Intercept

The intercept feature in Camel supports intercepting Exchange's' while they are being routed.

Kinds of interceptors

Camel supports three kinds of interceptors:

intercept that intercepts every processing step as they happen during routing
interceptFrom that intercepts only the incoming step (i.e. from)
interceptSendToEndpoint that intercepts only when an Exchange is about to be sent to the given endpoint.

The interceptSendToEndpoint is dynamic hence it will also trigger if a dynamic URI is constructed that Camel was not aware of at startup time.

The interceptFrom is not dynamic, and will only intercept all the known routes when Camel is starting. So if you construct a Consumer using the Camel Java API and consumes messages from this endpoint, then the interceptFrom is not triggered.

Interceptor scopes

All the interceptors can be configured on global, route scope, or with Route Configuration.

This means multiple interceptors can be triggered.

Most of the examples in this page are on global scope. To use route scope, then its similar but is done on the route.

For example the first example further below can be done as shown on route scope:

from("jms:queue:order")
   .intercept().to("log:hello").end() // intercepts only in this route
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

And in XML:

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <intercept>
      <to uri="log:hello"/>
    </intercept>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>

Common features of the interceptors

All these interceptors support the following features:

Predicate using when to only trigger the interceptor in certain conditions
stop forces stopping continue routing the Exchange and mark it as completed successful (it’s actually the Stop EIP).
skip when used with interceptSendToEndpoint will skip sending the message to the original intended endpoint.
afterUri when used with interceptSendToEndpoint allows to send the message to an endpoint afterwards.
interceptFrom and interceptSendToEndpoint supports endpoint URI pattern matching by: exact uri, wildcard, regular expression. See further below for more details.
The intercepted endpoint uri is stored as message header with the key Exchange.INTERCEPTED_ENDPOINT.

Using intercept

The Intercept is intercepting the Exchange on every processing steps during routing.

Given the following example:

// global interceptor for all routes
intercept().to("log:hello");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

What happens is that the Exchange is intercepted before each processing step, that means that it will be intercepted before

.to("bean:validateOrder")
.to("bean:processOrder")

So in this example we intercept the Exchange twice.

The example is as follows in XML:

<camelContext>

  <!-- global interceptor for all routes -->
  <intercept>
    <to uri="log:hello"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Controlling when to intercept using a predicate

If you only want to intercept "sometimes", then you can use a predicate.

For instance in the sample below we only intercept if the message body contains the string word Hello:

intercept().when(body().contains("Hello")).to("mock:intercepted");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <intercept>
      <when>
          <simple>${in.body} contains 'Hello'</simple>
      </when>
      <to uri="mock:intercepted"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Stop routing after being intercepted

It is also possible to stop continue routing after being intercepted. Now suppose if the message body contains the word Test we want to log and stop, then we can do:

intercept().when(body().contains("Hello"))
  .to("mock:intercepted")
  .stop(); // stop continue routing

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <intercept>
      <when>
        <simple>${body} contains 'Test'</simple>
        <to uri="log:test"/>
        <stop/> <!-- stop continue routing -->
      </when>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Using intercept from

The interceptFrom is for intercepting any incoming Exchange, in any route (it intercepts all the from EIPs)

This allows you to do some custom behavior for received Exchanges. You can provide a specific uri for a given Endpoint then it only applies for that particular route.

So lets start with the logging example. We want to log all the incoming messages, so we use interceptFrom to route to the Log component.

interceptFrom()
  .to("log:incoming");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <intercept>
    <to uri="log:incoming"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

If you want to only apply a specific endpoint, such as all jms endpoints, you can do:

interceptFrom("jms*")
  .to("log:incoming");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder");

from("file:inbox")
  .to("ftp:someserver/backup")

In this example then only messages from the JMS route is intercepted, because we specified a pattern in the interceptFrom as jms* (uses a wildcard).

The pattern syntax is documented in more details later.

