Facebook

Since Camel 2.14

Both producer and consumer are supported

The Facebook component provides access to all of the Facebook APIs accessible using Facebook4J. It allows producing messages to retrieve, add, and delete posts, likes, comments, photos, albums, videos, photos, checkins, locations, links, etc. It also supports APIs that allow polling for posts, users, checkins, groups, locations, etc.

Facebook requires the use of OAuth for all client application authentication. In order to use camel-facebook with your account, you’ll need to create a new application within Facebook at https://developers.facebook.com/apps and grant the application access to your account. The Facebook application’s id and secret will allow access to Facebook APIs which do not require a current user. A user access token is required for APIs that require a logged in user. More information on obtaining a user access token can be found at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/facebook-login/access-tokens/.

Maven users will need to add the following dependency to their pom.xml for this component:

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

URI format

facebook://[endpoint]?[options]

The facebook component can be configured with the Facebook account settings below, which are mandatory. The values can be provided to the component using the bean property configuration of type org.apache.camel.component.facebook.config.FacebookConfiguration. The oAuthAccessToken option may be ommited but that will only allow access to application APIs.

Configuring Options

Camel components are configured on two separate levels:

  • component level

  • endpoint level

Configuring Component Options

The component level is the highest level which holds general and common configurations that are inherited by the endpoints. For example a component may have security settings, credentials for authentication, urls for network connection and so forth.

Some components only have a few options, and others may have many. Because components typically have pre configured defaults that are commonly used, then you may often only need to configure a few options on a component; or none at all.

Configuring components can be done with the Component DSL, in a configuration file (application.properties|yaml), or directly with Java code.

Configuring Endpoint Options

Where you find yourself configuring the most is on endpoints, as endpoints often have many options, which allows you to configure what you need the endpoint to do. The options are also categorized into whether the endpoint is used as consumer (from) or as a producer (to), or used for both.

Configuring endpoints is most often done directly in the endpoint URI as path and query parameters. You can also use the Endpoint DSL as a type safe way of configuring endpoints.

A good practice when configuring options is to use Property Placeholders, which allows to not hardcode urls, port numbers, sensitive information, and other settings. In other words placeholders allows to externalize the configuration from your code, and gives more flexibility and reuse.

The following two sections lists all the options, firstly for the component followed by the endpoint.

Component Options

The Facebook component supports 31 options, which are listed below.

Name Description Default Type

clientURL (common)

Facebook4J API client URL.

String

clientVersion (common)

Facebook4J client API version.

String

debugEnabled (common)

Enables deubg output. Effective only with the embedded logger.

false

Boolean

gzipEnabled (common)

Use Facebook GZIP encoding.

true

Boolean

httpConnectionTimeout (common)

Http connection timeout in milliseconds.

20000

Integer

httpDefaultMaxPerRoute (common)

HTTP maximum connections per route.

2

Integer

httpMaxTotalConnections (common)

HTTP maximum total connections.

20

Integer

httpReadTimeout (common)

Http read timeout in milliseconds.

120000

Integer

httpRetryCount (common)

Number of HTTP retries.

0

Integer

httpRetryIntervalSeconds (common)

HTTP retry interval in seconds.

5

Integer

httpStreamingReadTimeout (common)

HTTP streaming read timeout in milliseconds.

40000

Integer

jsonStoreEnabled (common)

If set to true, raw JSON forms will be stored in DataObjectFactory.

false

Boolean

mbeanEnabled (common)

If set to true, Facebook4J mbean will be registerd.

false

Boolean

prettyDebugEnabled (common)

Prettify JSON debug output if set to true.

false

Boolean

restBaseURL (common)

API base URL.

https://graph.facebook.com/

String

useSSL (common)

Use SSL.

true

Boolean

videoBaseURL (common)

Video API base URL.

https://graph-video.facebook.com/

String

bridgeErrorHandler (consumer)

