Chapter 89. JSONPath
Camel supports JSONPath to allow using Expression or Predicate on JSON messages.
89.1. JSONPath Options
The JSONPath language supports 8 options, which are listed below.
Name | Default | Java Type | Description |
---|---|---|---|
resultType |
| Sets the class name of the result type (type from output). | |
suppressExceptions |
| Whether to suppress exceptions such as PathNotFoundException. | |
allowSimple |
| Whether to allow in inlined Simple exceptions in the JSONPath expression. | |
allowEasyPredicate |
| Whether to allow using the easy predicate parser to pre-parse predicates. | |
writeAsString |
| Whether to write the output of each row/element as a JSON String value instead of a Map/POJO value. | |
headerName |
| Name of header to use as input, instead of the message body. | |
option |
| To configure additional options on JSONPath. Multiple values can be separated by comma. Enum values:
| |
trim |
| Whether to trim the value to remove leading and trailing whitespaces and line breaks. |
89.2. Examples
For example, you can use JSONPath in a Predicate with the Content Based Router EIP.
from("queue:books.new") .choice() .when().jsonpath("$.store.book[?(@.price < 10)]") .to("jms:queue:book.cheap") .when().jsonpath("$.store.book[?(@.price < 30)]") .to("jms:queue:book.average") .otherwise() .to("jms:queue:book.expensive");
And in XML DSL:
<route> <from uri="direct:start"/> <choice> <when> <jsonpath>$.store.book[?(@.price < 10)]</jsonpath> <to uri="mock:cheap"/> </when> <when> <jsonpath>$.store.book[?(@.price < 30)]</jsonpath> <to uri="mock:average"/> </when> <otherwise> <to uri="mock:expensive"/> </otherwise> </choice> </route>
89.3. JSONPath Syntax
Using the JSONPath syntax takes some time to learn, even for basic predicates. So for example to find out all the cheap books you have to do:
$.store.book[?(@.price < 20)]
89.3.1. Easy JSONPath Syntax
However, what if you could just write it as:
store.book.price < 20
And you can omit the path if you just want to look at nodes with a price key:
price < 20
To support this there is a EasyPredicateParser
which kicks-in if you have defined the predicate using a basic style. That means the predicate must not start with the $
sign, and only include one operator.
The easy syntax is:
left OP right
You can use Camel simple language in the right operator, eg:
store.book.price < ${header.limit}
See the JSONPath project page for more syntax examples.
89.4. Supported message body types
Camel JSonPath supports message body using the following types:
Type | Comment |
---|---|
| Reading from files |
| Plain strings |
|
Message bodies as |
|
Message bodies as |
|
Optional If Jackson is on the classpath, then camel-jsonpath is able to use Jackson to read the message body as POJO and convert to |
|
If none of the above types matches, then Camel will attempt to read the message body as a |
If a message body is of unsupported type then an exception is thrown by default, however you can configure JSonPath to suppress exceptions (see below)
89.5. Suppressing exceptions
By default, jsonpath will throw an exception if the json payload does not have a valid path accordingly to the configured jsonpath expression. In some use-cases you may want to ignore this in case the json payload contains optional data. Therefore, you can set the option suppressExceptions
to true
to ignore this as shown:
from("direct:start") .choice() // use true to suppress exceptions .when().jsonpath("person.middlename", true) .to("mock:middle") .otherwise() .to("mock:other");
And in XML DSL:
<route> <from uri="direct:start"/> <choice> <when> <jsonpath suppressExceptions="true">person.middlename</jsonpath> <to uri="mock:middle"/> </when> <otherwise> <to uri="mock:other"/> </otherwise> </choice> </route>
This option is also available on the @JsonPath
annotation.
89.6. Inline Simple expressions
It’s possible to inlined Simple language in the JSONPath expression using the simple syntax ${xxx}
.
