Getting Started

First you need to Download the Camel distribution; or you could grab the Source and try Building it yourself.

Then come back here and you might want to read the following documentation before continuing:

• Longer Getting Started Guide
• Find out about Enterprise Integration Patterns and how to implement them with Camel
• Review the Architecture guide to see how to build Routes using the Java DSL or Spring based Xml Configuration

Working with CamelContexts and RouteBuilders

To get started with Camel:

1. Create a CamelContext.
2. Optionally, configure components or endpoints.
3. Add whatever routing rules you wish using the DSL and RouteBuilder or using Xml Configuration.
4. Start the context.

When your application is closing you may wish to stop the context

When you are ready, why not Walk through an Example?
And then continue the walk Walk through another example
And after the walks head over to the tutorials.

Working with Spring

If you use Spring as a Dependency Injection container then please refer to the Camel Spring documentation.

Other Resources

We strongly suggest that you brew a cup of coffee or tea and take the 30 minutes to read one or more of the following resources:

• Camel in Action, Chapter 1 (direct link) free chapter 1 of the Camel in Action book. Highly recommended to read to learn what Camel is and the basic Camel concepts. This is a free chapter you can download directly as a pdf (about 20 pages) and introduces you to Camel. We have been told by experience Camel end users they wished this chapter was available to them when they started learning Camel.

• Open Source Integration with Apache Camel and How Fuse IDE Can Help by Jonathan Anstey. Updated article of the Apache Camel: Integration Nirvana. Great article to learn what Camel is and has a good use case example.

• Several of the vendors on the Commercial Camel Offerings page also offer various tutorials, webinars, examples, etc.... that may be useful.

• Articles is a link collection with articles, blogs, podcasts, presentations and the likes about Camel done by people from the community.