Spring Java Config

Spring Java Config

Spring started life using XML Config to wire beans together. However some folks don't like using XML and would rather use Java code which led to the creation of Guice along with the Spring JavaConfig project.

You can use either the XML or Java config approachs with Camel; its your choice really on which you prefer.

Using Spring Java Config

To use Spring Java Config in your Camel project the easiest thing to do is add the following to your pom.xml

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-spring-javaconfig</artifactId>
  <version>${camel-version}</version>
</dependency>

This will then add the dependencies on the Spring JavaConfig library along with some helper classes for configuring Camel inside Spring.

Note that this library is totally optional; you could just wire Camel together yourself with Java Config.

Example

The following example using Java Config is actually a Spring Testing based unit test.

The @ContextConfiguration annotation tells the Spring Testing framework to load the ContextConfig class as the configuration to use. This class derives from SingleRouteCamelConfiguration which is a helper Spring Java Config class which will configure the CamelContext for us and then register the RouteBuilder we create.

If you wish to create a collection of RouteBuilder instances then derive from the CamelConfiguration helper class and implement the routes() method.