An example is shown below:
from("direct:start") .choice() .when().jsonpath("$.store.book[?(@.price < ${header.cheap})]") .to("mock:cheap") .when().jsonpath("$.store.book[?(@.price < ${header.average})]") .to("mock:average") .otherwise() .to("mock:expensive");
And in XML DSL:
<route> <from uri="direct:start"/> <choice> <when> <jsonpath>$.store.book[?(@.price < ${header.cheap})]</jsonpath> <to uri="mock:cheap"/> </when> <when> <jsonpath>$.store.book[?(@.price < ${header.average})]</jsonpath> <to uri="mock:average"/> </when> <otherwise> <to uri="mock:expensive"/> </otherwise> </choice> </route>
You can turn off support for inlined Simple expression by setting the option allowSimple
to false
as shown:
.when().jsonpath("$.store.book[?(@.price < 10)]", false, false)
And in XML DSL:
<jsonpath allowSimple="false">$.store.book[?(@.price < 10)]</jsonpath>
89.7. JSonPath injection
You can use Bean Integration to invoke a method on a bean and use various languages such as JSONPath (via the @JsonPath
annotation) to extract a value from the message and bind it to a method parameter, as shown below:
public class Foo { @Consume("activemq:queue:books.new") public void doSomething(@JsonPath("$.store.book[*].author") String author, @Body String json) { // process the inbound message here } }
89.8. Encoding Detection
The encoding of the JSON document is detected automatically, if the document is encoded in unicode (UTF-8, UTF-16LE, UTF-16BE, UTF-32LE, UTF-32BE ) as specified in RFC-4627. If the encoding is a non-unicode encoding, you can either make sure that you enter the document in String format to JSONPath, or you can specify the encoding in the header CamelJsonPathJsonEncoding
which is defined as a constant in: JsonpathConstants.HEADER_JSON_ENCODING
.
89.9. Split JSON data into sub rows as JSON
You can use JSONPath to split a JSON document, such as:
from("direct:start") .split().jsonpath("$.store.book[*]") .to("log:book");
Then each book is logged, however the message body is a Map
instance. Sometimes you may want to output this as plain String JSON value instead, which can be done with the writeAsString
option as shown:
from("direct:start") .split().jsonpathWriteAsString("$.store.book[*]") .to("log:book");
Then each book is logged as a String JSON value.
89.10. Using header as input
By default, JSONPath uses the message body as the input source. However, you can also use a header as input by specifying the headerName
option.
For example to count the number of books from a JSON document that was stored in a header named books
you can do:
from("direct:start") .setHeader("numberOfBooks") .jsonpath("$..store.book.length()", false, int.class, "books") .to("mock:result");
In the jsonpath
expression above we specify the name of the header as books
, and we also told that we wanted the result to be converted as an integer by int.class
.
The same example in XML DSL would be:
<route> <from uri="direct:start"/> <setHeader name="numberOfBooks"> <jsonpath headerName="books" resultType="int">$..store.book.length()</jsonpath> </setHeader> <to uri="mock:result"/> </route>
89.11. Spring Boot Auto-Configuration
When using jsonpath with Spring Boot make sure to use the following Maven dependency to have support for auto configuration:
<dependency> <groupId>org.apache.camel.springboot</groupId> <artifactId>camel-jsonpath-starter</artifactId> </dependency>
The component supports 8 options, which are listed below.
Name | Description | Default | Type |
---|---|---|---|
camel.language.jsonpath.allow-easy-predicate | Whether to allow using the easy predicate parser to pre-parse predicates. | true | Boolean |
camel.language.jsonpath.allow-simple | Whether to allow in inlined Simple exceptions in the JSONPath expression. | true | Boolean |
camel.language.jsonpath.enabled | Whether to enable auto configuration of the jsonpath language. This is enabled by default. | Boolean | |
camel.language.jsonpath.header-name | Name of header to use as input, instead of the message body. | String | |
camel.language.jsonpath.option | To configure additional options on JSONPath. Multiple values can be separated by comma. | String | |
camel.language.jsonpath.suppress-exceptions | Whether to suppress exceptions such as PathNotFoundException. | false | Boolean |
camel.language.jsonpath.trim | Whether to trim the value to remove leading and trailing whitespaces and line breaks. | true | Boolean |
camel.language.jsonpath.write-as-string | Whether to write the output of each row/element as a JSON String value instead of a Map/POJO value. | false | Boolean |