5.5. Message Router

Overview

A message router, shown in Figure 5.7, “Message Router Pattern”, is a type of filter that consumes messages from a single consumer endpoint and redirects them to the appropriate target endpoint, based on a particular decision criterion. A message router is concerned only with redirecting messages; it does not modify the message content.

Figure 5.7. Message Router Pattern

Message router pattern
A message router can easily be implemented in Apache Camel using the choice() processor, where each of the alternative target endpoints can be selected using a when() subclause (for details of the choice processor, see Section 1.5, “Processors”).

Java DSL example

The following Java DSL example shows how to route messages to three alternative destinations (either seda:a, seda:b, or seda:c) depending on the contents of the foo header: 
from("seda:a").choice()
    .when(header("foo").isEqualTo("bar")).to("seda:b")
    .when(header("foo").isEqualTo("cheese")).to("seda:c")
    .otherwise().to("seda:d");

XML configuration example

The following example shows how to configure the same route in XML: 
<camelContext id="buildSimpleRouteWithChoice" xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
  <route>
    <from uri="seda:a"/>
    <choice>
      <when>
        <xpath>$foo = 'bar'</xpath>
        <to uri="seda:b"/>
      </when>
      <when>
        <xpath>$foo = 'cheese'</xpath>
        <to uri="seda:c"/>
      </when>
      <otherwise>
        <to uri="seda:d"/>
      </otherwise>
    </choice>
  </route>
</camelContext>

Choice without otherwise

If you use choice() without an otherwise() clause, any unmatched exchanges are dropped by default.