainFirst, and retainLast that can be used to limit the number of messages the Mock endpoints keep in memory.

URI format

mock:someName[?options]

Where someName can be any string that uniquely identifies the endpoint.

You can append query options to the URI in the following format, ?option=value&option=value&...

Options

Option Default Description
reportGroup null A size to use a throughput logger for reporting

Simple Example

Here's a simple example of Mock endpoint in use. First, the endpoint is resolved on the context. Then we set an expectation, and then, after the test has run, we assert that our expectations have been met.

MockEndpoint resultEndpoint = context.resolveEndpoint("mock:foo", MockEndpoint.class);

resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(2);

// send some messages
...

// now lets assert that the mock:foo endpoint received 2 messages
resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();

You typically always call the assertIsSatisfied() method to test that the expectations were met after running a test.

Camel will by default wait 10 seconds when the assertIsSatisfied() is invoked. This can be configured by setting the setResultWaitTime(millis) method.

Using assertPeriod

Available as of Camel 2.7
When the assertion is satisfied then Camel will stop waiting and continue from the assertIsSatisfied method. That means if a new message arrives on the mock endpoint, just a bit later, that arrival will not affect the outcome of the assertion. Suppose you do want to test that no new messages arrives after a period thereafter, then you can do that by setting the setAssertPeriod method, for example:

MockEndpoint resultEndpoint = context.resolveEndpoint("mock:foo", MockEndpoint.class);
resultEndpoint.setAssertPeriod(5000);
resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(2);

// send some messages
...

// now lets assert that the mock:foo endpoint received 2 messages
resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();

Setting expectations

You can see from the javadoc of MockEndpoint the various helper methods you can use to set expectations. The main methods are as follows:

Method Description
expectedMessageCount(int) To define the expected message count on the endpoint.
expectedMinimumMessageCount(int) To define the minimum number of expected messages on the endpoint.
expectedBodiesReceived(...) To define the expected bodies that should be received (in order).
expectedHeaderReceived(...) To define the expected header that should be received
expectsAscending(Expression) To add an expectation that messages are received in order, using the given Expression to compare messages.
expectsDescending(Expression) To add an expectation that messages are received in order, using the given Expression to compare messages.
expectsNoDuplicates(Expression) To add an expectation that no duplicate messages are received; using an Expression to calculate a unique identifier for each message. This could be something like the JMSMessageID if using JMS, or some unique reference number within the message.

Here's another example:

resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived("firstMessageBody", "secondMessageBody", "thirdMessageBody");

Adding expectations to specific messages

In addition, you can use the message(int messageIndex) method to add assertions about a specific message that is received.

For example, to add expectations of the headers or body of the first message (using zero-based indexing like java.util.List), you can use the following code:

resultEndpoint.message(0).header("foo").isEqualTo("bar");

There are some examples of the Mock endpoint in use in the camel-core processor tests.

Mocking existing endpoints

Available as of Camel 2.7

Camel now allows you to automatically mock existing endpoints in your Camel routes.

How it works
Important: The endpoints are still in action. What happens differently is that a Mock endpoint is injected and receives the message first and then delegates the message to the target endpoint. You can view this as a kind of intercept and delegate or endpoint listener.

Suppose you have the given route below:

Route
@Override
protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() throws Exception {
    return new RouteBuilder() {
        @Override
        public void configure() throws Exception {
            from("direct:start").to("direct:foo").to("log:foo").to("mock:result");

            from("direct:foo").transform(constant("Bye World"));
        }
    };
}

You can then use the adviceWith feature in Camel to mock all the endpoints in a given route from your unit test, as shown below:

adviceWith mocking all endpoints
public void testAdvisedMockEndpoints() throws Exception {
    // advice the first route using the inlined AdviceWith route builder
    // which has extended capabilities than the regular route builder
    context.getRouteDefinitions().get(0).adviceWith(context, new AdviceWithRouteBuilder() {
        @Override
        public void configure() throws Exception {
            // mock all endpoints
            mockEndpoints();
        }
    });

    getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:start").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
    getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:foo").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
    getMockEndpoint("mock:log:foo").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");
    getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");

    template.sendBody("direct:start", "Hello World");

    assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

    // additional test to ensure correct endpoints in registry
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:start"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:foo"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("log:foo"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:result"));
    // all the endpoints was mocked
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:start"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:foo"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:log:foo"));
}

Notice that the mock endpoints is given the uri mock:<endpoint>, for example mock:direct:foo. Camel logs at INFO level the endpoints being mocked:

INFO  Adviced endpoint [direct://foo] with mock endpoint [mock:direct:foo]
Mocked endpoints are without parameters
Endpoints which are mocked will have their parameters stripped off. For example the endpoint "log:foo?showAll=true" will be mocked to the following endpoint "mock:log:foo". Notice the parameters have been removed.

Its also possible to only mock certain endpoints using a pattern. For example to mock all log endpoints you do as shown:

adviceWith mocking only log endpoints using a pattern
public void testAdvisedMockEndpointsWithPattern() throws Exception {
    // advice the first route using the inlined AdviceWith route builder
    // which has extended capabilities than the regular route builder
    context.getRouteDefinitions().get(0).adviceWith(context, new AdviceWithRouteBuilder() {
        @Override
        public void configure() throws Exception {
            // mock only log endpoints
            mockEndpoints("log*");
        }
    });

    // now we can refer to log:foo as a mock and set our expectations
    getMockEndpoint("mock:log:foo").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");

    getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");

    template.sendBody("direct:start", "Hello World");

    assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

    // additional test to ensure correct endpoints in registry
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:start"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:foo"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("log:foo"));
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:result"));
    // only the log:foo endpoint was mocked
    assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:log:foo"));
    assertNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:start"));
    assertNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:foo"));
}

The pattern supported can be a wildcard or a regular expression. See more details about this at Intercept as its the same matching function used by Camel.

Mind that mocking endpoints causes the messages to be copied when they arrive on the mock.
That means Camel will use more memory. This may not be suitable when you send in a lot of messages.

Mocking existing endpoints using the camel-test component

Instead of using the adviceWith to instruct Camel to mock endpoints, you can easily enable this behavior when using the camel-test Test Kit.
The same route can be tested as follows. Notice that we return "*" from the isMockEndpoints method, which tells Camel to mock all endpoints.
If you only want to mock all log endpoints you can return "log*" instead.

isMockEndpoints using camel-test kit
public class IsMockEndpointsJUnit4Test extends CamelTestSupport {

    @Override
    public String isMockEndpoints() {
        // override this method and return the pattern for which endpoints to mock.
        // use * to indicate all
        return "*";
    }

    @Test
    public void testMockAllEndpoints() throws Exception {
        // notice we have automatic mocked all endpoints and the name of the endpoints is "mock:uri"
        getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:start").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
        getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:foo").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
        getMockEndpoint("mock:log:foo").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");
        getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived("Bye World");

        template.sendBody("direct:start", "Hello World");

        assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

        // additional test to ensure correct endpoints in registry
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:start"));
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("direct:foo"));
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("log:foo"));
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:result"));
        // all the endpoints was mocked
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:start"));
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:direct:foo"));
        assertNotNull(context.hasEndpoint("mock:log:foo"));
    }

    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() throws Exception {
        return new RouteBuilder() {
            @Override
            public void configure() throws Exception {
                from("direct:start").to("direct:foo").to("log:foo").to("mock:result");

                from("direct:foo").transform(constant("Bye World"));
            }
        };
    }
}

Mocking existing endpoints with XML DSL

If you do not use the camel-test component for unit testing (as shown above) you can use a different approach when using XML files for routes.
The solution is to create a new XML file used by the unit test and then include the intended XML file which has the route you want to test.

Suppose we have the route in the camel-route.xml file:

camel-route.xml
<!-- this camel route is in the camel-route.xml file -->
<camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">

    <route>
        <from uri="direct:start"/>
        <to uri="direct:foo"/>
        <to uri="log:foo"/>
        <to uri="mock:result"/>
    </route>

    <route>
        <from uri="direct:foo"/>
        <transform>
            <constant>Bye World</constant>
        </transform>
    </route>

</camelContext>

Then we create a new XML file as follows, where we include the camel-route.xml file and define a spring bean with the class org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy which tells Camel to mock all endpoints:

test-camel-route.xml
<!-- the Camel route is defined in another XML file -->
<import resource="camel-route.xml"/>

<!-- bean which enables mocking all endpoints -->
<bean id="mockAllEndpoints" class="org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy"/>

Then in your unit test you load the new XML file (test-camel-route.xml) instead of camel-route.xml.

