2.11. JMX Naming

Apache Camel allows you to customise the name of a CamelContext bean as it appears in JMX, by defining a management name pattern for it. For example, you can customise the name pattern of an XML CamelContext instance, as follows:

<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="#name#">
    ...
</camelContext>

If you do not explicitly set a name pattern for the CamelContext bean, Apache Camel reverts to a default naming strategy.

By default, the JMX name of a CamelContext bean is equal to the value of the bean's id attribute, prefixed by the current bundle ID. For example, if the id attribute on a camelContext element is myCamel and the current bundle ID is 250, the JMX name would be 250-myCamel. In cases where there is more than one CamelContext instance with the same id in the bundle, the JMX name is disambiguated by adding a counter value as a suffix. For example, if there are multiple instances of myCamel in the bundle, the corresponding JMX MBeans are named as follows:

250-myCamel-1
250-myCamel-2
250-myCamel-3
...

One drawback of the default naming strategy is that you cannot guarantee that a given CamelContext bean will have the same JMX name between runs. If you want to have greater consistency between runs, you can control the JMX name more precisely by defining a JMX name pattern for the CamelContext instances.

To specify a name pattern on a CamelContext in Java, call the setNamePattern method, as follows:

To specify a name pattern on a CamelContext in XML, set the managementNamePattern attribute on the camelContext element, as follows:

<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="#name#">

You can construct a JMX name pattern by mixing literal text with any of the following tokens:

Here are some examples of JMX name patterns you could define using the supported tokens:

<camelContext id="fooContext" managementNamePattern="FooApplication-#name#">
    ...
</camelContext>
<camelContext id="myCamel" managementNamePattern="#bundleID#-#symbolicName#-#name#">
    ...
</camelContext>

Because the customised naming pattern overrides the default naming strategy, it is possible to define ambiguous JMX MBean names using this approach. For example:

<camelContext id="foo" managementNamePattern="SameOldSameOld"> ... </camelContext>
...
<camelContext id="bar" managementNamePattern="SameOldSameOld"> ... </camelContext>

In this case, Apache Camel would fail on start-up and report an MBean already exists exception. You should, therefore, take extra care to ensure that you do not define ambiguous name patterns.