[[SpringSupport-SpringSupport]]
## Spring Support

Apache Camel is designed to work nicely with the
http://www.springframework.org/[Spring Framework] in a number of ways.

* Camel uses Spring Transactions as the default transaction handling in
components like <<jms-component,JMS>> and <<jms-component,JPA>>
* Camel works with Spring 2 XML processing with the
Xml Configuration
* Camel Spring XML Schema's is defined at link:xml-reference.html[Xml
Reference]
* Camel supports a powerful version of link:spring-remoting.html[Spring
Remoting] which can use powerful routing between the client and server
side along with using all of the available
Components for the transport
* Camel provides powerful Bean Integration
with any bean defined in a Spring ApplicationContext
* Camel integrates with various Spring helper classes; such as providing
Type Converter support for Spring Resources
etc
* Allows Spring to dependency inject Component
instances or the CamelContext instance itself
and auto-expose Spring beans as components and endpoints.
* Allows you to reuse the Spring Testing
framework to simplify your unit and integration testing using
link:enterprise-integration-patterns.html[Enterprise Integration
Patterns] and Camel's powerful <<mock-component,Mock>> and
<<test-component,Test>> endpoints
* From *Camel 2.15* onwards Camel supports Spring Boot using
the `camel-spring-boot` component.

### Using Spring to configure the CamelContext

You can configure a CamelContext inside any spring.xml using the
http://camel.apache.org/maven/current/camel-spring/apidocs/org/apache/camel/spring/CamelContextFactoryBean.html[CamelContextFactoryBean].
This will automatically start the
CamelContext along with any referenced
Routes along any referenced
Component and Endpoint
instances.

* Adding Camel schema
* Configure Routes in two ways:
** Using Java Code
** Using Spring XML

### Adding Camel Schema

For Camel 1.x you need to use the following namespace:

[source,java]
----------------------------------------------
http://activemq.apache.org/camel/schema/spring
----------------------------------------------

with the following schema location:

[source,java]
---------------------------------------------------------------
http://activemq.apache.org/camel/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
---------------------------------------------------------------

You need to add Camel to the `schemaLocation` declaration

[source,java]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the XML file looks like this:

[source,xml]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
          http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd">
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#### Using camel: namespace

Or you can refer to camel XSD in the XML declaration:

[source,java]
---------------------------------------------------
xmlns:camel="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring"
---------------------------------------------------

... so the declaration is:

[source,xml]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:camel="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring"
       xsi:schemaLocation="
          http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
          http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring/camel-spring.xsd">
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

... and then use the camel: namespace prefix, and you can omit the
inline namespace declaration:

[source,xml]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
<camel:camelContext id="camel5">
  <camel:package>org.apache.camel.spring.example</camel:package>
</camel:camelContext>
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

#### Advanced configuration using Spring

See more details at
link:advanced-configuration-of-camelcontext-using-spring.html[Advanced
configuration of CamelContext using Spring]

$### Using Java Code

You can use Java Code to define your
RouteBuilder implementations. These can be
defined as beans in spring and then referenced in your camel context
e.g.

#### Using <package>

Camel also provides a powerful feature that allows for the automatic
discovery and initialization of routes in given packages. This is
configured by adding tags to the camel context in your spring context
definition, specifying the packages to be recursively searched for
RouteBuilder implementations. To use this
feature in 1.X, requires a <package></package> tag specifying a comma
separated list of packages that should be searched e.g.

[source,xml]
----------------------------------------------------------------
  <camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
    <package>org.apache.camel.spring.config.scan.route</package>
  </camelContext>
----------------------------------------------------------------


WARNING:Use caution when specifying the package name as `org.apache.camel` or a
sub package of this. This causes Camel to search in its own packages for
your routes which could cause problems.