To only mock all Log endpoints you can define the pattern in the constructor for the bean:

<bean id="mockAllEndpoints" class="org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy">
    <constructor-arg index="0" value="log*"/>
</bean>

Mocking endpoints and skip sending to original endpoint

Available as of Camel 2.10

Sometimes you want to easily mock and skip sending to a certain endpoints. So the message is detoured and send to the mock endpoint only. From Camel 2.10 onwards you can now use the mockEndpointsAndSkip method using AdviceWith or the [Test Kit]. The example below will skip sending to the two endpoints "direct:foo", and "direct:bar".

adviceWith mock and skip sending to endpoints
public void testAdvisedMockEndpointsWithSkip() throws Exception {
    // advice the first route using the inlined AdviceWith route builder
    // which has extended capabilities than the regular route builder
    context.getRouteDefinitions().get(0).adviceWith(context, new AdviceWithRouteBuilder() {
        @Override
        public void configure() throws Exception {
            // mock sending to direct:foo and direct:bar and skip send to it
            mockEndpointsAndSkip("direct:foo", "direct:bar");
        }
    });

    getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
    getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:foo").expectedMessageCount(1);
    getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:bar").expectedMessageCount(1);

    template.sendBody("direct:start", "Hello World");

    assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

    // the message was not send to the direct:foo route and thus not sent to the seda endpoint
    SedaEndpoint seda = context.getEndpoint("seda:foo", SedaEndpoint.class);
    assertEquals(0, seda.getCurrentQueueSize());
}

The same example using the Test Kit

isMockEndpointsAndSkip using camel-test kit
public class IsMockEndpointsAndSkipJUnit4Test extends CamelTestSupport {

    @Override
    public String isMockEndpointsAndSkip() {
        // override this method and return the pattern for which endpoints to mock,
        // and skip sending to the original endpoint.
        return "direct:foo";
    }

    @Test
    public void testMockEndpointAndSkip() throws Exception {
        // notice we have automatic mocked the direct:foo endpoints and the name of the endpoints is "mock:uri"
        getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived("Hello World");
        getMockEndpoint("mock:direct:foo").expectedMessageCount(1);

        template.sendBody("direct:start", "Hello World");

        assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

        // the message was not send to the direct:foo route and thus not sent to the seda endpoint
        SedaEndpoint seda = context.getEndpoint("seda:foo", SedaEndpoint.class);
        assertEquals(0, seda.getCurrentQueueSize());
    }

    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() throws Exception {
        return new RouteBuilder() {
            @Override
            public void configure() throws Exception {
                from("direct:start").to("direct:foo").to("mock:result");

                from("direct:foo").transform(constant("Bye World")).to("seda:foo");
            }
        };
    }
}

Limiting the number of messages to keep

Available as of Camel 2.10

The Mock endpoints will by default keep a copy of every Exchange that it received. So if you test with a lot of messages, then it will consume memory.
From Camel 2.10 onwards we have introduced two options retainFirst and retainLast that can be used to specify to only keep N'th of the first and/or last Exchanges.

For example in the code below, we only want to retain a copy of the first 5 and last 5 Exchanges the mock receives.

  MockEndpoint mock = getMockEndpoint("mock:data");
  mock.setRetainFirst(5);
  mock.setRetainLast(5);
  mock.expectedMessageCount(2000);

  ...

  mock.assertIsSatisfied();

Using this has some limitations. The getExchanges() and getReceivedExchanges() methods on the MockEndpoint will return only the retained copies of the Exchanges. So in the example above, the list will contain 10 Exchanges; the first five, and the last five.
The retainFirst and retainLast options also have limitations on which expectation methods you can use. For example the expectedXXX methods that work on message bodies, headers, etc. will only operate on the retained messages. In the example above they can test only the expectations on the 10 retained messages.

Testing with arrival times

Available as of Camel 2.7

The Mock endpoint stores the arrival time of the message as a property on the Exchange.

Date time = exchange.getProperty(Exchange.RECEIVED_TIMESTAMP, Date.class);

You can use this information to know when the message arrived on the mock. But it also provides foundation to know the time interval between the previous and next message arrived on the mock. You can use this to set expectations using the arrives DSL on the Mock endpoint.

For example to say that the first message should arrive between 0-2 seconds before the next you can do:

mock.message(0).arrives().noLaterThan(2).seconds().beforeNext();

You can also define this as that 2nd message (0 index based) should arrive no later than 0-2 seconds after the previous:

mock.message(1).arrives().noLaterThan(2).seconds().afterPrevious();

You can also use between to set a lower bound. For example suppose that it should be between 1-4 seconds:

mock.message(1).arrives().between(1, 4).seconds().afterPrevious();

You can also set the expectation on all messages, for example to say that the gap between them should be at most 1 second:

mock.allMessages().arrives().noLaterThan(1).seconds().beforeNext();
time units
In the example above we use seconds as the time unit, but Camel offers milliseconds, and minutes as well.

See Also

Testing

Testing is a crucial activity in any piece of software development or integration. Typically Camel Riders use various different technologies wired together in a variety of patterns with different expression languages together with different forms of Bean Integration and Dependency Injection so its very easy for things to go wrong! . Testing is the crucial weapon to ensure that things work as you would expect.

Camel is a Java library so you can easily wire up tests in whatever unit testing framework you use (JUnit 3.x (deprecated), 4.x, or TestNG). However the Camel project has tried to make the testing of Camel as easy and powerful as possible so we have introduced the following features.

Testing mechanisms

The following mechanisms are supported

Name Component Description
Camel Test camel-test Is a standalone Java library letting you easily create Camel test cases using a single Java class for all your configuration and routing without using Spring or Guice for Dependency Injection which does not require an in-depth knowledge of Spring + Spring Test or Guice.  Supports JUnit 3.x (deprecated) and JUnit 4.x based tests.
Spring Testing camel-test-spring Supports JUnit 3.x (deprecated) or JUnit 4.x based tests that bootstrap a test environment using Spring without needing to be familiar with Spring Test.  The  plain JUnit 3.x/4.x based tests work very similar to the test support classes in camel-test.  Also supports Spring Test based tests that use the declarative style of test configuration and injection common in Spring Test.  The Spring Test based tests provide feature parity with the plain JUnit 3.x/4.x based testing approach.  Notice camel-test-spring is a new component in Camel 2.10 onwards. For older Camel release use camel-test which has built-in Spring Testing.
Blueprint Testing camel-test-blueprint Camel 2.10: Provides the ability to do unit testing on blueprint configurations
Guice camel-guice Uses Guice to dependency inject your test classes
Camel TestNG camel-testng
Supports plain TestNG based tests with or without Spring or Guice for Dependency Injection which does not require an in-depth knowledge of Spring + Spring Test or Guice.  Also from Camel 2.10 onwards, this component supports Spring Test based tests that use the declarative style of test configuration and injection common in Spring Test and described in more detail under Spring Testing.

In all approaches the test classes look pretty much the same in that they all reuse the Camel binding and injection annotations.

Camel Test Example

Here is the Camel Test example.

public class FilterTest extends CamelTestSupport {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() {
        return new RouteBuilder() {
            public void configure() {
                from("direct:start").filter(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("mock:result");
            }
        };
    }
}

Notice how it derives from the Camel helper class CamelTestSupport but has no Spring or Guice dependency injection configuration but instead overrides the createRouteBuilder() method.

Spring Test with XML Config Example

Here is the Spring Testing example using XML Config.

@ContextConfiguration
public class FilterTest extends SpringRunWithTestSupport {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }
}

Notice that we use @DirtiesContext on the test methods to force Spring Testing to automatically reload the CamelContext after each test method - this ensures that the tests don't clash with each other (e.g. one test method sending to an endpoint that is then reused in another test method).

Also notice the use of @ContextConfiguration to indicate that by default we should look for the FilterTest-context.xml on the classpath to configure the test case which looks like this

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
    ">

  <camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
    <route>
      <from uri="direct:start"/>
      <filter>
        <xpath>$foo = 'bar'</xpath>
        <to uri="mock:result"/>
      </filter>
    </route>
  </camelContext>

</beans>

Spring Test with Java Config Example

Here is the Spring Testing example using Java Config.

For more information see Spring Java Config.

@ContextConfiguration(
        locations = "org.apache.camel.spring.javaconfig.patterns.FilterTest$ContextConfig",
        loader = JavaConfigContextLoader.class)
public class FilterTest extends AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Configuration
    public static class ContextConfig extends SingleRouteCamelConfiguration {
        @Bean
        public RouteBuilder route() {
            return new RouteBuilder() {
                public void configure() {
                    from("direct:start").filter(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("mock:result");
                }
            };
        }
    }
}

This is similar to the XML Config example above except that there is no XML file and instead the nested ContextConfig class does all of the configuration; so your entire test case is contained in a single Java class. We currently have to reference by class name this class in the @ContextConfiguration which is a bit ugly. Please vote for SJC-238 to address this and make Spring Test work more cleanly with Spring JavaConfig.

