Apache Camel - Issue a HTTP-Request from within a Processor - java

a similar, but more general question has been asked here:
Business logic in Camel processors vs service endpoints.
Now consider the following flow (E1 and E2 represent processors, they are not endpoints as in camel flows), which I trigger with parameters (p,q):
Route: E1 -> E2
E1 itself issues an HTTP-request with parameters (p,q), receives the response-data d (sync) and forwards this to E2, which continues processing based on (p,q,d). So it essentially enriches the input with additional data.
The endpoint, which is called contains the data that is to be integrated, i.e. this will not change and needs not to be configurable in the future.
I tried two solutions, both of which seem kind of wrong to me:
use http4:url endpoints and piggyback the (p,q) in the header of the messages (or alternatively properties of the exchange).
use a processor that explicitly/programmatically issues the http-request, processes the response and forwards the expected (p,q,d). For convenience, I did this with a producerTemplate being sent to http4:url inside the camel-context.
Problem with the first is that it adds a lot of boilerplate procducers etc and make the actual route really obscure. The second approach allows to offload processing into a new class (and not mix it into the routes) but still requires the camel-context and depends on this.
What is the recommendation for this. I couldn't find anything around except more abstract statements like "do not mix business logic with wiring" etc.
* added real use-case *
E1 gets two dates (a time-span) and a department name, fetches all names that have been in the specified department over the specified time-span. Then (above I ignored this detail) the names are splitted and for every single name, all data is fetched that has been saved in the specified date-span. For this last step the dates from the input of the first is needed (so these need to be passed through the entire route).
thanks,
markus

Thanks to Claus:
You can enrich the message anyhow you like. Camel doesn't really care. If you use a processor / pojo its just java code and you can do whatever you want. If you use the enrich / pollEnrich DSL then they uses an AggregationStrategy to "merge" the enrichment.
I enriched the original input of the route by the result of the http4:url endpoint. This way I could separate the "fetching" of data from the acual business logic, which now happens in the Processor/AggregationStreategy bean that is independent of the rest (of camel in particular).
thanks
markus

Related

CQRS + Event Sourcing handling update of entity using requests

I'm developing this JavaEE REST microservice oriented CQRS + EventSourcing app, I have this entity (Artwork) with many fields and I have to record each update to this entity according to EventSourcing pattern (basically each update creates a new event, the artwork is then rebuild using these events).
My approach basically works, but I'm stuck with a "compliance" towards HTTP standards, basically I want to avoid a "generic" update in which you update the whole entity because it will be a mess to handle each single field update (and consequent event generation).
So this is what I did.
Let's say that I have this entity:
public entity{
int id;
String field1;
String field2;
...
Then I created as many requests as many fields I have to update (not all fields can be updated, such as the ID)
public field1UpdateRequest{
field1 newvalue;
}
and the same for field 2.
These updated are handled using a PUT request, when such a request arrives, it is handled by something like this:
HTTP → Controller→ Service → (DAOS etc.)
So in the controller class I have a PUT http://...//updatefield1 method that accepts field1UpdateRequest objects.
My question is:
Is this right to do? How can I explain that this is right (if it is)? should these requests be PATCH more than PUT? Should a generic PUT request also be included? (Even if I'm scared that this will make the event sourcing part more difficult)?
In a CQRS spproach, it's important to remember that the C stands for Command. Every request to your "write-side" is thus a command. A generic "here is the new value for this resource" request (which is what REST tends to lead to) can be interpreted as a "use this value henceforth" command, but it is a bit of an impedance mismatch with CQRS, because it's a fairly anemic command. There are definitely cases where having that in an API can be called for (and if it's an exceptionally rare request, you may even be able to get away with modeling it as a single "new beginning" event rather than teasing out finer-grained events; this has the cost of shifting some complexity out to consumers of the events).
With that in mind, an alternative approach that updates parts of an object is a little more of a fit with CQRS (though in this case, you are shifting some complexity to requestor, at least if that requestor wants to do wholesale updates). HTTP PUTsounds proper to me: the command is "use this value for this field/component of the entity".
That said, an even more CQRSy API would instead focus on the higher-level activities which motivate a change to the entity. For instance if you're tracking the current owner of the artwork as of when it was sold, you might have a currentOwner and a currentOwnerAcquired field in your artwork entity. When recording a sale, you would want to update both, so a POST /artworks/{artworkId}/transferOwnership endpoint taking something like
{
"transferor": "Joe Bloggs",
"transferee": "Jack Schmoe",
"date": "2021-12-24T00:00:01Z"
}
would allow the update to be a single transaction and allow you to encode the "why" as well as the "what" in your events (which is an advantage of event sourcing).
So in the controller class i have a PUT http://...//updatefield1 method that accepts field1UpdateRequest objects.
Is this right to do?
It might be, but it probably isn't.
Here's the key idea: your REST API is a facade; it supports the illusion that your server is stores and produces documents. In other words, your providing an interface to your data that makes it look like every other site on the web.
The good news: when you do that, you get (for free!) the benefits of a bunch of general purpose work that has already been done for you.
But the cost (of these things that you get for free) is that - for everything to "just work", you need to handle the impedance mismatch between HTTP (which is based on an idiom of documents) and your domain model.
So I send to you messages to "edit your documents", and you in turn figure out how to translate those messages into commands for your domain model.
In HTTP, both PUT and PATCH have remote authoring semantics. Both of those messages mean "make your copy of the document look like my copy". They are the flavor of HTTP messages you would use to (for example) edit the title of an HTML document on your web server.
The semantics are fundamentally anemic. My message tells you how I want your copy of the document to look, your server is responsible for figuring out how to achieve that.
And that's fine when you are working with documents, or using documents as a facade in front of a data model. But matching remote authoring requests with a domain model are a lot harder.
(Recommended reading: Greg Young 2010 on task based user interfaces).
In the case of a domain model, you normally want to send to the server a representation of a command message. HTTP really wants you to deal with command messages in one of two ways:
treat the command message as a document/resource of its own, to be stored on the server (the changes to the domain model are a side effect of storing a new command message)
POST the command message to the resource most directly impacted by the change.
(See Fielding, 2009; it is okay to use POST).
In both cases, the HTTP application itself knows nothing about what's going on at the domain level, it is only concerned with the transfer of documents over the network.
HTTP doesn't really place any constraints on your resource model - if you want to publish all of your information in one document, that's fine. If you want to distribute your information across many documents, that's also fine.
So taking a single entity in your domain, and distributing its information across many resources is fine.
BUT: remember caching. HTTP has simple rules for automatically invalidating previously cached responses; separating the resource you use for reading information from the resource that you use for editing information makes caching harder (caution: caching is already one of the two hard problems).
In other words: trade offs.

