Bean

The Bean EIP binds beans to Camel message exchanges.

URI Format

bean:beanID[?options]

Where beanID can be any string which is used to look up the bean in the Registry

EIP options

The Bean EIP supports 5 options which are listed below:

Name	Description	Default	Type
ref	Sets a reference to a bean to use		String
method	Sets the method name on the bean to use		String
beanType	Sets the Class of the bean		String
cache	Deprecated Use singleton option instead	true	Boolean
scope	Scope of bean. When using singleton scope (default) the bean is created or looked up only once and reused for the lifetime of the endpoint. The bean should be thread-safe in case concurrent threads is calling the bean at the same time. When using request scope the bean is created or looked up once per request (exchange). This can be used if you want to store state on a bean while processing a request and you want to call the same bean instance multiple times while processing the request. The bean does not have to be thread-safe as the instance is only called from the same request. When using prototype scope, then the bean will be looked up or created per call. However in case of lookup then this is delegated to the bean registry such as Spring or CDI (if in use), which depends on their configuration can act as either singleton or prototype scope. so when using prototype scope then this depends on the bean registry implementation.	Singleton	String

Name

Description

Default

Type

ref

Sets a reference to a bean to use

String

method

Sets the method name on the bean to use

String

beanType

Sets the Class of the bean

String

cache

Deprecated Use singleton option instead

true

Boolean

scope

Scope of bean. When using singleton scope (default) the bean is created or looked up only once and reused for the lifetime of the endpoint. The bean should be thread-safe in case concurrent threads is calling the bean at the same time. When using request scope the bean is created or looked up once per request (exchange). This can be used if you want to store state on a bean while processing a request and you want to call the same bean instance multiple times while processing the request. The bean does not have to be thread-safe as the instance is only called from the same request. When using prototype scope, then the bean will be looked up or created per call. However in case of lookup then this is delegated to the bean registry such as Spring or CDI (if in use), which depends on their configuration can act as either singleton or prototype scope. so when using prototype scope then this depends on the bean registry implementation.

Singleton

String

Bean scope

When using singleton scope (default) the bean is created or looked up only once and reused for the lifetime of the endpoint. The bean should be thread-safe in case concurrent threads is calling the bean at the same time. When using request scope the bean is created or looked up once per request (exchange). This can be used if you want to store state on a bean while processing a request and you want to call the same bean instance multiple times while processing the request. The bean does not have to be thread-safe as the instance is only called from the same request. When using prototype scope, then the bean will be looked up or created per call. However in case of lookup then this is delegated to the bean registry such as Spring or CDI (if in use), which depends on their configuration can act as either singleton or prototype scope. so when using prototype then this depends on the delegated registry.

Bean as endpoint

Camel also supports invoking Bean as an Endpoint. In the route below:

What happens is that when the exchange is routed to the myBean Camel will use the Bean Binding to invoke the bean.
The source for the bean is just a plain POJO:

Camel will use Bean Binding to invoke the sayHello method, by converting the Exchange’s In body to the String type and storing the output of the method on the Exchange Out body.

Java DSL bean syntax

Java DSL comes with syntactic sugar for the Bean component. Instead of specifying the bean explicitly as the endpoint (i.e. to("bean:beanName")) you can use the following syntax:

// Send message to the bean endpoint
// and invoke method resolved using Bean Binding.
from("direct:start").beanRef("beanName");

// Send message to the bean endpoint
// and invoke given method.
from("direct:start").beanRef("beanName", "methodName");

Instead of passing name of the reference to the bean (so that Camel will lookup for it in the registry), you can specify the bean itself:

// Send message to the given bean instance.
from("direct:start").bean(new ExampleBean());

// Explicit selection of bean method to be invoked.
from("direct:start").bean(new ExampleBean(), "methodName");

// Camel will create the instance of bean and cache it for you.
from("direct:start").bean(ExampleBean.class);

Bean binding

How bean methods to be invoked are chosen (if they are not specified explicitly through the method parameter) and how parameter values are constructed from the Message are all defined by the Bean Binding mechanism which is used throughout all of the various Bean Integration mechanisms in Camel.