Its totally optional but for the ContextConfig implementation we derive from SingleRouteCamelConfiguration which is a helper Spring Java Config class which will configure the CamelContext for us and then register the RouteBuilder we create.

Since Camel 2.11.0 you can use the CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner with CamelSpringDelegatingTestContextLoader like example using Java Config with CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner.

@RunWith(CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration(
        classes = {CamelSpringDelegatingTestContextLoaderTest.TestConfig.class},
        // Since Camel 2.11.0 
        loader = CamelSpringDelegatingTestContextLoader.class
)
@MockEndpoints
public class CamelSpringDelegatingTestContextLoaderTest {
    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:direct:end")
    protected MockEndpoint endEndpoint;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:direct:error")
    protected MockEndpoint errorEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:test")
    protected ProducerTemplate testProducer;

    @Configuration
    public static class TestConfig extends SingleRouteCamelConfiguration {
        @Bean
        @Override
        public RouteBuilder route() {
            return new RouteBuilder() {
                @Override
                public void configure() throws Exception {
                    from("direct:test").errorHandler(deadLetterChannel("direct:error")).to("direct:end");

                    from("direct:error").log("Received message on direct:error endpoint.");

                    from("direct:end").log("Received message on direct:end endpoint.");
                }
            };
        }
    }

    @Test
    public void testRoute() throws InterruptedException {
        endEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(1);
        errorEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        testProducer.sendBody("<name>test</name>");

        endEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
        errorEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }
}
.

Spring Test with XML Config and Declarative Configuration Example

Here is a Camel test support enhanced Spring Testing example using XML Config and pure Spring Test based configuration of the Camel Context.

@RunWith(CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
// Put here to prevent Spring context caching across tests and test methods since some tests inherit 
// from this test and therefore use the same Spring context.  Also because we want to reset the
// Camel context and mock endpoints between test methods automatically.
@DirtiesContext(classMode = ClassMode.AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
public class CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunnerPlainTest {
    
    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext;
    
    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext2;
    
    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:a", context = "camelContext")
    protected MockEndpoint mockA;
    
    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:b", context = "camelContext")
    protected MockEndpoint mockB;
    
    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:c", context = "camelContext2")
    protected MockEndpoint mockC;
    
    @Produce(uri = "direct:start", context = "camelContext")
    protected ProducerTemplate start;
    
    @Produce(uri = "direct:start2", context = "camelContext2")
    protected ProducerTemplate start2;
    
    @Test
    public void testPositive() throws Exception {
        assertEquals(ServiceStatus.Started, camelContext.getStatus());
        assertEquals(ServiceStatus.Started, camelContext2.getStatus());
        
        mockA.expectedBodiesReceived("David");
        mockB.expectedBodiesReceived("Hello David");
        mockC.expectedBodiesReceived("David");
        
        start.sendBody("David");
        start2.sendBody("David");
        
        MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext);
    }
    
    @Test
    public void testJmx() throws Exception {
        assertEquals(DefaultManagementStrategy.class, camelContext.getManagementStrategy().getClass());
    }
    
    @Test
    public void testShutdownTimeout() throws Exception {
        assertEquals(10, camelContext.getShutdownStrategy().getTimeout());
        assertEquals(TimeUnit.SECONDS, camelContext.getShutdownStrategy().getTimeUnit());
    }
    
    @Test
    public void testStopwatch() {
        StopWatch stopWatch = StopWatchTestExecutionListener.getStopWatch();
        
        assertNotNull(stopWatch);
        assertTrue(stopWatch.taken() < 100);
    }
    
    @Test
    public void testExcludedRoute() {
        assertNotNull(camelContext.getRoute("excludedRoute"));
    }
    
    @Test
    public void testProvidesBreakpoint() {
        assertNull(camelContext.getDebugger());
        assertNull(camelContext2.getDebugger());
    }

    @SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
    @Test
    public void testLazyLoadTypeConverters() {
        assertTrue(camelContext.isLazyLoadTypeConverters());
        assertTrue(camelContext2.isLazyLoadTypeConverters());
    }
}

Notice how a custom test runner is used with the @RunWith annotation to support the features of CamelTestSupport through annotations on the test class.  See Spring Testing for a list of annotations you can use in your tests.

Blueprint Test

Here is the Blueprint Testing example using XML Config.

// to use camel-test-blueprint, then extend the CamelBlueprintTestSupport class,
// and add your unit tests methods as shown below.
public class DebugBlueprintTest extends CamelBlueprintTestSupport {

    private boolean debugBeforeMethodCalled;
    private boolean debugAfterMethodCalled;

    // override this method, and return the location of our Blueprint XML file to be used for testing
    @Override
    protected String getBlueprintDescriptor() {
        return "org/apache/camel/test/blueprint/camelContext.xml";
    }
   
    // here we have regular JUnit @Test method
    @Test
    public void testRoute() throws Exception {

        // set mock expectations
        getMockEndpoint("mock:a").expectedMessageCount(1);

        // send a message
        template.sendBody("direct:start", "World");

        // assert mocks
        assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();

        // assert on the debugBefore/debugAfter methods below being called as we've enabled the debugger
        assertTrue(debugBeforeMethodCalled);
        assertTrue(debugAfterMethodCalled);
    }

    @Override
    public boolean isUseDebugger() {
        // must enable debugger
        return true;
    }

    @Override
    protected void debugBefore(Exchange exchange, org.apache.camel.Processor processor, ProcessorDefinition<?> definition, String id, String label) {
        log.info("Before " + definition + " with body " + exchange.getIn().getBody());
        debugBeforeMethodCalled = true;
    }

    @Override
    protected void debugAfter(Exchange exchange, org.apache.camel.Processor processor, ProcessorDefinition<?> definition, String id, String label, long timeTaken) {
        log.info("After " + definition + " with body " + exchange.getIn().getBody());
        debugAfterMethodCalled = true;
    }
}

Also notice the use of getBlueprintDescriptors to indicate that by default we should look for the camelContext.xml in the package to configure the test case which looks like this

<blueprint xmlns="http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0"
           xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
           xsi:schemaLocation="
             http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0 http://www.osgi.org/xmlns/blueprint/v1.0.0/blueprint.xsd">

  <camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/blueprint">

    <route>
      <from uri="direct:start"/>
      <transform>
        <simple>Hello ${body}</simple>
      </transform>
      <to uri="mock:a"/>
    </route>

  </camelContext>

</blueprint>

Testing endpoints

Camel provides a number of endpoints which can make testing easier.

Name Description
DataSet For load & soak testing this endpoint provides a way to create huge numbers of messages for sending to Components and asserting that they are consumed correctly
Mock For testing routes and mediation rules using mocks and allowing assertions to be added to an endpoint
Test Creates a Mock endpoint which expects to receive all the message bodies that could be polled from the given underlying endpoint

The main endpoint is the Mock endpoint which allows expectations to be added to different endpoints; you can then run your tests and assert that your expectations are met at the end.

Stubbing out physical transport technologies

If you wish to test out a route but want to avoid actually using a real physical transport (for example to unit test a transformation route rather than performing a full integration test) then the following endpoints can be useful.

Name Description
Direct Direct invocation of the consumer from the producer so that single threaded (non-SEDA) in VM invocation is performed which can be useful to mock out physical transports
SEDA Delivers messages asynchonously to consumers via a java.util.concurrent.BlockingQueue which is good for testing asynchronous transports
Stub Works like SEDA but does not validate the endpoint uri, which makes stubbing much easier.

Testing existing routes

Camel provides some features to aid during testing of existing routes where you cannot or will not use Mock etc. For example you may have a production ready route which you want to test with some 3rd party API which sends messages into this route.

Name Description
NotifyBuilder Allows you to be notified when a certain condition has occurred. For example when the route has completed 5 messages. You can build complex expressions to match your criteria when to be notified.
AdviceWith Allows you to advice or enhance an existing route using a RouteBuilder style. For example you can add interceptors to intercept sending outgoing messages to assert those messages are as expected.

Camel Test

As a simple alternative to using Spring Testing or Guice the camel-test module was introduced so you can perform powerful Testing of your Enterprise Integration Patterns easily.

The camel-test JAR is using JUnit. There is an alternative camel-testng JAR (Camel 2.8 onwards) using the TestNG test framework.

Adding to your pom.xml

To get started using Camel Test you will need to add an entry to your pom.xml

JUnit

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-test</artifactId>
  <version>${camel-version}</version>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

TestNG

Available as of Camel 2.8

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-testng</artifactId>
  <version>${camel-version}</version>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

You might also want to add slf4j and log4j to ensure nice logging messages (and maybe adding a log4j.properties file into your src/test/resources directory).