Allows for bridging the consumer to the Camel routing Error Handler, which mean any exceptions occurred while the consumer is trying to pickup incoming messages, or the likes, will now be processed as a message and handled by the routing Error Handler. By default the consumer will use the org.apache.camel.spi.ExceptionHandler to deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored.

boolean

lazyStartProducer (producer)

Whether the producer should be started lazy (on the first message). By starting lazy you can use this to allow CamelContext and routes to startup in situations where a producer may otherwise fail during starting and cause the route to fail being started. By deferring this startup to be lazy then the startup failure can be handled during routing messages via Camel’s routing error handlers. Beware that when the first message is processed then creating and starting the producer may take a little time and prolong the total processing time of the processing.

boolean

autowiredEnabled (advanced)

Whether autowiring is enabled. This is used for automatic autowiring options (the option must be marked as autowired) by looking up in the registry to find if there is a single instance of matching type, which then gets configured on the component. This can be used for automatic configuring JDBC data sources, JMS connection factories, AWS Clients, etc.

true

boolean

configuration (advanced)

To use the shared configuration.

FacebookConfiguration

httpProxyHost (proxy)

HTTP proxy server host name.

String

httpProxyPassword (proxy)

HTTP proxy server password.

String

httpProxyPort (proxy)

HTTP proxy server port.

Integer

httpProxyUser (proxy)

HTTP proxy server user name.

String

oAuthAccessToken (security)

The user access token.

String

oAuthAccessTokenURL (security)

OAuth access token URL.

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token

String

oAuthAppId (security)

The application Id.

String

oAuthAppSecret (security)

The application Secret.

String

oAuthAuthorizationURL (security)

OAuth authorization URL.

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth

String

oAuthPermissions (security)

Default OAuth permissions. Comma separated permission names. See https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/login/#permissions for the detail.

String

Endpoint Options

The Facebook endpoint is configured using URI syntax:

facebook:methodName

with the following path and query parameters:

Path Parameters (1 parameters)

Name Description Default Type

methodName (common)

Required What operation to perform.

String

Query Parameters (102 parameters)

Name Description Default Type

achievementURL (common)

The unique URL of the achievement.

URL

albumId (common)

The album ID.

String

albumUpdate (common)

The facebook Album to be created or updated.

AlbumUpdate

appId (common)

The ID of the Facebook Application.

String

center (common)

Location latitude and longitude.

GeoLocation

checkinId (common)

The checkin ID.

String

checkinUpdate (common)

Deprecated The checkin to be created. Deprecated, instead create a Post with an attached location.

CheckinUpdate

clientURL (common)

Facebook4J API client URL.

String

clientVersion (common)

Facebook4J client API version.

String

commentId (common)

The comment ID.

String

commentUpdate (common)

The facebook Comment to be created or updated.

CommentUpdate

debugEnabled (common)

Enables deubg output. Effective only with the embedded logger.

false

Boolean

description (common)

The description text.

String

distance (common)

Distance in meters.

Integer

domainId (common)

The domain ID.

String

domainName (common)

The domain name.

String

domainNames (common)

The domain names.

List

eventId (common)

The event ID.

String

eventUpdate (common)

The event to be created or updated.

EventUpdate

friendId (common)

The friend ID.

String

friendlistId (common)

The friend list ID.

String

friendlistName (common)

The friend list Name.

String

friendUserId (common)

The friend user ID.

String

groupId (common)

The group ID.

String

gzipEnabled (common)

Use Facebook GZIP encoding.

true

Boolean

httpConnectionTimeout (common)

Http connection timeout in milliseconds.

20000

Integer

httpDefaultMaxPerRoute (common)

HTTP maximum connections per route.

2

Integer

httpMaxTotalConnections (common)

HTTP maximum total connections.

20

Integer

httpReadTimeout (common)

Http read timeout in milliseconds.

120000

Integer

httpRetryCount (common)

Number of HTTP retries.

0

Integer

httpRetryIntervalSeconds (common)

HTTP retry interval in seconds.

