Dataset

Since Camel 1.3

Both producer and consumer are supported

Testing of distributed and asynchronous processing is notoriously difficult. The Mock, DataSet, and DataSet Test endpoints work great with the Camel Testing Framework to simplify your unit and integration testing using Enterprise Integration Patterns and Camel’s large range of Components together with the powerful Bean Integration.

The DataSet component provides a mechanism to easily perform load & soak testing of your system. It works by allowing you to create DataSet instances both as a source of messages and as a way to assert that the data set is received.

Camel will use the throughput logger when sending dataset’s.

URI format

dataset:name[?options]

Where name is used to find the DataSet instance in the Registry

Camel ships with a support implementation of org.apache.camel.component.dataset.DataSet, the org.apache.camel.component.dataset.DataSetSupport class, that can be used as a base for implementing your own DataSet. Camel also ships with some implementations that can be used for testing: org.apache.camel.component.dataset.SimpleDataSet, org.apache.camel.component.dataset.ListDataSet and org.apache.camel.component.dataset.FileDataSet, all of which extend DataSetSupport.

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 Dataset component supports 5 options, which are listed below.

Name	Description	Default	Type
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
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.	false	boolean
log (producer)	To turn on logging when the mock receives an incoming message. This will log only one time at INFO level for the incoming message. For more detailed logging then set the logger to DEBUG level for the org.apache.camel.component.mock.MockEndpoint class.	false	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
exchangeFormatter (advanced)	Autowired Sets a custom ExchangeFormatter to convert the Exchange to a String suitable for logging. If not specified, we default to DefaultExchangeFormatter.		ExchangeFormatter

Name

Description

Default

Type

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

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.

false

boolean

log (producer)

To turn on logging when the mock receives an incoming message. This will log only one time at INFO level for the incoming message. For more detailed logging then set the logger to DEBUG level for the org.apache.camel.component.mock.MockEndpoint class.

false

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

exchangeFormatter (advanced)

Autowired Sets a custom ExchangeFormatter to convert the Exchange to a String suitable for logging. If not specified, we default to DefaultExchangeFormatter.

ExchangeFormatter

Endpoint Options

The Dataset endpoint is configured using URI syntax:

dataset:name

with the following path and query parameters:

Path Parameters (1 parameters)

Name	Description	Default	Type
name (common)	Required Name of DataSet to lookup in the registry.		DataSet

Name

Description

Default

Type

name (common)

Required Name of DataSet to lookup in the registry.

DataSet

Query Parameters (21 parameters)