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
  <artifactId>slf4j-log4j12</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>
<dependency>
  <groupId>log4j</groupId>
  <artifactId>log4j</artifactId>
  <scope>test</scope>
</dependency>

Writing your test

You firstly need to derive from the class CamelTestSupport (org.apache.camel.test.CamelTestSupport, org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport, or org.apache.camel.testng.CamelTestSupport for JUnit 3.x, JUnit 4.x, and TestNG, respectively) and typically you will need to override the createRouteBuilder() or createRouteBuilders() method to create routes to be tested.

Here is an example.

public class FilterTest extends CamelTestSupport {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() {
        return new RouteBuilder() {
            public void configure() {
                from("direct:start").filter(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("mock:result");
            }
        };
    }
}

Notice how you can use the various Camel binding and injection annotations to inject individual Endpoint objects - particularly the Mock endpoints which are very useful for Testing. Also you can inject producer objects such as ProducerTemplate or some application code interface for sending messages or invoking services.

Features Provided by CamelTestSupport

The various CamelTestSupport classes provide a standard set of behaviors relating to the CamelContext used to host the route(s) under test.  The classes provide a number of methods that allow a test to alter the configuration of the CamelContext used.  The following table describes the available customization methods and the default behavior of tests that are built from a CamelTestSupport class.

Method Name Description Default Behavior
boolean isUseRouteBuilder() If the route builders from returned from createRouteBuilder() or createRouteBuilders() should be added to the CamelContext used in the test should be started. Returns true.  createRouteBuilder() or createRouteBuilders() are invoked and the CamelContext is started automatically.
boolean isUseAdviceWith()
If the CamelContext use in the test should be automatically started before test methods are invoked.
Override when using advice with and return true.  This helps in knowing the adviceWith is to be used, and the CamelContext will not be started before the advice with takes place. This delay helps by ensuring the advice with has been property setup before the CamelContext is started.
Its important to start the CamelContext manually from the unit test after you are done doing all the advice with.


 Returns false.  the CamelContext is started automatically before test methods are invoked.
boolean isCreateCamelContextPerClass()
See Setup CamelContext once per class, or per every test method. The CamelContext and routes are recreated for each test method.
String isMockEndpoints() Triggers the auto-mocking of endpoints whose URIs match the provided filter.  The default filter is null which disables this feature.  Return "*"  to match all endpoints.  See org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy for more details on the registration of the mock endpoints. Disabled
boolean isUseDebugger() If this method returns true, the debugBefore(Exchange exchange, Processor processor, ProcessorDefinition<?> definition, String id, String label) and 
debugAfter(Exchange exchange, Processor processor, ProcessorDefinition<?> definition, String id, String label, long timeTaken) methods are invoked for each processor in the registered routes. 		Disabled.  The methods are not invoked during the test.
int getShutdownTimeout() Returns the number of seconds that Camel should wait for graceful shutdown.  Useful for decreasing test times when a message is still in flight at the end of the test. Returns 10 seconds.
boolean useJmx() If JMX should be disabled on the CamelContext used in the test. JMX is disabled.
JndiRegistry createRegistry()
Provides a hook for adding objects into the registry.  Override this method to bind objects to the registry before test methods are invoked. An empty registry is initialized.
useOverridePropertiesWithPropertiesComponent Camel 2.10: Allows to add/override properties when Using PropertyPlaceholder in Camel. null
ignoreMissingLocationWithPropertiesComponent Camel 2.10: Allows to control if Camel should ignore missing locations for properties. null

JNDI

Camel uses a Registry to allow you to configure Component or Endpoint instances or Beans used in your routes. If you are not using Spring or [OSGi] then JNDI is used as the default registry implementation.

So you will also need to create a jndi.properties file in your src/test/resources directory so that there is a default registry available to initialise the CamelContext.

Here is an example jndi.properties file

java.naming.factory.initial = org.apache.camel.util.jndi.CamelInitialContextFactory

Dynamically assigning ports

Available as of Camel 2.7

Tests that use port numbers will fail if that port is already on use. AvailablePortFinder provides methods for finding unused port numbers at runtime.

// Get the next available port number starting from the default starting port of 1024
int port1 = AvailablePortFinder.getNextAvailable();
/*
 * Get another port. Note that just getting a port number does not reserve it so
 * we look starting one past the last port number we got.
 */
int port2 = AvailablePortFinder.getNextAvailable(port1 + 1);

Setup CamelContext once per class, or per every test method

Available as of Camel 2.8

The Camel Test kit will by default setup and shutdown CamelContext per every test method in your test class. So for example if you have 3 test methods, then CamelContext is started and shutdown after each test, that is 3 times.

TestNG
This feature is also supported in camel-testng
Beware
When using this the CamelContext will keep state between tests, so have that in mind. So if your unit tests start to fail for no apparent reason, it could be due this fact. So use this feature with a bit of care.

You may want to do this once, to share the CamelContext between test methods, to speedup unit testing. This requires to use JUnit 4! In your unit test method you have to extend the org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport or the org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelSpringTestSupport test class and override the isCreateCamelContextPerClass method and return true as shown in the following example:

Setup CamelContext once per class
public class FilterCreateCamelContextPerClassTest extends CamelTestSupport {

    @Override
    public boolean isCreateCamelContextPerClass() {
        // we override this method and return true, to tell Camel test-kit that
        // it should only create CamelContext once (per class), so we will
        // re-use the CamelContext between each test method in this class
        return true;
    }

    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("direct:start", expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();
    }

    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        getMockEndpoint("mock:result").expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("direct:start", "<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        assertMockEndpointsSatisfied();
    }

    @Override
    protected RouteBuilder createRouteBuilder() {
        return new RouteBuilder() {
            public void configure() {
                from("direct:start").filter(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("mock:result");
            }
        };
    }
}

See Also

Spring Testing

Testing is a crucial part of any development or integration work. The Spring Framework offers a number of features that makes it easy to test while using Spring for Inversion of Control which works with JUnit 3.x, JUnit 4.x, and TestNG.

We can use Spring for IoC and the Camel Mock and Test endpoints to create sophisticated integration/unit tests that are easy to run and debug inside your IDE.  There are three supported approaches for testing with Spring in Camel.

Name Testing Frameworks Supported Description Required Camel Test Dependencies
CamelSpringTestSupport
  • JUnit 3.x (deprecated)
  • JUnit 4.x
  • TestNG - Camel 2.8
 Provided by org.apache.camel.test.CamelSpringTestSupport, org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelSpringTestSupport, and org.apache.camel.testng.CamelSpringTestSupport.  These base classes provide feature parity with the simple CamelTestSupport classes from Camel Test but do not support Spring annotations on the test class such as @Autowired, @DirtiesContext, and @ContextConfiguration.
  • JUnit 3.x (deprecated) - camel-test-spring
  • JUnit 4.x - camel-test-spring
  • TestNG - camel-test-ng
Plain Spring Test
  • JUnit 3.x
  • JUnit 4.x
  • TestNG
 Extend the abstract base classes (org.springframework.test.context.junit38.AbstractJUnit38SpringContextTests, org.springframework.test.context.junit38.AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests, etc.) provided in Spring Test or use the Spring Test JUnit4 runner.  These approaches support both the Camel annotations and Spring annotations, but do not have feature parity with org.apache.camel.test.CamelTestSupport, org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport, and org.apache.camel.testng.CamelSpringTestSupport.
  • JUnit 3.x (deprecated) - None
  • JUnit 4.x - None
  • TestNG - None
Camel Enhanced Spring Test
  • JUnit 4.x - Camel 2.10
  • TestNG - Camel 2.10
 Use the org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner runner with the @RunWith annotation or extend org.apache.camel.testng.AbstractCamelTestNGSpringContextTests to enable feature parity with org.apache.camel.test.CamelTestSupport and org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport and also support the full suite of Spring Test annotations such as @Autowired, @DirtiesContext, and @ContextConfiguration.
  • JUnit 3.x (deprecated) - camel-test-spring
  • JUnit 4.x - camel-test-spring
  • TestNG - camel-test-ng

CamelSpringTestSupport

org.apache.camel.test.CamelSpringTestSupport, org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelSpringTestSupport, and org.apache.camel.testng.CamelSpringTestSupport extend their non-Spring aware counterparts (org.apache.camel.test.CamelTestSupport, org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelTestSupport, and org.apache.camel.testng.CamelTestSupport) and deliver integration with Spring into your test classes.  Instead of instantiating the CamelContext and routes programmatically, these classes rely on a Spring context to wire the needed components together.  If your test extends one of these classes, you must provide the Spring context by implementing the following method.

protected abstract AbstractApplicationContext createApplicationContext();

You are responsible for the instantiation of the Spring context in the method implementation.  All of the features available in the non-Spring aware counterparts from Camel Test are available in your test.

Plain Spring Test

In this approach, your test classes directly inherit from the Spring Test abstract test classes or use the JUnit 4.x test runner provided in Spring Test.  This approach supports dependency injection into your test class and the full suite of Spring Test annotations but does not support the features provided by the CamelSpringTestSupport classes.

