To D

There is a new .toD / <toD> that allows to send a message to a dynamic computed Endpoint using one or more Expression that are concat together. By default the Simple language is used to compute the endpoint.

Options

The To D eip supports 6 options, which are listed below.

Name Description Default Type

uri

Required The uri of the endpoint to send to. The uri can be dynamic computed using the org.apache.camel.language.simple.SimpleLanguage expression.

String

pattern

Sets the optional ExchangePattern used to invoke this endpoint.

Enum values:

  • InOnly

  • InOptionalOut

  • InOut

ExchangePattern

cacheSize

Sets the maximum size used by the org.apache.camel.spi.ProducerCache which is used to cache and reuse producers when using this recipient list, when uris are reused. Beware that when using dynamic endpoints then it affects how well the cache can be utilized. If each dynamic endpoint is unique then its best to turn of caching by setting this to -1, which allows Camel to not cache both the producers and endpoints; they are regarded as prototype scoped and will be stopped and discarded after use. This reduces memory usage as otherwise producers/endpoints are stored in memory in the caches. However if there are a high degree of dynamic endpoints that have been used before, then it can benefit to use the cache to reuse both producers and endpoints and therefore the cache size can be set accordingly or rely on the default size (1000). If there is a mix of unique and used before dynamic endpoints, then setting a reasonable cache size can help reduce memory usage to avoid storing too many non frequent used producers.

Integer

ignoreInvalidEndpoint

Ignore the invalidate endpoint exception when try to create a producer with that endpoint.

Boolean

allowOptimisedComponents

Whether to allow components to optimise toD if they are org.apache.camel.spi.SendDynamicAware .

true

Boolean

autoStartComponents

Whether to auto startup components when toD is starting up.

true

Boolean

description

Sets the description of this node.

DescriptionDefinition

Samples

For example to send a message to a endpoint defined by a header you can do as shown below:

from("direct:start")
  .toD("${header.foo}");

And in XML:

<route>
  <from uri="direct:start"/>
  <toD uri="${header.foo}"/>
</route>

You can also prefix the uri with a value because by default the uri is evaluated using the Simple language

from("direct:start")
  .toD("mock:${header.foo}");

And in XML:

<route>
  <from uri="direct:start"/>
  <toD uri="mock:${header.foo}"/>
</route>

In the example above we compute an endpoint that has prefix "mock:" and then the header foo is appended. So for example if the header foo has value order, then the endpoint is computed as "mock:order".

You can also use another language than Simple such as XPath - this requires to prefix with language: as shown below (simple language is the default language). If you do not specify language: then the endpoint is a component name. And in some cases there is both a component and language with the same name such as xquery.

<route>
  <from uri="direct:start"/>
  <toD uri="language:xpath:/order/@uri"/>
</route>

This is done by specifying the name of the language followed by a colon.

from("direct:start")
  .toD("language:xpath:/order/@uri");

Avoid creating endless dynamic endpoints which takes up resources

When using dynamic computed endpoints with toD then you may compute a lot of dynamic endpoints, which results in an overhead of resources in use, by each dynamic endpoint uri, and its associated producer.

For example HTTP based endpoints where you may have dynamic values in URI parameters when calling the HTTP service, such as:

from("direct:login")
  .toD("http:myloginserver:8080/login?userid=${header.userName}");

In the example above then the parameter userid is dynamic computed, and would result in one instance of endpoint and producer for each different userid. To avoid having too many dynamic endpoints you can configure toD to reduce its cache size, for example:

from("direct:login")
  .toD("http:myloginserver:8080/login?userid=${header.userName}", 10);

where the cache is 10. Important this will only reduce the endpoint cache of the toD that has a chance of being reused in case a message is routed with the same userName header. Therefore reducing the cache size will not solve the endless dynamic endpoints problem. Instead you should use static endpoints with to and provide the dynamic parts in Camel message headers (if possible).

Using static endpoints

In the example above then the parameter userid is dynamic computed, and would result in one instance of endpoint and producer for each different userid. To avoid having too dynamic endpoints you use a single static endpoint and use headers to provide the dynamic parts:

from("direct:login")
  .setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_PATH, constant("/login"))
  .setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_QUERY, simple("userid=${header.userName}"))
  .toD("http:myloginserver:8080");

However, you can use its optimised components for toD that can solve this out of the box, as documented next.

Using optimised components

A better solution would be if the HTTP component could be optimised to handle the variations of dynamic computed endpoint uris. This is with among the following components, which have been optimised for toD:

  • camel-http

  • camel-jetty

  • camel-netty-http

  • camel-undertow

  • camel-vertx-http

A number of non-HTTP components has been optimised as well:

  • camel-activemq

  • camel-amqp

  • camel-file

  • camel-ftp

  • camel-jms

  • camel-kafka

  • camel-paho-mqtt5

  • camel-paho

  • camel-rabbitmq

  • camel-sjms

  • camel-sjms2

  • camel-spring-rabbitmq

For the optimisation to work, then:

  1. The optimisation is detected and activated during startup of the Camel routes with `toD’s.

  2. The dynamic uri in toD must provide the component name as either static or resolved via property placeholders.

  3. The supported components must be on the classpath.

The HTTP based components will be optimised to use the same hostname:port for each endpoint, and the dynamic values for context-path and query parameters will be provided as headers:

For example this route:

from("direct:login")
  .toD("http:myloginserver:8080/login?userid=${header.userName}");

will essentially be optimised to (pseudo route):

from("direct:login")
  .setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_PATH, expression("/login"))
  .setHeader(Exchange.HTTP_QUERY, expression("userid=${header.userName}"))
  .toD("http:myloginserver:8080")
  .removeHeader(Exchange.HTTP_PATH)
  .removeHeader(Exchange.HTTP_QUERY);

Where expression will be evaluated dynamically. Notice how the uri in toD is now static (\http:myloginserver:8080). This optimisation allows Camel to reuse the same endpoint and its associated producer for all dynamic variations. This yields much lower resource overhead as the same http producer will be used for all the different variations of userid’s.

When the optimised component is in use, then you cannot use the headers Exchange.HTTP_PATH and Exchange.HTTP_QUERY to provide dynamic values to override the uri in toD. If you want to use these headers, then use the plain to DSL instead. In other words these headers are used internally by toD to carry the dynamic details of the endpoint.

In case of problems then you can turn on DEBUG logging level on org.apache.camel.processor.SendDynamicProcessor which will log during startup if toD was optimised, or if there was a failure loading the optimised component, with a stacktrace logged.

Detected SendDynamicAware component: http optimising toD: http:myloginserver:8080/login?userid=${header.userName}
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