5

Integer

httpStreamingReadTimeout (common)

HTTP streaming read timeout in milliseconds.

40000

Integer

ids (common)

The ids of users.

List

inBody (common)

Sets the name of a parameter to be passed in the exchange In Body.

String

includeRead (common)

Enables notifications that the user has already read in addition to unread ones.

Boolean

isHidden (common)

Whether hidden.

Boolean

jsonStoreEnabled (common)

If set to true, raw JSON forms will be stored in DataObjectFactory.

false

Boolean

link (common)

Link URL.

URL

linkId (common)

Link ID.

String

locale (common)

Desired FQL locale.

Locale

mbeanEnabled (common)

If set to true, Facebook4J mbean will be registerd.

false

Boolean

message (common)

The message text.

String

messageId (common)

The message ID.

String

metric (common)

The metric name.

String

milestoneId (common)

The milestone id.

String

name (common)

Test user name, must be of the form 'first last'.

String

noteId (common)

The note ID.

String

notificationId (common)

The notification ID.

String

objectId (common)

The insight object ID.

String

offerId (common)

The offer id.

String

optionDescription (common)

The question’s answer option description.

String

pageId (common)

The page id.

String

permissionName (common)

The permission name.

String

permissions (common)

Test user permissions in the format perm1,perm2,…​

String

photoId (common)

The photo ID.

String

pictureId (common)

The picture id.

Integer

pictureId2 (common)

The picture2 id.

Integer

pictureSize (common)

The picture size.

Enum values:

  • square

  • small

  • normal

  • large

  • thumbnail

  • album

PictureSize

placeId (common)

The place ID.

String

postId (common)

The post ID.

String

postUpdate (common)

The post to create or update.

PostUpdate

prettyDebugEnabled (common)

Prettify JSON debug output if set to true.

false

Boolean

queries (common)

FQL queries.

Map

query (common)

FQL query or search terms for search endpoints.

String

questionId (common)

The question id.

String

reading (common)

Optional reading parameters. See Reading Options(#reading).

Reading

readingOptions (common)

To configure Reading using key/value pairs from the Map.

Map

restBaseURL (common)

API base URL.

https://graph.facebook.com/

String

scoreValue (common)

The numeric score with value.

Integer

size (common)

The picture size, one of large, normal, small or square.

Enum values:

  • square

  • small

  • normal

  • large

  • thumbnail

  • album

PictureSize

source (common)

The media content from either a java.io.File or java.io.Inputstream.

Media

subject (common)

The note of the subject.

String

tabId (common)

The tab id.

String

tagUpdate (common)

Photo tag information.

TagUpdate

testUser1 (common)

Test user 1.

TestUser

testUser2 (common)

Test user 2.

TestUser

testUserId (common)

The ID of the test user.

String

title (common)

The title text.

String

toUserId (common)

The ID of the user to tag.

String

toUserIds (common)

The IDs of the users to tag.

List

userId (common)

The Facebook user ID.

String

userId1 (common)

The ID of a user 1.

String

userId2 (common)

The ID of a user 2.

String

userIds (common)

The IDs of users to invite to event.

List

userLocale (common)

The test user locale.

String

useSSL (common)

Use SSL.

true

Boolean

videoBaseURL (common)

Video API base URL.

https://graph-video.facebook.com/

String

videoId (common)

The video ID.

String

bridgeErrorHandler (consumer)

Allows for bridging the consumer to the Camel routing Error Handler, which mean any exceptions occurred while the consumer is trying to pickup incoming messages, or the likes, will now be processed as a message and handled by the routing Error Handler. By default the consumer will use the org.apache.camel.spi.ExceptionHandler to deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored.

boolean

exceptionHandler (consumer (advanced))

To let the consumer use a custom ExceptionHandler. Notice if the option bridgeErrorHandler is enabled then this option is not in use. By default the consumer will deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored.

ExceptionHandler

exchangePattern (consumer (advanced))

Sets the exchange pattern when the consumer creates an exchange.

