Apache Camel 4.13 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
We have made management possible for BackOff, ForegroundTask, and BackgroundTask which are used as internal tasks to perform repetitive tasks, usually related to re-connection or recovery. Some of the Came components uses these features, and other components has native recovery built-in from the underlying library. However, those that uses these Camel tasks, is now exposed as JMX management, and also provide more logging details during activity. All together it’s easier to follow what is happening.
If possible Camel will now report file name:line-number of the source file in the FailedToStartRouteException if a route threw an exception on startup.
Camel JBang
Reduced the number of dependencies used with camel run.
Added camel get internal-task command to show state of internal tasks (see above).
Camel Launcher
This module provides a self-contained executable JAR that includes all dependencies required to run Camel JBang without the need for the JBang two-step process.
This is distributed as:
- A self-executing JAR:
camel-launcher-4.13.0.jar - Distribution archives:
camel-launcher-4.13.0-bin.ziporcamel-launcher-4.13.0-bin.tar.gz
You can then launch Camel either via java -jar or extract the distribution and execute the camel scripts.
Benefits
- No need for JBang installation
- Single executable JAR with all dependencies included
- Faster startup time (no dependency resolution step, on-demand class loading)
- Better memory usage (only loads classes that are actually used)
- Avoids classpath conflicts (dependencies kept as separate JARs)
- Each self-executing JAR is its own release, avoiding version complexity
- Can still be used with JBang if preferred
Rest DSL
Overall improved the request validator, for both the built-in and as well when using camel-openapi-validator component. The latter will now also validate the request payload is valid according to the OpenAPI schema.
Added support for find-grained validation levels with camel-openapi-validator. For example, you can ignore query parameters:
camel.rest.validation-levels[validation.schema.required] = INFO
camel.rest.validation-levels[validation.request.parameter.query.missing] = IGNORE
camel.rest.validation-levels[validation.response.body.missing] = WARN
Added response validator which can be turned on via clientResponseValidation=true, which makes Camel check what is being returned as response is valid according to the OpenAPI spec.
YAML DSL
Removed support for using kebab-case in the DSL. So for example set-body should be migrated to setBody which is the canonical syntax used in all the DSLs.
Camel AI
The Camel components for langchain4j has been updated for the latest 1.0.x releases.
Camel HTTP
Added skipcontrolheaders option which can be enabled, that makes it easier when you have several HTTP endpoints being called in the routes, and don’t want any CamelHttpXXX control headers to interfere when calling new HTTP endpoints. This avoids having to use removeHeaders in the routes to manually removing those headers.
Camel Kafka
We added two parameters transacted and transactionalId to the camel-kafka component, so you don’t have to set the transactional.id in the additionalProperties parameter. This way sets the kafka producer with transaction boundaries, in this case the transactional.id is the endpoint id + route id.
Example:
from("platform-http:/sendtx/{word}")
.setBody(simple("{\"foo\": \"${header.word}\"}"))
.to("kafka:my-topic?transacted=true")
.to("sql:insert into foo(name) values (:#word)");
In case you want to have finer control you can set a transactionalId parameter per route. Note that the old styles using the additionalProperties is still valid.
Camel Spring Boot
camel-spring-boot is upgraded to the latest Spring Boot 3.5.3 release.
Removed deprecated camel.springboot.xxx auto configuration naming. Use camel.main.xxx instead.
Camel Micrometer
camel-micrometer component added a little but (hopefully) useful default metric: camel_exchanges_last_timestamp. The goal of this new metric is to be able to discern how long a Camel application has been idle expecting any exchange to consume. In environments where there is the expectation of a continuous execution of exchanges, this can be of great help to immediately flag an application for some potential problem. The outcome of the metric in Prometheus is a Gauge which expose the Unix epoch milliseconds:
# HELP camel_exchanges_last_timestamp Last exchange processed time in milliseconds since the Unix epoch
# TYPE camel_exchanges_last_timestamp gauge
camel_exchanges_last_timestamp 1.749824808777E12
Miscellaneous
Upgraded many third-party dependencies to the latest releases at the time of release.
The camel-nats component now has support for using the Nats JetStreams feature.
The camel-ftp and camel-smb components is now more resilient on startup when using autoCreate and creating the starting directory in the consumer fails, then Camel will not try to recover and attempt to create the directory on next poll.
We made camel-smb more resilient and better recover when there are connectivity problems.
New Components
There are no new components.
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.
The Camel Upgrade Recipes tool can also be used to automate upgrading. See more at: https://github.com/apache/camel-upgrade-recipes
Release Notes
You can find additional information about this release in the list of resolved JIRA tickets:
Roadmap
The following 4.14 LTS release is planned for September 2025.