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Chapter 309. Stream Component

Available as of Camel version 1.3

The stream: component provides access to the System.in, System.out and System.err streams as well as allowing streaming of file and URL.

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

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

309.1. URI format

stream:in[?options]
stream:out[?options]
stream:err[?options]
stream:header[?options]

In addition, the file and url endpoint URIs are supported:

stream:file?fileName=/foo/bar.txt
stream:url[?options]

If the stream:header URI is specified, the stream header is used to find the stream to write to. This option is available only for stream producers (that is, it cannot appear in from()).

You can append query options to the URI in the following format, ?option=value&option=value&…​

309.2. Options

The Stream component has no options.

The Stream endpoint is configured using URI syntax:

stream:kind

with the following path and query parameters:

309.2.1. Path Parameters (1 parameters):

NameDescriptionDefaultType

kind

Required Kind of stream to use such as System.in or System.out.

 

String

309.2.2. Query Parameters (18 parameters):

NameDescriptionDefaultType

encoding (common)

You can configure the encoding (is a charset name) to use text-based streams (for example, message body is a String object). If not provided, Camel uses the JVM default Charset.

 

String

fileName (common)

When using the stream:file URI format, this option specifies the filename to stream to/from.

 

String

url (common)

When using the stream:url URI format, this option specifies the URL to stream to/from. The input/output stream will be opened using the JDK URLConnection facility.

 

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.

false

boolean

groupLines (consumer)

To group X number of lines in the consumer. For example to group 10 lines and therefore only spit out an Exchange with 10 lines, instead of 1 Exchange per line.

 

int

groupStrategy (consumer)

Allows to use a custom GroupStrategy to control how to group lines.

 

GroupStrategy

initialPromptDelay (consumer)

Initial delay in milliseconds before showing the message prompt. This delay occurs only once. Can be used during system startup to avoid message prompts being written while other logging is done to the system out.

2000

long

promptDelay (consumer)

Optional delay in milliseconds before showing the message prompt.

 

long

promptMessage (consumer)

Message prompt to use when reading from stream:in; for example, you could set this to Enter a command:

 

String

retry (consumer)

Will retry opening the file if it’s overwritten, somewhat like tail --retry

false

boolean

scanStream (consumer)

To be used for continuously reading a stream such as the unix tail command.

false

boolean

scanStreamDelay (consumer)

Delay in milliseconds between read attempts when using scanStream.

 

long

exceptionHandler (consumer)

To let the consumer use a custom ExceptionHandler. Notice if the option bridgeErrorHandler is enabled then this options 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)

Sets the exchange pattern when the consumer creates an exchange.

 

ExchangePattern

autoCloseCount (producer)

Number of messages to process before closing stream on Producer side. Never close stream by default (only when Producer is stopped). If more messages are sent, the stream is reopened for another autoCloseCount batch.

 

int

closeOnDone (producer)

This option is used in combination with Splitter and streaming to the same file. The idea is to keep the stream open and only close when the Splitter is done, to improve performance. Mind this requires that you only stream to the same file, and not 2 or more files.

false

boolean

delay (producer)

Initial delay in milliseconds before producing the stream.

 

long

synchronous (advanced)

Sets whether synchronous processing should be strictly used, or Camel is allowed to use asynchronous processing (if supported).

false

boolean

309.3. Message content

The stream: component supports either String or byte[] for writing to streams. Just add either String or byte[] content to the message.in.body. Messages sent to the stream: producer in binary mode are not followed by the newline character (as opposed to the String messages). Message with null body will not be appended to the output stream.
The special stream:header URI is used for custom output streams. Just add a java.io.OutputStream object to message.in.header in the key header.
See samples for an example.

309.4. Samples

In the following sample we route messages from the direct:in endpoint to the System.out stream:

// Route messages to the standard output.
from("direct:in").to("stream:out");

// Send String payload to the standard output.
// Message will be followed by the newline.
template.sendBody("direct:in", "Hello Text World");

// Send byte[] payload to the standard output.
// No newline will be added after the message.
template.sendBody("direct:in", "Hello Bytes World".getBytes());

The following sample demonstrates how the header type can be used to determine which stream to use. In the sample we use our own output stream, MyOutputStream.

The following sample demonstrates how to continuously read a file stream (analogous to the UNIX tail command):

from("stream:file?fileName=/server/logs/server.log&scanStream=true&scanStreamDelay=1000").to("bean:logService?method=parseLogLine");

One gotcha with scanStream (pre Camel 2.7) or scanStream + retry is the file will be re-opened and scanned with each iteration of scanStreamDelay. Until NIO2 is available we cannot reliably detect when a file is deleted/recreated.

309.5. See Also

  • Configuring Camel
  • Component
  • Endpoint
  • Getting Started