how to consume a Restful Web Service (Restful API) in Java

I just want to know the high level steps of the process. Here's my thought on the process:
Assumption: the API returns JSON format
Check the API document to see the structure of the returned JSON
Create a corresponding Java class (ex: Employee)
Make Http call to the endpoint to get the JSON response
Using some JSON library (such as GSON, Jackson) to unmarshall the JSON string to Employee object.
Manipulate the Employee object
However, what if the API returned JSON is changed? it's really tedious task to exam the JSON string every now and then to adjust the corresponding Java class.
Can anyone help me out with this understanding. Thanks
You describe how to consume a json over http API, which is fine since most of the APIs out there are just that. If you are interested in consuming Restful HTTP resources however, one way would be:
Check the API documentation, aka. the media-types that your client will need to support in order to communicate with its resources. Some RESTafarians argue that all media-types should be standardized, so all clients could potentially support them, but I think that goes a bit far.
Watch out for link representations, and processing logic. media-types do not only describe the format of the data, but also how to process them. How to display it if its an image, how to run code that might be part of the message, how to layout onto the screen, how to use embedded controls like forms, etc.
Create corresponding Java classes. If the resources "only" describe data (which they usually do in API context), then simple Java classes will do, otherwise more might be needed. For example: can the representation contain JavaScript to run on the client? You need to embed a JavaScript engine, and prepare your class to do just that.
Make call to a bookmarked URI if you have it. There should be no hardcoded SOAP-like "endpoint" you call. You start with bookmarks and work your way to the state your client need to be in.
Usually your first call goes to the "start" resource. This is the only bookmark you have in the beginning. You specify the media-types you support for this resource in the Accept header.
You then check whether the returned Content-Type matches one of your accepted media-types (remember, the server is free to ignore your preferences), and then you process the returned representation according to its rules.
For example you want to get all the accounts for customer 123456 for which you don't yet have a bookmark to. You might first GET the start resource for account management. The processing logic there might describe a link to go to for account listings. You follow the link. The representation there might give you a "form" in which you have to fill out the customer number and POST. Finally, you get your representation of the account list. You may at this point bookmark the page, so you don't have to go through the whole chain the next time.
Process representation. This might involve displaying, running, or just handing over the data to some other class.
Sorry for the long post, slow day at work :) Just for completeness, some other points the client needs to know about: caching, handling bookmarks (reacting to 3xx codes), following links in representations.
Versioning is another topic you mention. This is a whole discussion onto itself, but in short: some people (myself included) advocate versioning the media-type. Non-backwards compatible changes simply change the media type's name (for example from application/vnd.company.customer-v1+json, to application/vnd.company.customer-v2+json), and then everything (bookmarks for example) continues to work because of content negotiation.
There are many ways to consume RESTful APIs.
Typically, you need to know what version of the API you are going to use. When the API changes (i.e. a different version is exposed) you need to decide if the new functionality is worth migrating your application(s) to the latest and greatest or not...
In my experience, migrating to a new API always requires some effort and it really depends on the value of doing so (vs. not doing it) and/or whether the old API is going to be deprecated and/or not supported by the publisher.

