Apache Camel 4.8 LTS has just been released.
This release introduces a set of new features and noticeable improvements that we will cover in this blog post.
Camel Core
The simple language has new functions such as a iif (ternary if). The @BindToRegistry now supports init/destroy methods, and can be declared as lazy as well.
The log EIP can more easily configure its logger name using dynamic patterns.
Add poll EIP as an easier and simpler version of pollEnrich EIP which is also more tooling friendly.
The performance of the Camel tracer has been significantly improved, with a reduction of overhead. When using Camel JBang, tracing is now in standby mode instead of enabled. You can use camel trace --action=start to start tracing.
We continued with micro-optimizations on the core code. For the simple language, matching predicates should be about 12% faster - on average. Additionally, we have fine-tuned the buffer sizes used for multiple operations, which should help reduce the CPU cycles required for generating strings, handling input and input data and more.
Cloud configuration
In this version we’ve added the capability for the core to automatically read the cloud configuration that the user can mount at deployment time. Simply add the configuration option camel.main.cloud-properties-location to allow the runtime to scan such directories (using comma separated values) and consume those values as regular properties.
For example, given the following application:
- from:
uri: "timer:yaml"
parameters:
period: "1000"
steps:
- setBody:
simple: "Hello Camel from {{my-property}}"
- log: "${body}"
and the following Kubernetes Secret:
apiVersion: v1
data:
my-property: Q2FtZWwgNC44
kind: Secret
metadata:
name: my-secret
type: Opaque
You can provide the camel.main.cloud-properties-location = /etc/camel/conf.d/_secrets application property. Then, just wire your Kubernetes secret (or configmap) to the Deployment specification as you usually do with your cloud configuration:
spec:
containers:
...
volumeMounts:
- name: secret-volume
readOnly: true
mountPath: "/etc/camel/conf.d/_secrets"
volumes:
- name: secret-volume
secret:
secretName: my-secret
It’s nice to notice that the management of secrets (and configuration) would be entirely delegated to the cluster and transparent for the final user.
Camel JBang
We continue to improve and innovate with the Camel JBang CLI. For this release we have cleaned up the camel export command and made it more consistent exporting to the three runtimes (Main, Spring Boot, and Quarkus).
The camel kubernetes plugin has had major overhaul and we added more support for traits, export to Spring Boot and Quarkus, and as well to deploy and run directly via run.
It is now easier to see why a Camel route failed to start using camel get route --error command such as follows:
$ camel get route --error
PID NAME ID FROM REMOTE STATUS PHASE MESSAGE
81814 MyKafka route1 kafka://cheese?brokers=localhost:119092 x Error Start Invalid port in bootstrap.servers: localhost:119092
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
STACK-TRACE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
org.apache.kafka.common.config.ConfigException: Invalid port in bootstrap.servers: localhost:119092
at org.apache.kafka.clients.ClientUtils.parseAndValidateAddresses(ClientUtils.java:96)
at org.apache.kafka.clients.ClientUtils.parseAndValidateAddresses(ClientUtils.java:62)
at org.apache.camel.component.kafka.KafkaConsumer.doStart(KafkaConsumer.java:165)
at org.apache.camel.support.service.BaseService.start(BaseService.java:113)
at org.apache.camel.support.service.ServiceHelper.startService(ServiceHelper.java:126)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.AbstractCamelContext.startService(AbstractCamelContext.java:3170)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.InternalRouteStartupManager.doStartOrResumeRouteConsumers(InternalRouteStartupManager.java:415)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.InternalRouteStartupManager.doStartRouteConsumers(InternalRouteStartupManager.java:331)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.InternalRouteStartupManager.safelyStartRouteServices(InternalRouteStartupManager.java:217)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.InternalRouteStartupManager.safelyStartRouteServices(InternalRouteStartupManager.java:245)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.AbstractCamelContext.startRouteService(AbstractCamelContext.java:3217)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.AbstractCamelContext.startRoute(AbstractCamelContext.java:1114)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.InternalRouteController.startRoute(InternalRouteController.java:126)
at org.apache.camel.impl.engine.DefaultRouteController.startRoute(DefaultRouteController.java:133)
at org.apache.camel.cli.connector.LocalCliConnector.doActionRouteTask(LocalCliConnector.java:823)
at org.apache.camel.cli.connector.LocalCliConnector.actionTask(LocalCliConnector.java:237)
at org.apache.camel.cli.connector.LocalCliConnector.task(LocalCliConnector.java:220)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:539)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.runAndReset(FutureTask.java:305)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor$ScheduledFutureTask.run(ScheduledThreadPoolExecutor.java:305)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1136)
at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:635)
at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:840)
We also made it easy to include small web apps with Camel JBang. Just include your .html, .js, and .css files together with the Camel source code, and run it all together via camel run *.
Added new camel cmd browse to browse messages on external systems such as JMS brokers, and FTP servers.
Added camel get kafka to show Kafka topic information such as comitted offset.
There are many other small improvements and bug fixes in Camel JBang.
Camel Kubernetes Secrets refresh
The Kubernetes Secrets component has been enriched with a Camel Context reload based on Kubernetes Secrets update.
The needed properties are:
camel.vault.kubernetes.refreshEnabled=true
camel.vault.kubernetes.secrets=<secret_name>
The component will monitor the secrets listed, as comma separated names or regex, through a Kubernetes Client watcher.
Whenever a modification happens on the secret value, the component will trigger a Camel context reload.
To see this feature in action you can have a look at the example
Camel Tests
We continued to modernize the testing framework which you can read about in this blog post .
Miscellaneous
The camel-as2 has added more security algorithms.
The camel-azure-servicebus component has been made more robust and fault-tolerant.
Upgraded many third-party dependencies to the latest releases at the time of release.
The camel-spring-boot is upgraded to latest Spring Boot 3.3.3 release.
New Components
We have added a few new components:
camel-langchain4j-tools- LangChain4j Tools and Function Calling Featurescamel-langchain4j-tokenizer- LangChain4j Tokenizercamel-langchain4j-web-search- LangChain4j Web Search Enginecamel-solr- Perform operations against Apache Lucene Solrcamel-tahu- Sparkplug B Host/Edge support over MQTT using Eclipse Tahu
Upgrading
Make sure to read the upgrade guide if you are upgrading from a previous Camel version.
If you are upgrading from, for example, 4.4 to 4.8, then make sure to follow the upgrade guides for each release in-between, i.e. 4.4 -> 4.5, 4.5 -> 4.6, and so forth.
Release Notes
You can find more information about this release in the list of JIRA tickets resolved in the release:
Roadmap
The following 4.9 release is planned for Oct/Nov 2024.