Enum values:

  • InOnly

  • InOut

  • InOptionalOut

ExchangePattern

lazyStartProducer (producer)

Whether the producer should be started lazy (on the first message). By starting lazy you can use this to allow CamelContext and routes to startup in situations where a producer may otherwise fail during starting and cause the route to fail being started. By deferring this startup to be lazy then the startup failure can be handled during routing messages via Camel’s routing error handlers. Beware that when the first message is processed then creating and starting the producer may take a little time and prolong the total processing time of the processing.

boolean

httpProxyHost (proxy)

HTTP proxy server host name.

String

httpProxyPassword (proxy)

HTTP proxy server password.

String

httpProxyPort (proxy)

HTTP proxy server port.

Integer

httpProxyUser (proxy)

HTTP proxy server user name.

String

oAuthAccessToken (security)

The user access token.

String

oAuthAccessTokenURL (security)

OAuth access token URL.

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token

String

oAuthAppId (security)

The application Id.

String

oAuthAppSecret (security)

The application Secret.

String

oAuthAuthorizationURL (security)

OAuth authorization URL.

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth

String

oAuthPermissions (security)

Default OAuth permissions. Comma separated permission names. See https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/login/#permissions for the detail.

String

Producer Endpoints:

Producer endpoints can use endpoint names and options from the table below. Endpoints can also use the short name without the get or search prefix, except checkin due to ambiguity between getCheckin and searchCheckin. Endpoint options that are not mandatory are denoted by [].

Producer endpoints can also use a special option inBody that in turn should contain the name of the endpoint option whose value will be contained in the Camel Exchange In message. For example, the facebook endpoint in the following route retrieves activities for the user id value in the incoming message body.

from("direct:test").to("facebook://activities?inBody=userId")...

Any of the endpoint options can be provided in either the endpoint URI, or dynamically in a message header. The message header name must be of the format CamelFacebook.option. For example, the userId option value in the previous route could alternately be provided in the message header CamelFacebook.userId. Note that the inBody option overrides message header, e.g. the endpoint option inBody=user would override a CamelFacebook.userId header.

Endpoints that return a String return an Id for the created or modified entity, e.g. addAlbumPhoto returns the new album Id. Endpoints that return a boolean, return true for success and false otherwise. In case of Facebook API errors the endpoint will throw a RuntimeCamelException with a facebook4j.FacebookException cause.

Consumer Endpoints:

Any of the producer endpoints that take a reading parameter can be used as a consumer endpoint. The polling consumer uses the since and until fields to get responses within the polling interval. In addition to other reading fields, an initial since value can be provided in the endpoint for the first poll.

Rather than the endpoints returning a List (or facebook4j.ResponseList) through a single route exchange, camel-facebook creates one route exchange per returned object. As an example, if "facebook://home" results in five posts, the route will be executed five times (once for each Post).

Reading Options

The reading option of type facebook4j.Reading adds support for reading parameters, which allow selecting specific fields, limits the number of results, etc. For more information see Graph API documentation.

It is also used by consumer endpoints to poll Facebook data to avoid sending duplicate messages across polls.

The reading option can be a reference or value of type facebook4j.Reading, or can be specified using the following reading options in either the endpoint URI or exchange header with CamelFacebook. prefix.

Message header

Any of the URI options can be provided in a message header for producer endpoints with CamelFacebook. prefix.

Message body

All result message bodies utilize objects provided by the Facebook4J API. Producer endpoints can specify the option name for incoming message body in the inBody endpoint parameter.

For endpoints that return an array, or facebook4j.ResponseList, or java.util.List, a consumer endpoint will map every elements in the list to distinct messages.

Use cases

To create a post within your Facebook profile, send this producer a facebook4j.PostUpdate body.

from("direct:foo")
    .to("facebook://postFeed/inBody=postUpdate);

To poll, every 5 sec (You can set the polling consumer options by adding a prefix of "consumer"), all statuses on your home feed:

from("facebook://home?delay=5000")
    .to("bean:blah");

Searching using a producer with dynamic options from header.