Name	Description	Default	Type
dataSetIndex (common)	Controls the behaviour of the CamelDataSetIndex header. off (consumer) the header will not be set. strict (consumer) the header will be set. lenient (consumer) the header will be set. off (producer) the header value will not be verified, and will not be set if it is not present. strict (producer) the header value must be present and will be verified. lenient (producer) the header value will be verified if it is present, and will be set if it is not present. Enum values: strict lenient off	lenient	String
initialDelay (consumer)	Time period in millis to wait before starting sending messages.	1000	long
minRate (consumer)	Wait until the DataSet contains at least this number of messages.	0	int
preloadSize (consumer)	Sets how many messages should be preloaded (sent) before the route completes its initialization.	0	long
produceDelay (consumer)	Allows a delay to be specified which causes a delay when a message is sent by the consumer (to simulate slow processing).	3	long
bridgeErrorHandler (consumer (advanced))	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
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
assertPeriod (producer)	Sets a grace period after which the mock endpoint will re-assert to ensure the preliminary assertion is still valid. This is used for example to assert that exactly a number of messages arrives. For example if expected count was set to 5, then the assertion is satisfied when 5 or more message arrives. To ensure that exactly 5 messages arrives, then you would need to wait a little period to ensure no further message arrives. This is what you can use this method for. By default this period is disabled.		long
consumeDelay (producer)	Allows a delay to be specified which causes a delay when a message is consumed by the producer (to simulate slow processing).	0	long
expectedCount (producer)	Specifies the expected number of message exchanges that should be received by this endpoint. Beware: If you want to expect that 0 messages, then take extra care, as 0 matches when the tests starts, so you need to set a assert period time to let the test run for a while to make sure there are still no messages arrived; for that use setAssertPeriod(long). An alternative is to use NotifyBuilder, and use the notifier to know when Camel is done routing some messages, before you call the assertIsSatisfied() method on the mocks. This allows you to not use a fixed assert period, to speedup testing times. If you want to assert that exactly n’th message arrives to this mock endpoint, then see also the setAssertPeriod(long) method for further details.	-1	int
failFast (producer)	Sets whether assertIsSatisfied() should fail fast at the first detected failed expectation while it may otherwise wait for all expected messages to arrive before performing expectations verifications. Is by default true. Set to false to use behavior as in Camel 2.x.	false	boolean
log (producer)	To turn on logging when the mock receives an incoming message. This will log only one time at INFO level for the incoming message. For more detailed logging then set the logger to DEBUG level for the org.apache.camel.component.mock.MockEndpoint class.	false	boolean
reportGroup (producer)	A number that is used to turn on throughput logging based on groups of the size.		int
resultMinimumWaitTime (producer)	Sets the minimum expected amount of time (in millis) the assertIsSatisfied() will wait on a latch until it is satisfied.		long
resultWaitTime (producer)	Sets the maximum amount of time (in millis) the assertIsSatisfied() will wait on a latch until it is satisfied.		long
retainFirst (producer)	Specifies to only retain the first n’th number of received Exchanges. This is used when testing with big data, to reduce memory consumption by not storing copies of every Exchange this mock endpoint receives. Important: When using this limitation, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return the actual number of received Exchanges. For example if we have received 5000 Exchanges, and have configured to only retain the first 10 Exchanges, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return 5000 but there is only the first 10 Exchanges in the getExchanges() and getReceivedExchanges() methods. When using this method, then some of the other expectation methods is not supported, for example the expectedBodiesReceived(Object…) sets a expectation on the first number of bodies received. You can configure both setRetainFirst(int) and setRetainLast(int) methods, to limit both the first and last received.	-1	int
retainLast (producer)	Specifies to only retain the last n’th number of received Exchanges. This is used when testing with big data, to reduce memory consumption by not storing copies of every Exchange this mock endpoint receives. Important: When using this limitation, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return the actual number of received Exchanges. For example if we have received 5000 Exchanges, and have configured to only retain the last 20 Exchanges, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return 5000 but there is only the last 20 Exchanges in the getExchanges() and getReceivedExchanges() methods. When using this method, then some of the other expectation methods is not supported, for example the expectedBodiesReceived(Object…) sets a expectation on the first number of bodies received. You can configure both setRetainFirst(int) and setRetainLast(int) methods, to limit both the first and last received.	-1	int
sleepForEmptyTest (producer)	Allows a sleep to be specified to wait to check that this endpoint really is empty when expectedMessageCount(int) is called with zero.		long
copyOnExchange (producer (advanced))	Sets whether to make a deep copy of the incoming Exchange when received at this mock endpoint. Is by default true.	true	boolean
lazyStartProducer (producer (advanced))	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

Name

Description

Default

Type

dataSetIndex (common)

Controls the behaviour of the CamelDataSetIndex header. off (consumer) the header will not be set. strict (consumer) the header will be set. lenient (consumer) the header will be set. off (producer) the header value will not be verified, and will not be set if it is not present. strict (producer) the header value must be present and will be verified. lenient (producer) the header value will be verified if it is present, and will be set if it is not present.

Enum values:

strict
lenient
off

lenient

String

initialDelay (consumer)

Time period in millis to wait before starting sending messages.

1000

long

minRate (consumer)

Wait until the DataSet contains at least this number of messages.

int

preloadSize (consumer)

Sets how many messages should be preloaded (sent) before the route completes its initialization.

long

produceDelay (consumer)

Allows a delay to be specified which causes a delay when a message is sent by the consumer (to simulate slow processing).

long

bridgeErrorHandler (consumer (advanced))

false

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

assertPeriod (producer)

Sets a grace period after which the mock endpoint will re-assert to ensure the preliminary assertion is still valid. This is used for example to assert that exactly a number of messages arrives. For example if expected count was set to 5, then the assertion is satisfied when 5 or more message arrives. To ensure that exactly 5 messages arrives, then you would need to wait a little period to ensure no further message arrives. This is what you can use this method for. By default this period is disabled.