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <interceptFrom uri="jms*">
    <to uri="log:incoming"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
  </route>
  <route>
    <from uri="file:inbox"/>
    <to uri="ftp:someserver/backup"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Using intercept when sending to an endpoint

You can also intercept when Camel is sending a message to an endpoint.

This can be used to do some custom processing before the message is sent to the intended destination.

The interceptor can also be configured to not send to the destination (skip) which means the message is detoured instead.

A Predicate can also be used to control when to intercept, which has been previously covered.

The afterUri option, is used when you need to process the response message from the intended destination. This functionality was added later to the interceptor, in a form of sending to yet another endpoint.

Let start with a basic example, where we want to intercept when a message is being sent to kafka:

interceptSendToEndpoint("kafka*")
  .to("bean:beforeKafka");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder")
  .to("kafka:order");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <interceptSendToEndpoint uri="kafka*">
    <to uri="bean:beforeKafka"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
    <to uri="kafka:order"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

When you also want to process the message after it has been sent to the intended destination, then the example is slightly odd because you have to use the afterUri as shown:

interceptSendToEndpoint("kafka*")
  .to("bean:beforeKafka")
  .afterUri("bean:afterKafka");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder")
  .to("kafka:order");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <interceptSendToEndpoint uri="kafka*" afterUri="bean:afterKafka">
    <to uri="bean:beforeKafka"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
    <to uri="kafka:order"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Skip sending to original endpoint

Sometimes you want to intercept and skip sending messages to a specific endpoint.

For example to avoid sending any message to kafka, but detour them to a mock endpoint, can be done as follows:

interceptSendToEndpoint("kafka*").skipSendToOriginalEndpoint()
  .to("mock:kafka");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder")
  .to("kafka:order");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <interceptSendToEndpoint uri="kafka*" skipSendToOriginalEndpoint="true">
    <to uri="mock:kafka"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
    <to uri="kafka:order"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Conditional skipping sending to endpoint

You can combine both a predicate and skip sending to the original endpoint. For example suppose you have some "test" messages that sometimes occur, and that you want to avoid sending these message to a downstream kafka system, then this can be done as shown:

interceptSendToEndpoint("kafka*").skipSendToOriginalEndpoint()
  .when(simple("${header.biztype} == 'TEST'")
  .log("TEST message detected - is NOT send to kafka");

from("jms:queue:order")
  .to("bean:validateOrder")
  .to("bean:processOrder")
  .to("kafka:order");

And in XML:

<camelContext>

  <interceptSendToEndpoint uri="kafka*" skipSendToOriginalEndpoint="true">
    <when><simple>${header.biztype} == 'TEST'</simple></when>
    <log message="TEST message detected - is NOT send to kafka"/>
  </intercept>

  <route>
    <from uri="jms:queue:order"/>
    <to uri="bean:validateOrder"/>
    <to uri="bean:processOrder"/>
    <to uri="kafka:order"/>
  </route>

</camelContext>

Intercepting endpoints using pattern matching

The interceptFrom and interceptSendToEndpoint supports endpoint pattern matching by the following rules in the given order:

match by exact URI name
match by wildcard
match by regular expression

Intercepting when matching by exact URI

This matches only a specific endpoint with exactly the same URI.

For example to intercept messages being send to a specific JMS queue you can do:

interceptSendToEndpoint("jms:queue:cheese").to("log:smelly");

Intercepting when matching endpoints by wildcard

Match by wildcard allows you to match a range of endpoint or all of a given type. For instance use file:* will match all file based endpoints.

interceptFrom("file:*").to("log:from-file");

Match by wildcard works so that the pattern ends with a \* and that the uri matches if it starts with the same pattern.

For example, you can be more specific, to only match for files from specific folders like:

interceptFrom("file:order/inbox/*").to("log:new-file-orders");

Intercepting when matching endpoints by regular expression

Match by regular expression is just like match by wildcard but using regex instead. So if we want to intercept incoming messages from gold and silver JMS queues we can do:

interceptFrom("jms:queue:(gold|silver)").to("seda:handleFast");