Plain Spring Test using JUnit 3.x with XML Config Example

Here is a simple unit test using JUnit 3.x support from Spring Test using XML Config.

@ContextConfiguration
public class FilterTest extends SpringRunWithTestSupport {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }
}

Notice that we use @DirtiesContext on the test methods to force Spring Testing to automatically reload the CamelContext after each test method - this ensures that the tests don't clash with each other (e.g. one test method sending to an endpoint that is then reused in another test method).

Also notice the use of @ContextConfiguration to indicate that by default we should look for the FilterTest-context.xml on the classpath to configure the test case which looks like this

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:context="http://www.springframework.org/schema/context"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
    ">

  <camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
    <route>
      <from uri="direct:start"/>
      <filter>
        <xpath>$foo = 'bar'</xpath>
        <to uri="mock:result"/>
      </filter>
    </route>
  </camelContext>

</beans>

This test will load a Spring XML configuration file calledFilterTest-context.xml from the classpath in the same package structure as the FilterTest class and initialize it along with any Camel routes we define inside it, then inject theCamelContextinstance into our test case.

For instance, like this maven folder layout:

src/test/java/org/apache/camel/spring/patterns/FilterTest.java
src/test/resources/org/apache/camel/spring/patterns/FilterTest-context.xml

Plain Spring Test using JUnit 4.x with Java Config Example

You can completely avoid using an XML configuration file by using Spring Java Config.  Here is a unit test using JUnit 4.x support from Spring Test using Java Config.

@ContextConfiguration(
        locations = "org.apache.camel.spring.javaconfig.patterns.FilterTest$ContextConfig",
        loader = JavaConfigContextLoader.class)
public class FilterTest extends AbstractJUnit4SpringContextTests {

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:result")
    protected MockEndpoint resultEndpoint;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start")
    protected ProducerTemplate template;

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        String expectedBody = "<matched/>";

        resultEndpoint.expectedBodiesReceived(expectedBody);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader(expectedBody, "foo", "bar");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @DirtiesContext
    @Test
    public void testSendNotMatchingMessage() throws Exception {
        resultEndpoint.expectedMessageCount(0);

        template.sendBodyAndHeader("<notMatched/>", "foo", "notMatchedHeaderValue");

        resultEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied();
    }

    @Configuration
    public static class ContextConfig extends SingleRouteCamelConfiguration {
        @Bean
        public RouteBuilder route() {
            return new RouteBuilder() {
                public void configure() {
                    from("direct:start").filter(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("mock:result");
                }
            };
        }
    }
}

This is similar to the XML Config example above except that there is no XML file and instead the nested ContextConfig class does all of the configuration; so your entire test case is contained in a single Java class. We currently have to reference by class name this class in the @ContextConfiguration which is a bit ugly. Please vote for SJC-238 to address this and make Spring Test work more cleanly with Spring JavaConfig.

Plain Spring Test using JUnit 4.x Runner with XML Config

You can avoid extending Spring classes by using the SpringJUnit4ClassRunner provided by Spring Test.  This custom JUnit runner means you are free to choose your own class hierarchy while retaining all the capabilities of Spring Test.

@RunWith(SpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
public class MyCamelTest {

    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:foo")
    protected MockEndpoint foo;


    @Test
    @DirtiesContext
    public void testMocksAreValid() throws Exception {
        ...       

        foo.message(0).header("bar").isEqualTo("ABC");

        MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext);
    }
}

Camel Enhanced Spring Test

Using org.apache.camel.test.junit4.CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner runner with the @RunWith annotation or extending org.apache.camel.testng.AbstractCamelTestNGSpringContextTests provides the full feature set of Spring Test with support for the feature set provided in the CamelTestSupport classes.  A number of Camel specific annotations have been developed in order to provide for declarative manipulation of the Camel context(s) involved in the test.  These annotations free your test classes from having to inherit from the CamelSpringTestSupport classes and also reduce the amount of code required to customize the tests.

Annotation Class Applies To Description Default Behavioir If Not Present Default Behavior If Present
org.apache.camel.test.spring.DisableJmx
Class Indicates if JMX should be globally disabled in the CamelContexts that are bootstrapped  during the test through the use of Spring Test loaded application contexts.
JMX is disabled JMX is disabled
org.apache.camel.test.spring.ExcludeRoutes
Class
Indicates if certain route builder classes should be excluded from discovery.  Initializes a org.apache.camel.spi.PackageScanClassResolver to exclude a set of given classes from being resolved. Typically this is used at test time to exclude certain routes, which might otherwise be just noisy, from being discovered and initialized.
Not enabled and no routes are excluded No routes are excluded
org.apache.camel.test.spring.LazyLoadTypeConverters (Deprecated)
Class
Indicates if the CamelContexts that are bootstrapped during the test through the use of Spring Test loaded application contexts should use lazy loading of type converters. Type converters are not lazy loaded Type converters are not lazy loaded
org.apache.camel.test.spring.MockEndpoints
Class
Triggers the auto-mocking of endpoints whose URIs match the provided filter.  The default filter is "*" which matches all endpoints.  See org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy for more details on the registration of the mock endpoints. Not enabled All endpoints are sniffed and recorded in a mock endpoint.
org.apache.camel.test.spring.MockEndpointsAndSkip
 Class Triggers the auto-mocking of endpoints whose URIs match the provided filter.  The default filter is "*", which matches all endpoints.  See org.apache.camel.impl.InterceptSendToMockEndpointStrategy for more details on the registration of the mock endpoints.  This annotation will also skip sending the message to matched endpoints as well.
 Not enabled
 All endpoints are sniffed and recorded in a mock endpoint.  The original endpoint is not invoked.
org.apache.camel.test.spring.ProvidesBreakpoint
Method Indicates that the annotated method returns an org.apache.camel.spi.Breakpoint for use in the test.  Useful for intercepting traffic to all endpoints or simply for setting a break point in an IDE for debugging.  The method must be public, static, take no arguments, and return org.apache.camel.spi.Breakpoint.
N/A The returned Breakpoint is registered in the CamelContext(s)
org.apache.camel.test.spring.ShutdownTimeout
Class
Indicates to set the shutdown timeout of all CamelContexts instantiated through the use of Spring Test loaded application contexts.  If no annotation is used, the timeout is automatically reduced to 10 seconds by the test framework.
10 seconds 10 seconds
org.apache.camel.test.spring.UseAdviceWith
Class
Indicates the use of adviceWith() within the test class.  If a class is annotated with this annotation and UseAdviceWith#value() returns true, any CamelContexts bootstrapped during the test through the use of Spring Test loaded application contexts will not be started automatically.  The test author is responsible for injecting the Camel contexts into the test and executing CamelContext#start() on them at the appropriate time after any advice has been applied to the routes in the CamelContext(s).
CamelContexts do not automatically start. CamelContexts do not automatically start.

The following example illustrates the use of the @MockEndpoints annotation in order to setup mock endpoints as interceptors on all endpoints using the Camel Log component and the @DisableJmx annotation to enable JMX which is disabled during tests by default.  Note that we still use the @DirtiesContext annotation to ensure that the CamelContext, routes, and mock endpoints are reinitialized between test methods.

@RunWith(CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunner.class)
@ContextConfiguration
@DirtiesContext(classMode = ClassMode.AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
@MockEndpoints("log:*")
@DisableJmx(false)
public class CamelSpringJUnit4ClassRunnerPlainTest {

    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext2;

    protected MockEndpoint mockB;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:c", context = "camelContext2")
    protected MockEndpoint mockC;

    @Produce(uri = "direct:start2", context = "camelContext2")
    protected ProducerTemplate start2;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:log:org.apache.camel.test.junit4.spring", context = "camelContext2")
    protected MockEndpoint mockLog;

    @Test
    public void testPositive() throws Exception {

        mockC.expectedBodiesReceived("David");
        mockLog.expectedBodiesReceived("Hello David");

        start2.sendBody("David");

        MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext);
    }

Adding more Mock expectations

If you wish to programmatically add any new assertions to your test you can easily do so with the following. Notice how we use @EndpointInject to inject a Camel endpoint into our code then the Mock API to add an expectation on a specific message.

@ContextConfiguration
public class MyCamelTest extends AbstractJUnit38SpringContextTests {

    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:foo")
    protected MockEndpoint foo;

    public void testMocksAreValid() throws Exception {
        // lets add more expectations
        foo.message(0).header("bar").isEqualTo("ABC");

        MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext);
    }
}

Further processing the received messages

Sometimes once a Mock endpoint has received some messages you want to then process them further to add further assertions that your test case worked as you expect.

So you can then process the received message exchanges if you like...

@ContextConfiguration
public class MyCamelTest extends AbstractJUnit38SpringContextTests {

    @Autowired
    protected CamelContext camelContext;

    @EndpointInject(uri = "mock:foo")
    protected MockEndpoint foo;

    public void testMocksAreValid() throws Exception {
        // lets add more expectations...

        MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext);

		// now lets do some further assertions
        List<Exchange> list = foo.getReceivedExchanges();
        for (Exchange exchange : list) {
            Message in = exchange.getIn();
            ...
        }
    }
}

Sending and receiving messages

It might be that the Enterprise Integration Patterns you have defined in either Spring XML or using the Java DSL do all of the sending and receiving and you might just work with the Mock endpoints as described above. However sometimes in a test case its useful to explicitly send or receive messages directly.

To send or receive messages you should use the Bean Integration mechanism. For example to send messages inject a ProducerTemplate using the @EndpointInject annotation then call the various send methods on this object to send a message to an endpoint. To consume messages use the @MessageDriven annotation on a method to have the method invoked when a message is received.

public class Foo {
  @EndpointInject(uri="activemq:foo.bar")
  ProducerTemplate producer;

  public void doSomething() {
    // lets send a message!
    producer.sendBody("<hello>world!</hello>");
  }

  // lets consume messages from the 'cheese' queue
  @MessageDriven(uri="activemq:cheese")
  public void onCheese(String name) {
    ...
  }
}

See Also

Camel Guice

We have support for Google Guice as a dependency injection framework.

Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:

<dependency>
    <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
    <artifactId>camel-guice</artifactId>
    <version>x.x.x</version>
    <!-- use the same version as your Camel core version -->
</dependency>

Dependency Injecting Camel with Guice

The GuiceCamelContext is designed to work nicely inside Guice. You then need to bind it using some Guice Module.

The camel-guice library comes with a number of reusable Guice Modules you can use if you wish - or you can bind the GuiceCamelContext yourself in your own module.

  • CamelModule is the base module which binds the GuiceCamelContext but leaves it up you to bind the RouteBuilder instances
  • CamelModuleWithRouteTypes extends CamelModule so that in the constructor of the module you specify the RouteBuilder classes or instances to use
  • CamelModuleWithMatchingRoutes extends CamelModule so that all bound RouteBuilder instances will be injected into the CamelContext or you can supply an optional Matcher to find RouteBuilder instances matching some kind of predicate.

So you can specify the exact RouteBuilder instances you want

Injector injector = Guice.createInjector(new CamelModuleWithRouteTypes(MyRouteBuilder.class, AnotherRouteBuilder.class));
// if required you can lookup the CamelContext
CamelContext camelContext = injector.getInstance(CamelContext.class);

Or inject them all

Injector injector = Guice.createInjector(new CamelModuleWithRouteTypes());
// if required you can lookup the CamelContext
CamelContext camelContext = injector.getInstance(CamelContext.class);

You can then use Guice in the usual way to inject the route instances or any other dependent objects.

Bootstrapping with JNDI

A common pattern used in J2EE is to bootstrap your application or root objects by looking them up in JNDI. This has long been the approach when working with JMS for example - looking up the JMS ConnectionFactory in JNDI for example.

You can follow a similar pattern with Guice using the GuiceyFruit JNDI Provider which lets you bootstrap Guice from a jndi.properties file which can include the Guice Modules to create along with environment specific properties you can inject into your modules and objects.

If the jndi.properties is conflict with other component, you can specify the jndi properties file name in the Guice Main with option -j or -jndiProperties with the properties file location to let Guice Main to load right jndi properties file.

Configuring Component, Endpoint or RouteBuilder instances

You can use Guice to dependency inject whatever objects you need to create, be it an Endpoint, Component, RouteBuilder or arbitrary bean used within a route.

The easiest way to do this is to create your own Guice Module class which extends one of the above module classes and add a provider method for each object you wish to create. A provider method is annotated with @Provides as follows

public class MyModule extends CamelModuleWithMatchingRoutes {

    @Provides
    @JndiBind("jms")
    JmsComponent jms(@Named("activemq.brokerURL") String brokerUrl) {
        return JmsComponent.jmsComponent(new ActiveMQConnectionFactory(brokerUrl));
    }
}

You can optionally annotate the method with @JndiBind to bind the object to JNDI at some name if the object is a component, endpoint or bean you wish to refer to by name in your routes.

You can inject any environment specific properties (such as URLs, machine names, usernames/passwords and so forth) from the jndi.properties file easily using the @Named annotation as shown above. This allows most of your configuration to be in Java code which is typesafe and easily refactorable - then leaving some properties to be environment specific (the jndi.properties file) which you can then change based on development, testing, production etc.

Creating multiple RouteBuilder instances per type

It is sometimes useful to create multiple instances of a particular RouteBuilder with different configurations.

To do this just create multiple provider methods for each configuration; or create a single provider method that returns a collection of RouteBuilder instances.

For example

import org.apache.camel.guice.CamelModuleWithMatchingRoutes;
import com.google.common.collect.Lists;

public class MyModule extends CamelModuleWithMatchingRoutes {

    @Provides
    @JndiBind("foo")
    Collection<RouteBuilder> foo(@Named("fooUrl") String fooUrl) {
        return Lists.newArrayList(new MyRouteBuilder(fooUrl), new MyRouteBuilder("activemq:CheeseQueue"));
    }
}

See Also

Templating

When you are testing distributed systems its a very common requirement to have to stub out certain external systems with some stub so that you can test other parts of the system until a specific system is available or written etc.

A great way to do this is using some kind of Template system to generate responses to requests generating a dynamic message using a mostly-static body.

There are a number of templating components included in the Camel distribution you could use

or the following external Camel components

Example

Here's a simple example showing how we can respond to InOut requests on the My.Queue queue on ActiveMQ with a template generated response. The reply would be sent back to the JMSReplyTo Destination.

from("activemq:My.Queue").
  to("velocity:com/acme/MyResponse.vm");

If you want to use InOnly and consume the message and send it to another destination you could use

from("activemq:My.Queue").
  to("velocity:com/acme/MyResponse.vm").
  to("activemq:Another.Queue");

See Also

  • Mock for details of mock endpoint testing (as opposed to template based stubs).

Database

Camel can work with databases in a number of different ways. This document tries to outline the most common approaches.

Database endpoints

Camel provides a number of different endpoints for working with databases

  • JPA for working with hibernate, openjpa or toplink. When consuming from the endpoints entity beans are read (and deleted/updated to mark as processed) then when producing to the endpoints they are written to the database (via insert/update).
  • iBATIS similar to the above but using Apache iBATIS
  • JDBC similar though using explicit SQL

Database pattern implementations

Various patterns can work with databases as follows

Parallel Processing and Ordering

It is a common requirement to want to use parallel processing of messages for throughput and load balancing, while at the same time process certain kinds of messages in order.

How to achieve parallel processing

You can send messages to a number of Camel Components to achieve parallel processing and load balancing such as

  • SEDA for in-JVM load balancing across a thread pool
  • ActiveMQ or JMS for distributed load balancing and parallel processing
  • JPA for using the database as a poor mans message broker

When processing messages concurrently, you should consider ordering and concurrency issues. These are described below

Concurrency issues

Note that there is no concurrency or locking issue when using ActiveMQ, JMS or SEDA by design; they are designed for highly concurrent use. However there are possible concurrency issues in the Processor of the messages i.e. what the processor does with the message?

For example if a processor of a message transfers money from one account to another account; you probably want to use a database with pessimistic locking to ensure that operation takes place atomically.

Ordering issues

As soon as you send multiple messages to different threads or processes you will end up with an unknown ordering across the entire message stream as each thread is going to process messages concurrently.

For many use cases the order of messages is not too important. However for some applications this can be crucial. e.g. if a customer submits a purchase order version 1, then amends it and sends version 2; you don't want to process the first version last (so that you loose the update). Your Processor might be clever enough to ignore old messages. If not you need to preserve order.

Recommendations

This topic is large and diverse with lots of different requirements; but from a high level here are our recommendations on parallel processing, ordering and concurrency

  • for distributed locking, use a database by default, they are very good at it
  • to preserve ordering across a JMS queue consider using Exclusive Consumers in the ActiveMQ component
  • even better are Message Groups which allows you to preserve ordering across messages while still offering parallelisation via the JMSXGroupID header to determine what can be parallelized
  • if you receive messages out of order you could use the Resequencer to put them back together again

A good rule of thumb to help reduce ordering problems is to make sure each single can be processed as an atomic unit in parallel (either without concurrency issues or using say, database locking); or if it can't, use a Message Group to relate the messages together which need to be processed in order by a single thread.

Using Message Groups with Camel

To use a Message Group with Camel you just need to add a header to the output JMS message based on some kind of Correlation Identifier to correlate messages which should be processed in order by a single thread - so that things which don't correlate together can be processed concurrently.