long

consumeDelay (producer)

Allows a delay to be specified which causes a delay when a message is consumed by the producer (to simulate slow processing).

long

expectedCount (producer)

Specifies the expected number of message exchanges that should be received by this endpoint. Beware: If you want to expect that 0 messages, then take extra care, as 0 matches when the tests starts, so you need to set a assert period time to let the test run for a while to make sure there are still no messages arrived; for that use setAssertPeriod(long). An alternative is to use NotifyBuilder, and use the notifier to know when Camel is done routing some messages, before you call the assertIsSatisfied() method on the mocks. This allows you to not use a fixed assert period, to speedup testing times. If you want to assert that exactly n’th message arrives to this mock endpoint, then see also the setAssertPeriod(long) method for further details.

-1

int

failFast (producer)

Sets whether assertIsSatisfied() should fail fast at the first detected failed expectation while it may otherwise wait for all expected messages to arrive before performing expectations verifications. Is by default true. Set to false to use behavior as in Camel 2.x.

false

boolean

log (producer)

false

boolean

reportGroup (producer)

A number that is used to turn on throughput logging based on groups of the size.

int

resultMinimumWaitTime (producer)

Sets the minimum expected amount of time (in millis) the assertIsSatisfied() will wait on a latch until it is satisfied.

long

resultWaitTime (producer)

Sets the maximum amount of time (in millis) the assertIsSatisfied() will wait on a latch until it is satisfied.

long

retainFirst (producer)

Specifies to only retain the first n’th number of received Exchanges. This is used when testing with big data, to reduce memory consumption by not storing copies of every Exchange this mock endpoint receives. Important: When using this limitation, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return the actual number of received Exchanges. For example if we have received 5000 Exchanges, and have configured to only retain the first 10 Exchanges, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return 5000 but there is only the first 10 Exchanges in the getExchanges() and getReceivedExchanges() methods. When using this method, then some of the other expectation methods is not supported, for example the expectedBodiesReceived(Object…) sets a expectation on the first number of bodies received. You can configure both setRetainFirst(int) and setRetainLast(int) methods, to limit both the first and last received.

-1

int

retainLast (producer)

Specifies to only retain the last n’th number of received Exchanges. This is used when testing with big data, to reduce memory consumption by not storing copies of every Exchange this mock endpoint receives. Important: When using this limitation, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return the actual number of received Exchanges. For example if we have received 5000 Exchanges, and have configured to only retain the last 20 Exchanges, then the getReceivedCounter() will still return 5000 but there is only the last 20 Exchanges in the getExchanges() and getReceivedExchanges() methods. When using this method, then some of the other expectation methods is not supported, for example the expectedBodiesReceived(Object…) sets a expectation on the first number of bodies received. You can configure both setRetainFirst(int) and setRetainLast(int) methods, to limit both the first and last received.

-1

int

sleepForEmptyTest (producer)

Allows a sleep to be specified to wait to check that this endpoint really is empty when expectedMessageCount(int) is called with zero.

long

copyOnExchange (producer (advanced))

Sets whether to make a deep copy of the incoming Exchange when received at this mock endpoint. Is by default true.

true

boolean

lazyStartProducer (producer (advanced))

false

boolean

Message Headers

The Dataset component supports 1 message header(s), which is/are listed below:

Name Description Default Type

Name	Description	Default	Type
CamelDataSetIndex (common) Constant: `DATASET_INDEX`	The dataset index.		Long

CamelDataSetIndex (common)

Constant: DATASET_INDEX

The dataset index.

Long

Configuring DataSet

Camel will lookup in the Registry for a bean implementing the DataSet interface. So you can register your own DataSet as:

<bean id="myDataSet" class="com.mycompany.MyDataSet">
  <property name="size" value="100"/>
</bean>

Example

For example, to test that a set of messages are sent to a queue and then consumed from the queue without losing any messages:

// send the dataset to a queue
from("dataset:foo").to("activemq:SomeQueue");

// now lets test that the messages are consumed correctly
from("activemq:SomeQueue").to("dataset:foo");

The above would look in the Registry to find the foo DataSet instance which is used to create the messages.

Then you create a DataSet implementation, such as using the SimpleDataSet as described below, configuring things like how big the data set is and what the messages look like etc.