INFO:*Will ignore already instantiated classes*. 
The <package> and <packageScan> will skip any classes which has already
been created by Spring etc. So if you define a route builder as a spring
bean tag then that class will be skipped. You can include those beans
using `<routeBuilder ref="theBeanId"/>` or the `<contextScan>` feature.

#### Using <packageScan>

In Camel 2.0 this has been extended to allow selective inclusion and
exclusion of discovered route classes using Ant like path matching. In
spring this is specified by adding a <packageScan/> tag. The tag must
contain one or more 'package' elements (similar to 1.x), and optionally
one or more 'includes' or 'excludes' elements specifying patterns to be
applied to the fully qualified names of the discovered classes. e.g.

[source,xml]
--------------------------------------------------------------
  <camelContext xmlns="http://camel.apache.org/schema/spring">
    <packageScan>
      <package>org.example.routes</package>
      <excludes>**.*Excluded*</excludes>
      <includes>**.*</includes>
    </packageScan>
  </camelContext>
--------------------------------------------------------------

Exclude patterns are applied before the include patterns. If no include
or exclude patterns are defined then all the Route classes discovered in
the packages will be returned.

In the above example, camel will scan all the 'org.example.routes'
package and any subpackages for RouteBuilder classes. Say the scan finds
two RouteBuilders, one in org.example.routes called 'MyRoute" and
another 'MyExcludedRoute' in a subpackage 'excluded'. The fully
qualified names of each of the classes are extracted
(org.example.routes.MyRoute,
org.example.routes.excluded.MyExcludedRoute) and the include and exclude
patterns are applied.

The exclude pattern **.*Excluded* is going to match the fqcn
'org.example.routes.excluded.MyExcludedRoute' and veto camel from
initializing it.

Under the covers, this is using Spring's
http://static.springframework.org/spring/docs/2.5.x/api/org/springframework/util/AntPathMatcher.html[AntPatternMatcher]
implementation, which matches as follows

[source,java]
----------------------------------------------------------
? matches one character
* matches zero or more characters
** matches zero or more segments of a fully qualified name
----------------------------------------------------------

For example:

**.*Excluded* would match org.simple.Excluded,
org.apache.camel.SomeExcludedRoute or org.example.RouteWhichIsExcluded

**.??cluded* would match org.simple.IncludedRoute, org.simple.Excluded
but not match org.simple.PrecludedRoute

#### Using contextScan

*Available as of Camel 2.4*

You can allow Camel to scan the container context, e.g. the Spring
`ApplicationContext` for route builder instances. This allow you to use
the Spring `<component-scan>` feature and have Camel pickup any
RouteBuilder instances which was created by Spring in its scan process.

This allows you to just annotate your routes using the Spring
`@Component` and have those routes included by Camel

[source,java]
-------------------------------------------------
@Component
public class MyRoute extends SpringRouteBuilder {

    @Override
    public void configure() throws Exception {
        from("direct:start").to("mock:result");
    }
}
-------------------------------------------------

You can also use the ANT style for inclusion and exclusion, as mentioned
above in the `<packageScan>` documentation.

### How do I import routes from other XML files

*Available as of Camel 2.3*

When defining routes in Camel using link:xml-configuration.html[Xml
Configuration] you may want to define some routes in other XML files.
For example you may have many routes and it may help to maintain the
application if some of the routes are in separate XML files. You may
also want to store common and reusable routes in other XML files, which
you can simply import when needed.

In *Camel 2.3* it is now possible to define routes outside
`<camelContext/>` which you do in a new `<routeContext/>` tag.

*Notice:* When you use <routeContext> then they are separated, and
cannot reuse existing <onException>, <intercept>, <dataFormats> and
similar cross cutting functionality defined in the <camelContext>. In
other words the <routeContext> is currently isolated. This may change in
Camel 3.x.

For example we could have a file named `myCoolRoutes.xml` which contains
a couple of routes as shown:

*myCoolRoutes.xml*

Then in your XML file which contains the CamelContext you can use Spring
to import the `myCoolRoute.xml` file. +
 And then inside `<camelContext/>` you can refer to the
`<routeContext/>` by its id as shown below:

Also notice that you can mix and match, having routes inside
CamelContext and also externalized in RouteContext.