For example the following code shows how to create a message group using an XPath expression taking an invoice's product code as the Correlation Identifier

from("activemq:a").setHeader("JMSXGroupID", xpath("/invoice/productCode")).to("activemq:b");

You can of course use the Xml Configuration if you prefer

Asynchronous Processing

Overview

Supported versions
The information on this page applies for Camel 2.4 onwards. Before Camel 2.4 the asynchronous processing is only implemented for JBI where as in Camel 2.4 onwards we have implemented it in many other areas. See more at Asynchronous Routing Engine.

Camel supports a more complex asynchronous processing model. The asynchronous processors implement the AsyncProcessor interface which is derived from the more synchronous Processor interface. There are advantages and disadvantages when using asynchronous processing when compared to using the standard synchronous processing model.

Advantages:

  • Processing routes that are composed fully of asynchronous processors do not use up threads waiting for processors to complete on blocking calls. This can increase the scalability of your system by reducing the number of threads needed to process the same workload.
  • Processing routes can be broken up into SEDA processing stages where different thread pools can process the different stages. This means that your routes can be processed concurrently.

Disadvantages:

  • Implementing asynchronous processors is more complex than implementing the synchronous versions.

When to Use

We recommend that processors and components be implemented the more simple synchronous APIs unless you identify a performance of scalability requirement that dictates otherwise. A Processor whose process() method blocks for a long time would be good candidates for being converted into an asynchronous processor.

Interface Details

public interface AsyncProcessor extends Processor {
   boolean process(Exchange exchange, AsyncCallback callback);
}

The AsyncProcessor defines a single process() method which is very similar to it's synchronous Processor.process() brethren. Here are the differences:

  • A non-null AsyncCallback MUST be supplied which will be notified when the exchange processing is completed.
  • It MUST not throw any exceptions that occurred while processing the exchange. Any such exceptions must be stored on the exchange's Exception property.
  • It MUST know if it will complete the processing synchronously or asynchronously. The method will return true if it does complete synchronously, otherwise it returns false.
  • When the processor has completed processing the exchange, it must call the callback.done(boolean sync) method. The sync parameter MUST match the value returned by the process() method.

Implementing Processors that Use the AsyncProcessor API

All processors, even synchronous processors that do not implement the AsyncProcessor interface, can be coerced to implement the AsyncProcessor interface. This is usually done when you are implementing a Camel component consumer that supports asynchronous completion of the exchanges that it is pushing through the Camel routes. Consumers are provided a Processor object when created. All Processor object can be coerced to a AsyncProcessor using the following API:

Processor processor = ...
AsyncProcessor asyncProcessor = AsyncProcessorTypeConverter.convert(processor);

For a route to be fully asynchronous and reap the benefits to lower Thread usage, it must start with the consumer implementation making use of the asynchronous processing API. If it called the synchronous process() method instead, the consumer's thread would be forced to be blocked and in use for the duration that it takes to process the exchange.

It is important to take note that just because you call the asynchronous API, it does not mean that the processing will take place asynchronously. It only allows the possibility that it can be done without tying up the caller's thread. If the processing happens asynchronously is dependent on the configuration of the Camel route.

Normally, the the process call is passed in an inline inner AsyncCallback class instance which can reference the exchange object that was declared final. This allows it to finish up any post processing that is needed when the called processor is done processing the exchange. See below for an example.

final Exchange exchange = ...
AsyncProcessor asyncProcessor = ...
asyncProcessor.process(exchange, new AsyncCallback() {
    public void done(boolean sync) {

        if (exchange.isFailed()) {
            ... // do failure processing.. perhaps rollback etc.
        } else {
            ... // processing completed successfully, finish up 
                // perhaps commit etc.
        }
    }
});

Asynchronous Route Sequence Scenarios

Now that we have understood the interface contract of the AsyncProcessor, and have seen how to make use of it when calling processors, lets looks a what the thread model/sequence scenarios will look like for some sample routes.

The Jetty component's consumers support async processing by using continuations. Suffice to say it can take a http request and pass it to a camel route for async processing. If the processing is indeed async, it uses Jetty continuation so that the http request is 'parked' and the thread is released. Once the camel route finishes processing the request, the jetty component uses the AsyncCallback to tell Jetty to 'un-park' the request. Jetty un-parks the request, the http response returned using the result of the exchange processing.

Notice that the jetty continuations feature is only used "If the processing is indeed async". This is why AsyncProcessor.process() implementations MUST accurately report if request is completed synchronously or not.

The jhc component's producer allows you to make HTTP requests and implement the AsyncProcessor interface. A route that uses both the jetty asynchronous consumer and the jhc asynchronous producer will be a fully asynchronous route and has some nice attributes that can be seen if we take a look at a sequence diagram of the processing route. For the route:

from("jetty:http://localhost:8080/service").to("jhc:http://localhost/service-impl");

The sequence diagram would look something like this:

The diagram simplifies things by making it looks like processors implement the AsyncCallback interface when in reality the AsyncCallback interfaces are inline inner classes, but it illustrates the processing flow and shows how 2 separate threads are used to complete the processing of the original http request. The first thread is synchronous up until processing hits the jhc producer which issues the http request. It then reports that the exchange processing will complete async since it will use a NIO to complete getting the response back. Once the jhc component has received a full response it uses AsyncCallback.done() method to notify the caller. These callback notifications continue up until it reaches the original jetty consumer which then un-parks the http request and completes it by providing the response.

Mixing Synchronous and Asynchronous Processors

It is totally possible and reasonable to mix the use of synchronous and asynchronous processors/components. The pipeline processor is the backbone of a Camel processing route. It glues all the processing steps together. It is implemented as an AsyncProcessor and supports interleaving synchronous and asynchronous processors as the processing steps in the pipeline.

Lets say we have 2 custom processors, MyValidator and MyTransformation, both of which are synchronous processors. Lets say we want to load file from the data/in directory validate them with the MyValidator() processor, Transform them into JPA java objects using MyTransformation and then insert them into the database using the JPA component. Lets say that the transformation process takes quite a bit of time and we want to allocate 20 threads to do parallel transformations of the input files. The solution is to make use of the thread processor. The thread is AsyncProcessor that forces subsequent processing in asynchronous thread from a thread pool.

The route might look like:

from("file:data/in").process(new MyValidator()).threads(20).process(new MyTransformation()).to("jpa:PurchaseOrder");

The sequence diagram would look something like this:

You would actually have multiple threads executing the 2nd part of the thread sequence.

Staying synchronous in an AsyncProcessor

Generally speaking you get better throughput processing when you process things synchronously. This is due to the fact that starting up an asynchronous thread and doing a context switch to it adds a little bit of of overhead. So it is generally encouraged that AsyncProcessors do as much work as they can synchronously. When they get to a step that would block for a long time, at that point they should return from the process call and let the caller know that it will be completing the call asynchronously.

Implementing Virtual Topics on other JMS providers

ActiveMQ supports Virtual Topics since durable topic subscriptions kinda suck (see this page for more detail) mostly since they don't support Competing Consumers.

Most folks want Queue semantics when consuming messages; so that you can support Competing Consumers for load balancing along with things like Message Groups and Exclusive Consumers to preserve ordering or partition the queue across consumers.

However if you are using another JMS provider you can implement Virtual Topics by switching to ActiveMQ or you can use the following Camel pattern.

First here's the ActiveMQ approach.

  • send to activemq:topic:VirtualTopic.Orders
  • for consumer A consume from activemq:Consumer.A.VirtualTopic.Orders

When using another message broker use the following pattern

  • send to jms:Orders
  • add this route with a to() for each logical durable topic subscriber 
    from("jms:Orders").to("jms:Consumer.A", "jms:Consumer.B", ...);
  • for consumer A consume from jms:Consumer.A

What's the Camel Transport for CXF

In CXF you offer or consume a webservice by defining it´s address. The first part of the address specifies the protocol to use. For example address="http://localhost:9000" in an endpoint configuration means your service will be offered using the http protocol on port 9000 of localhost. When you integrate Camel Tranport into CXF you get a new transport "camel". So you can specify address="camel://direct:MyEndpointName" to bind the CXF service address to a camel direct endpoint.

Technically speaking Camel transport for CXF is a component which implements the CXF transport API with the Camel core library. This allows you to use camel´s routing engine and integration patterns support smoothly together with your CXF services.

Integrate Camel into CXF transport layer

To include the Camel Tranport into your CXF bus you use the CamelTransportFactory. You can do this in Java as well as in Spring.

Setting up the Camel Transport in Spring

You can use the following snippet in your applicationcontext if you want to configure anything special. If you only want to activate the camel transport you do not have to do anything in your application context. As soon as you include the camel-cxf-transport jar (or camel-cxf.jar if your camel version is less than 2.7.x) in your app cxf will scan the jar and load a CamelTransportFactory for you. 