DataSetSupport (abstract class)

The DataSetSupport abstract class is a nice starting point for new DataSets, and provides some useful features to derived classes.

Properties on DataSetSupport

Property Type Default Description

Property	Type	Default	Description
`defaultHeaders`	`Map<String,Object>`	`null`	Specifies the default message body. For SimpleDataSet it is a constant payload; though if you want to create custom payloads per message, create your own derivation of `DataSetSupport`.
`outputTransformer`	`org.apache.camel.Processor`	null
`size`	`long`	`10`	Specifies how many messages to send/consume.
`reportCount`	`long`	`-1`	Specifies the number of messages to be received before reporting progress. Useful for showing progress of a large load test. If < 0, then `size` / 5, if is 0 then `size`, else set to `reportCount` value.

defaultHeaders

Map<String,Object>

null

Specifies the default message body. For SimpleDataSet it is a constant payload; though if you want to create custom payloads per message, create your own derivation of DataSetSupport.

outputTransformer

org.apache.camel.Processor

null

size

long

10

Specifies how many messages to send/consume.

reportCount

long

-1

Specifies the number of messages to be received before reporting progress. Useful for showing progress of a large load test. If < 0, then size / 5, if is 0 then size, else set to reportCount value.

SimpleDataSet

The SimpleDataSet extends DataSetSupport, and adds a default body.

Additional Properties on SimpleDataSet

Property Type Default Description

Property	Type	Default	Description
`defaultBody`	`Object`	`<hello>world!</hello>`	Specifies the default message body. By default, the `SimpleDataSet` produces the same constant payload for each exchange. If you want to customize the payload for each exchange, create a Camel `Processor` and configure the `SimpleDataSet` to use it by setting the `outputTransformer` property.

defaultBody

Object

<hello>world!</hello>

Specifies the default message body. By default, the SimpleDataSet produces the same constant payload for each exchange. If you want to customize the payload for each exchange, create a Camel Processor and configure the SimpleDataSet to use it by setting the outputTransformer property.

ListDataSet

The ListDataSet extends DataSetSupport, and adds a list of default bodies.

Additional Properties on ListDataSet

Property Type Default Description

Property	Type	Default	Description
`defaultBodies`	`List<Object>`	`empty LinkedList<Object>`	Specifies the default message body. By default, the `ListDataSet` selects a constant payload from the list of `defaultBodies` using the `CamelDataSetIndex`. If you want to customize the payload, create a Camel `Processor` and configure the `ListDataSet` to use it by setting the `outputTransformer` property.
`size`	`long`	the size of the defaultBodies list	Specifies how many messages to send/consume. This value can be different from the size of the `defaultBodies` list. If the value is less than the size of the `defaultBodies` list, some of the list elements will not be used. If the value is greater than the size of the `defaultBodies` list, the payload for the exchange will be selected using the modulus of the `CamelDataSetIndex` and the size of the `defaultBodies` list (i.e. `CamelDataSetIndex % defaultBodies.size()` )

defaultBodies

List<Object>

empty LinkedList<Object>

Specifies the default message body. By default, the ListDataSet selects a constant payload from the list of defaultBodies using the CamelDataSetIndex. If you want to customize the payload, create a Camel Processor and configure the ListDataSet to use it by setting the outputTransformer property.

size

long

the size of the defaultBodies list

Specifies how many messages to send/consume. This value can be different from the size of the defaultBodies list. If the value is less than the size of the defaultBodies list, some of the list elements will not be used. If the value is greater than the size of the defaultBodies list, the payload for the exchange will be selected using the modulus of the CamelDataSetIndex and the size of the defaultBodies list (i.e. CamelDataSetIndex % defaultBodies.size() )

FileDataSet

The FileDataSet extends ListDataSet, and adds support for loading the bodies from a file.

Additional Properties on FileDataSet

Property Type Default Description

Property	Type	Default	Description
`sourceFile`	`File`	null	Specifies the source file for payloads
`delimiter`	`String`	\z	Specifies the delimiter pattern used by a `java.util.Scanner` to split the file into multiple payloads.

sourceFile

File

null

Specifies the source file for payloads

delimiter

String

Specifies the delimiter pattern used by a java.util.Scanner to split the file into multiple payloads.