You can have as many `<routeContextRef/>` as you like.

*Reusable routes*

The routes defined in `<routeContext/>` can be reused by multiple
`<camelContext/>`. However its only the definition which is reused. At
runtime each CamelContext will create its own instance of the route
based on the definition.

#### Test time exclusion.

At test time it is often desirable to be able to selectively exclude
matching routes from being initalized that are not applicable or useful
to the test scenario. For instance you might a spring context file
routes-context.xml and three Route builders RouteA, RouteB and RouteC in
the 'org.example.routes' package. The packageScan definition would
discover all three of these routes and initialize them.

Say RouteC is not applicable to our test scenario and generates a lot of
noise during test. It would be nice to be able to exclude this route
from this specific test. The SpringTestSupport class has been modified
to allow this. It provides two methods (excludedRoute and
excludedRoutes) that may be overridden to exclude a single class or an
array of classes.

[source,java]
----------------------------------------------------------------
public class RouteAandRouteBOnlyTest extends SpringTestSupport {
    @Override      
    protected Class excludeRoute() {
        return RouteC.class;
    }
}
----------------------------------------------------------------

In order to hook into the camelContext initialization by spring to
exclude the MyExcludedRouteBuilder.class we need to intercept the spring
context creation. When overriding createApplicationContext to create the
spring context, we call the getRouteExcludingApplicationContext() method
to provide a special parent spring context that takes care of the
exclusion.

[source,java]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@Override
protected AbstractXmlApplicationContext createApplicationContext() {
    return new ClassPathXmlApplicationContext(new String[] {"routes-context.xml"}, getRouteExcludingApplicationContext());
}
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RouteC will now be excluded from initialization. Similarly, in another
test that is testing only RouteC, we could exclude RouteB and RouteA by
overriding

[source,java]
---------------------------------------------------
@Override
protected Class[] excludeRoutes() {
    return new Class[]{RouteA.class, RouteB.class};
}
---------------------------------------------------

### Using Spring XML

You can use Spring 2.0 XML configuration to specify your
Xml Configuration for
Routes such as in the following
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/camel/trunk/components/camel-spring/src/test/resources/org/apache/camel/spring/routingUsingCamelContextFactory.xml[example].

### Configuring Components and Endpoints

You can configure your Component or
Endpoint instances in your Spring
XML as follows in
http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/camel/trunk/components/camel-jms/src/test/resources/org/apache/camel/component/jms/jmsRouteUsingSpring.xml[this
example].

Which allows you to configure a component using some name (activemq in
the above example), then you can refer to the component using
*activemq:[queue:|topic:]destinationName*. This works by the
SpringCamelContext lazily fetching components from the spring context
for the scheme name you use for Endpoint
URIs.

For more detail see link:how-do-i-configure-endpoints.html[Configuring
Endpoints and Components].

### CamelContextAware

If you want to be injected with the CamelContext
in your POJO just implement the
http://camel.apache.org/maven/current/camel-core/apidocs/org/apache/camel/CamelContextAware.html[CamelContextAware
interface]; then when Spring creates your POJO the CamelContext will be
injected into your POJO. Also see the link:bean-integration.html[Bean
Integration] for further injections.

### Integration Testing

To avoid a hung route when testing using Spring Transactions see the
note about Spring Integration Testing
under Transactional Client.

### See also

* Spring JMS Tutorial
* link:creating-a-new-spring-based-camel-route.html[Creating a new
Spring based Camel Route]
* Spring example
* Xml Reference
* link:advanced-configuration-of-camelcontext-using-spring.html[Advanced
configuration of CamelContext using Spring]
* link:how-do-i-import-routes-from-other-xml-files.html[How do I import
routes from other XML files]

