Dynamic Router
The Dynamic Router from the EIP patterns allows you to route messages while avoiding the dependency of the router on all possible destinations while maintaining its efficiency.
In Camel 2.5 we introduced a dynamicRouter
in the DSL which is like a dynamic Routing Slip which evaluates the slip on-the-fly.
Beware
You must ensure the expression used for the dynamicRouter
such as a bean, will return null
to indicate the end. Otherwise the dynamicRouter
will keep repeating endlessly.
Options
Name |
Default Value |
Description |
---|---|---|
|
|
Delimiter used if the Expression returned multiple endpoints. |
|
|
If an endpoint uri could not be resolved, should it be ignored. Otherwise Camel will thrown an exception stating the endpoint uri is not valid. |
Dynamic Router in Camel 2.5 onwards
From Camel 2.5 the Dynamic Router will set a property (Exchange.SLIP_ENDPOINT) on the Exchange which contains the current endpoint as it advanced though the slip. This allows you to know how far we have processed in the slip. (It's a slip because the Dynamic Router implementation is based on top of Routing Slip).
Java DSL
In Java DSL you can use the dynamicRouter
as shown below:
Which will leverage a Bean to compute the slip on-the-fly, which could be implemented as follows:
Mind that this example is only for show and tell. The current implementation is not thread safe. You would have to store the state on the Exchange, to ensure thread safety, as shown below:
You could also store state as message headers, but they are not guaranteed to be preserved during routing, where as properties on the Exchange are. Although there was a bug in the method call expression, see the warning below.
Using beans to store state
Spring XML
The same example in Spring XML would be:
@DynamicRouter annotation
You can also use the @DynamicRouter
annotation, for example the Camel 2.4 example below could be written as follows. The route
method would then be invoked repeatedly as the message is processed dynamically. The idea is to return the next endpoint uri where to go. Return null
to indicate the end. You can return multiple endpoints if you like, just as the Routing Slip, where each endpoint is separated by a delimiter.
public class MyDynamicRouter { @Consume(uri = "activemq:foo") @DynamicRouter public String route(@XPath("/customer/id") String customerId, @Header("Location") String location, Document body) { // query a database to find the best match of the endpoint based on the input parameteres // return the next endpoint uri, where to go. Return null to indicate the end. } }
Dynamic Router in Camel 2.4 or older
The simplest way to implement this is to use the RecipientList Annotation on a Bean method to determine where to route the message.
public class MyDynamicRouter { @Consume(uri = "activemq:foo") @RecipientList public List<String> route(@XPath("/customer/id") String customerId, @Header("Location") String location, Document body) { // query a database to find the best match of the endpoint based on the input parameteres ... } }
In the above we can use the Parameter Binding Annotations to bind different parts of the Message to method parameters or use an Expression such as using XPath or XQuery.
The method can be invoked in a number of ways as described in the Bean Integration such as
- POJO Producing
- Spring Remoting
- Bean component
Using This Pattern
If you would like to use this EIP Pattern then please read the Getting Started, you may also find the Architecture useful particularly the description of Endpoint and URIs. Then you could try out some of the Examples first before trying this pattern out.