<!-- you don't need to specify the CamelTransportFactory configuration as it is auto load by CXF bus -->
<bean class="org.apache.camel.component.cxf.transport.CamelTransportFactory">
  <property name="bus" ref="cxf" />
  <property name="camelContext" ref="camelContext" />
  <!-- checkException new added in Camel 2.1 and Camel 1.6.2 -->
  <!-- If checkException is true , CamelDestination will check the outMessage's
     exception and set it into camel exchange. You can also override this value 
     in CamelDestination's configuration. The default value is false.
     This option should be set true when you want to leverage the camel's error 
     handler to deal with fault message -->
  <property name="checkException" value="true" />
  <property name="transportIds">
    <list>
      <value>http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel</value>
    </list>
  </property>
</bean>

Integrating the Camel Transport in a programmatic way

Camel transport provides a setContext method that you could use to set the Camel context into the transport factory. If you want this factory take effect, you need to register the factory into the CXF bus. Here is a full example for you.

import org.apache.cxf.Bus;
import org.apache.cxf.BusFactory;
import org.apache.cxf.transport.ConduitInitiatorManager;
import org.apache.cxf.transport.DestinationFactoryManager;
...

BusFactory bf = BusFactory.newInstance();
Bus bus = bf.createBus();
CamelTransportFactory camelTransportFactory = new CamelTransportFactory();
// set up the CamelContext which will be use by the CamelTransportFactory
camelTransportFactory.setCamelContext(context)
// if you are using CXF higher then 2.4.x the 
camelTransportFactory.setBus(bus);

// if you are lower CXF, you need to register the ConduitInitiatorManager and DestinationFactoryManager like below
// register the conduit initiator
ConduitInitiatorManager cim = bus.getExtension(ConduitInitiatorManager.class);
cim.registerConduitInitiator(CamelTransportFactory.TRANSPORT_ID, camelTransportFactory);
// register the destination factory
DestinationFactoryManager dfm = bus.getExtension(DestinationFactoryManager.class);
dfm.registerDestinationFactory(CamelTransportFactory.TRANSPORT_ID, camelTransportFactory);
// set or bus as the default bus for cxf
BusFactory.setDefaultBus(bus);

Configure the destination and conduit with Spring

Namespace

The elements used to configure an Camel transport endpoint are defined in the namespace http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel. It is commonly referred to using the prefix camel. In order to use the Camel transport configuration elements you will need to add the lines shown below to the beans element of your endpoint's configuration file. In addition, you will need to add the configuration elements' namespace to the xsi:schemaLocation attribute.

Adding the Configuration Namespace
<beans ...
       xmlns:camel="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel
       ...
       xsi:schemaLocation="...
                           http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel
                           http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel.xsd
                          ...>

The destination element

You configure an Camel transport server endpoint using the camel:destination element and its children. The camel:destination element takes a single attribute, name, the specifies the WSDL port element that corresponds to the endpoint. The value for the name attribute takes the form portQName.camel-destination. The example below shows the camel:destination element that would be used to add configuration for an endpoint that was specified by the WSDL fragment <port binding="widgetSOAPBinding" name="widgetSOAPPort> if the endpoint's target namespace was http://widgets.widgetvendor.net.

camel:destination Element

...
  <camel:destination name="{http://widgets/widgetvendor.net}widgetSOAPPort.http-destination>
    <camelContext id="context" xmlns="http://activemq.apache.org/camel/schema/spring">
         <route>
           <from uri="direct:EndpointC" />
           <to uri="direct:EndpointD" />
         </route>
     </camelContext>
  </camel:destination>

  <!-- new added feature since Camel 2.11.x
  <camel:destination name="{http://widgets/widgetvendor.net}widgetSOAPPort.camel-destination" camelContextId="context" />  

...

The camel:destination element for Spring has a number of child elements that specify configuration information. They are described below.

ElementDescription
camel-spring:camelContextYou can specify the camel context in the camel destination
camel:camelContextRefThe camel context id which you want inject into the camel destination

The conduit element

You configure an Camel transport client using the camel:conduit element and its children. The camel:conduit element takes a single attribute, name, that specifies the WSDL port element that corresponds to the endpoint. The value for the name attribute takes the form portQName.camel-conduit. For example, the code below shows the camel:conduit element that would be used to add configuration for an endpoint that was specified by the WSDL fragment <port binding="widgetSOAPBinding" name="widgetSOAPPort> if the endpoint's target namespace was http://widgets.widgetvendor.net.

http-conf:conduit Element
...
  <camelContext id="conduit_context" xmlns="http://activemq.apache.org/camel/schema/spring">
       <route>
           <from uri="direct:EndpointA" />
           <to uri="direct:EndpointB" />
       </route>
   </camelContext>

  <camel:conduit name="{http://widgets/widgetvendor.net}widgetSOAPPort.camel-conduit">
     <camel:camelContextRef>conduit_context</camel:camelContextRef>
  </camel:conduit>

  <!-- new added feature since Camel 2.11.x
  <camel:conduit name="{http://widgets/widgetvendor.net}widgetSOAPPort.camel-conduit" camelContextId="conduit_context" />
     

  <camel:conduit name="*.camel-conduit">
  <!-- you can also using the wild card to specify the camel-conduit that you want to configure -->
    ...
  </camel:conduit>
...

The camel:conduit element has a number of child elements that specify configuration information. They are described below.

ElementDescription
camel-spring:camelContextYou can specify the camel context in the camel conduit
camel:camelContextRefThe camel context id which you want inject into the camel conduit

Configure the destination and conduit with Blueprint

From Camel 2.11.x, Camel Transport supports to be configured with Blueprint

If you are using blueprint, you should use the the namespace http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel/blueprint and import the schema like the blow.

Adding the Configuration Namespace for blueprint
<beans ...
       xmlns:camel="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel/blueprint"
       ...
       xsi:schemaLocation="...
                           http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel/blueprint 
                           http://cxf.apache.org/schmemas/blueprint/camel.xsd
                          ...>

In blueprint camel:conduit camel:destination only has one camelContextId attribute, they doesn't support to specify the camel context in the camel destination.

  <camel:conduit id="*.camel-conduit" camelContextId="camel1" />
  <camel:destination id="*.camel-destination" camelContextId="camel1" />

Example Using Camel as a load balancer for CXF

This example show how to use the camel load balance feature in CXF, and you need load the configuration file in CXF and publish the endpoints on the address "camel://direct:EndpointA" and "camel://direct:EndpointB"

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:camel="http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
       http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel http://cxf.apache.org/transports/camel.xsd
       http://camel.apache.org/schema/cxf http://camel.apache.org/schema/cxf/cxfEndpoint.xsd
       http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
    ">
    
   <!-- Enable bridge between Camel Property Placeholder and Spring Property placeholder so we can use system properties
       to dynamically set the port number for unit testing the example.  -->
   <bean id="bridgePropertyPlaceholder" class="org.apache.camel.spring.spi.BridgePropertyPlaceholderConfigurer"/>

   <bean id = "roundRobinRef" class="org.apache.camel.processor.loadbalancer.RoundRobinLoadBalancer" />

   <camelContext id="dest_context" xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
       <route>
            <from uri="jetty:http://localhost:{{port}}/GreeterContext/GreeterPort"/>
            <loadBalance ref="roundRobinRef">
              <to uri="direct:EndpointA"/>
              <to uri="direct:EndpointB"/>
            </loadBalance>
        </route>
   </camelContext>

   <!-- Inject the camel context to the Camel transport's destination -->
   <camel:destination name="{http://apache.org/hello_world_soap_http}CamelPort.camel-destination">
        <camel:camelContextRef>dest_context</camel:camelContextRef>
   </camel:destination>

</beans>

Complete Howto and Example for attaching Camel to CXF

Better JMS Transport for CXF Webservice using Apache Camel 

Introduction

When sending an Exchange to an Endpoint you can either use a Route or a ProducerTemplate. This works fine in many scenarios. However you may need to guarantee that an exchange is delivered to the same endpoint that you delivered a previous exchange on. For example in the case of delivering a batch of exchanges to a MINA socket you may need to ensure that they are all delivered through the same socket connection. Furthermore once the batch of exchanges have been delivered the protocol requirements may be such that you are responsible for closing the socket.

Using a Producer

To achieve fine grained control over sending exchanges you will need to program directly to a Producer. Your code will look similar to:

  CamelContext camelContext = ...

  // Obtain an endpoint and create the producer we will be using.
  Endpoint endpoint = camelContext.getEndpoint("someuri:etc");
  Producer producer = endpoint.createProducer();
  producer.start();

  try {
    // For each message to send...
    Object requestMessage = ...
    Exchange exchangeToSend = producer.createExchange();
    exchangeToSend().setBody(requestMessage);
    producer.process(exchangeToSend);
    ...

  } finally {
    // Tidy the producer up.
    producer.stop();
  }

In the case of using Apache MINA the producer.stop() invocation will cause the socket to be closed.
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