In the bar header we have the Facebook search string we want to execute in public posts, so we need to assign this value to the CamelFacebook.query header.

from("direct:foo")
    .setHeader("CamelFacebook.query", header("bar"))
    .to("facebook://posts");

Spring Boot Auto-Configuration

When using facebook with Spring Boot make sure to use the following Maven dependency to have support for auto configuration:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel.springboot</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-facebook-starter</artifactId>
  <version>x.x.x</version>
  <!-- use the same version as your Camel core version -->
</dependency>

The component supports 32 options, which are listed below.

Name Description Default Type

camel.component.facebook.autowired-enabled

Whether autowiring is enabled. This is used for automatic autowiring options (the option must be marked as autowired) by looking up in the registry to find if there is a single instance of matching type, which then gets configured on the component. This can be used for automatic configuring JDBC data sources, JMS connection factories, AWS Clients, etc.

true

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.bridge-error-handler

Allows for bridging the consumer to the Camel routing Error Handler, which mean any exceptions occurred while the consumer is trying to pickup incoming messages, or the likes, will now be processed as a message and handled by the routing Error Handler. By default the consumer will use the org.apache.camel.spi.ExceptionHandler to deal with exceptions, that will be logged at WARN or ERROR level and ignored.

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.client-u-r-l

Facebook4J API client URL

String

camel.component.facebook.client-version

Facebook4J client API version

String

camel.component.facebook.configuration

To use the shared configuration. The option is a org.apache.camel.component.facebook.config.FacebookConfiguration type.

FacebookConfiguration

camel.component.facebook.debug-enabled

Enables deubg output. Effective only with the embedded logger

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.enabled

Whether to enable auto configuration of the facebook component. This is enabled by default.

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.gzip-enabled

Use Facebook GZIP encoding

true

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.http-connection-timeout

Http connection timeout in milliseconds

20000

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-default-max-per-route

HTTP maximum connections per route

2

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-max-total-connections

HTTP maximum total connections

20

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-proxy-host

HTTP proxy server host name

String

camel.component.facebook.http-proxy-password

HTTP proxy server password

String

camel.component.facebook.http-proxy-port

HTTP proxy server port

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-proxy-user

HTTP proxy server user name

String

camel.component.facebook.http-read-timeout

Http read timeout in milliseconds

120000

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-retry-count

Number of HTTP retries

0

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-retry-interval-seconds

HTTP retry interval in seconds

5

Integer

camel.component.facebook.http-streaming-read-timeout

HTTP streaming read timeout in milliseconds

40000

Integer

camel.component.facebook.json-store-enabled

If set to true, raw JSON forms will be stored in DataObjectFactory

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.lazy-start-producer

Whether the producer should be started lazy (on the first message). By starting lazy you can use this to allow CamelContext and routes to startup in situations where a producer may otherwise fail during starting and cause the route to fail being started. By deferring this startup to be lazy then the startup failure can be handled during routing messages via Camel’s routing error handlers. Beware that when the first message is processed then creating and starting the producer may take a little time and prolong the total processing time of the processing.

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.mbean-enabled

If set to true, Facebook4J mbean will be registerd

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-access-token

The user access token

String

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-access-token-u-r-l

OAuth access token URL

https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/access_token

String

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-app-id

The application Id

String

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-app-secret

The application Secret

String

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-authorization-u-r-l

OAuth authorization URL

https://www.facebook.com/dialog/oauth

String

camel.component.facebook.o-auth-permissions

Default OAuth permissions. Comma separated permission names. See https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/login/#permissions for the detail

String

camel.component.facebook.pretty-debug-enabled

Prettify JSON debug output if set to true

false

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.rest-base-u-r-l

API base URL

https://graph.facebook.com/

String

camel.component.facebook.use-s-s-l

Use SSL

true

Boolean

camel.component.facebook.video-base-u-r-l

Video API base URL

https://graph-video.facebook.com/

String
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