Queue for messages from two sources in Apache Camel with chronological order

I would like to realize next scenario in Apache Camel (included in JBoss Fuse):
I have two systems, both of them produce events stored in database separately. Now I need to read events from this event tables and put them as messages in queue (realized by ActiveMQ). But what is really important I need to keep chronological order (creation time) of events in this queue, no matters where event was created.
I am looking for solution, which maximally uses components and patterns from Camel framework, of course I can realize the reading mechanism outside of Camel (pure Java), but I prefer Camel solution.
Thanks a lot for any idea!
I think you just want to pop the messages onto a seda queue and use a resequencer to merge them back into order.
from("--database1--")
to("seda:resequencer")
from("--database2--")
to("seda:resequencer")
from("seda:resequencer")
.resequence(header("date")).batch().timeout(5000L)
.to("activemq:...")
You will need to pay attention to the timeout settings and what is appropriate.
(Note: I haven't tested this code, so please tage it as a suggestion).

How to Aspect a whole camel route

Essentially, I'd like to aspect a whole camel route, so that I can grab the payload at the start and the end.
Now, I know I can just aspect the main "doing" class in the middle, not pulling it from a queue and placing it on the disk at the end. And this is fine for a simple route, not one that has many "doing" classes.
But is there a way to tie up the start and end of a route, without putting this into the route?
I have got a lot of routes and I'd like to keep them as clean of logging code as possible.
Use the interception possibilities of Camel as described here:
intercept that intercepts each and every processing step while routing an Exchange in the route.
interceptFrom that intercepts incoming Exchange in the route.
interceptSendToEndpoint that intercepts when an Exchange is about to be sent to the given Endpoint.
In your case the second and third possibility may be of interest.
I think you've got two choices:
Add a wiretap at the start and end of each route. See http://camel.apache.org/wire-tap.html. This obviously means editing the routes but is simple easy and it only two lines per route.
Use RouteDefinition.adviceWith to dynamically add an interceptor. See http://camel.apache.org/advicewith.html. I've not seen this used outside testing but I don't see any reason why you can't use it in live code.

Known RPC Protocols to put ontop of JMS

I am developing a distributed system which consists of different components (services) which are loosely (asynchronously) coupled via JMS (ActiveMQ).
Thus I do not want to reinvent the wheel, I am looking for a (well) known protocol / library that facilitates remote procedure calls inbetween these components and helps me deal with method interfaces.
So let's decompose the problem I am already solving right now via dirty solutions:
A consumer component want's to call a service, thus it constructs a request string (hand-written and dirty)
The request string is than compressed an put into a JMS message (dirty aswell)
The request message is than transmitted via JMS and routing mechanisms (that part is ok)
The service first of all needs to decompress and parse the request string, to identify the right method (dirty)
The method gets called and the reply goes like #2 - #4.
So that looks pretty much like SOAP, whilst I think that SOAP is to heavy for my application and further I am not using HTTP at all. Given that I was thinking that one might be able to deconstruct the problem into different components.
Part A: HTTP is replaced by JMS (that one is okay)
Part B: XML is replaced by something more lightweight (alright, MessagePack comes in handy here)
Part C: Mechanism to parse request/reply string to identify operation name and parameter values (that one is the real problem here)
I was looking into MessagePack, ProtocolBuffers, Thrift and so forth, but what I don't like about them is that they introduce their own way of handling the actual (TCP) communication. And bypass my already sophisticated JMS infrastructure (which also handles load balancing and stuff).
To further elaborate Part C above, this is how I am currently handling it: Right know I would do something like the following if a consumer would call a service, let's assume the service takes a text and replies keywords. I would have the consumer create a JMS message and transmit it (via ActiveMQ) to the service. The message would contain:
Syntax: OPERATION_NAME [PARAMETERS]
Method: GET_ALL_KEYWORDS [String text] returns [JSON String[] keywords]
Example Request: GET_ALL_KEYWORDS "Hello world, this is my input text..."
Example Reply: ["hello", "world", "text"]
Needless to say that it feels like hacked-together. The problem I see is if I would be to change the method interface by adding or deleting parameters, I would have to check all the request/reply string construction/deconstructions to syncronize the changes. That is pretty errorprone. I'd rather have the library construct the right request/reply syntax by looking at a java interface and throwing real exceptions on runtime if I do mess up stuff, like "Protocol Exception: Mandatory parameter not set" or something...
Any projects/libs known for that?
Requirements would be
It's small and lightweight and fast.
It's implemented in JAVA
It doesn't serve too many purposes (like some fullblown framework e.g. Spring)
I think this Spring package is what you're looking for. See JmsInvokerProxyFactoryBean and related classes.
From the javadoc:
FactoryBean for JMS invoker proxies. Exposes the proxied service for
use as a bean reference, using the specified service interface.
Serializes remote invocation objects and deserializes remote
invocation result objects. Uses Java serialization just like RMI, but
with the JMS provider as communication infrastructure.

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