37.3. Instantiate the WS Endpoint
Overview
In Apache Camel, the Camel CXF component is the key to integrating routes with Web services. You can use the Camel CXF component to create a CXF endpoint, which can be used in either of the following ways:
- Consumer—(at the start of a route) represents a Web service instance, which integrates with the route. The type of payload injected into the route depends on the value of the endpoint's
dataFormatoption. - Producer—(at other points in the route) represents a WS client proxy, which converts the current exchange object into an operation invocation on a remote Web service. The format of the current exchange must match the endpoint's
dataFormatsetting.
In the current demonstration, we are interested in creating a Camel CXF consumer endpoint, with the
dataFormat option set to POJO.
Maven dependency
The Camel CXF component requires you to add a dependency on the
camel-cxf component in your Maven POM. For example, the pom.xml file from the customer-ws-camel-cxf-pojo demonstration project includes the following dependency:
<dependency>
<groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
<artifactId>camel-cxf</artifactId>
<version>${camel-version}</version>
</dependency>The cxf:bean: URI syntax
The
cxf:bean: URI is used to bind an Apache CXF endpoint to a route and has the following general syntax:
cxf:bean:CxfEndpointID[?Options]
Where
CxfEndpointID is the ID of a bean created using the cxf:cxfEndpoint element, which configures the details of the WS endpoint. You can append options to this URI (where the options are described in detail in chapter "CXF" in "Apache Camel Component Reference"). If you do not specify any additional options, the endpoint uses the POJO data format by default.
For example, to start a route with a Apache CXF endpoint that is configured by the bean with ID,
customer-ws, define the route as follows:
<route>
<from uri="cxf:bean:customer-ws"/>
...
</route>Note
There is an alternative URI syntax,
cxf://WsAddress[?Options], which enables you to specify all of the WS endpoint details in the URI (so there is no need to reference a bean instance). This typically results in a long and cumbersome URI, but is useful in some cases.
The cxf:cxfEndpoint element
The
cxf:cxfEndpoint element is used to define a WS endpoint that binds either to the start (consumer endpoint) or the end (producer endpoint) of a route. For example, to define the customer-ws WS endpoint referenced in the preceding route, you would define a cxf:cxfEndpoint element as follows:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans ...
xmlns:cxf="http://camel.apache.org/schema/cxf" ...>
...
<cxf:cxfEndpoint id="customer-ws"
address="/Customer"
endpointName="c:SOAPOverHTTP"
serviceName="c:CustomerService"
serviceClass="com.fusesource.demo.wsdl.customerservice.CustomerService"
xmlns:c="http://demo.fusesource.com/wsdl/CustomerService/"/>
...
</beans>Important
Remember that the
cxf:cxfEndpoint element and the jaxws:endpoint element use different XML schemas (although the syntax looks superficially similar). These elements bind a WS endpoint in different ways: the cxf:cxfEndpoint element instantiates and binds a WS endpoint to an Apache Camel route, whereas the jaxws:endpoint element instantiates and binds a WS endpoint to a Java class using the JAX-WS mapping.
Address for the Jetty container
Apache CXF deploys the WS endpoint into a Jetty servlet container instance and the
address attribute of cxf:cxfEndpoint is therefore used to configure the addressing information for the endpoint in the Jetty container.
Apache CXF supports the notion of a default servlet container instance. The way the default servlet container is initialized and configured depends on the particular mode of deployment that you choose. For example the Red Hat JBoss Fuse container and Web containers (such as Tomcat) provide a default servlet container.
There are two different syntaxes you can use for the endpoint address, where the syntax that you use effectively determines whether or not the endpoint is deployed into the default servlet container, as follows:
- Address syntax for default servlet container—to use the default servlet container, specify only the servlet context for this endpoint. Do not specify the protocol, host, and IP port in the address. For example, to deploy the endpoint to the
/Customerservlet context in the default servlet container:address="/Customer"
- Address syntax for custom servlet container—to instantiate a custom Jetty container for this endpoint, specify a complete HTTP URL, including the host and IP port (the value of the IP port effectively identifies the target Jetty container). Typically, for a Jetty container, you specify the host as
0.0.0.0, which is interpreted as a wildcard that matches every IP network interface on the local machine (that is, if deployed on a multi-homed host, Jetty opens a listening port on every network card). For example, to deploy the endpoint to the custom Jetty container listening on IP port,8083:address="http://0.0.0.0:8083/Customer"
NoteIf you want to configure a secure endpoint (secured by SSL), you would specify thehttps:scheme in the address.
Referencing the SEI
The
serviceClass attribute of the cxf:cxfEndpoint element references the SEI of the Web service, which in this case is the CustomerService interface.
