The Synapse configuration language is designed to support a processing model where messages come into Synapse, are processed via some number of mediators and then delivered to an endpoint somewhere. It is currently direction agnostic, but directionality can easily be added as a selection mechanism for mediators (see below for details).
A Synapse configuration looks like the following at the top level:
<definitions> <registry provider="string">...</registry>? <localEntry key="string">...</localEntry>? <sequence name="string">...</sequence>? <endpoint name="string">...</endpoint>? <proxy name="string" ...>...</proxy>? <task name="string" ...>...</task>? mediator* </definitions>
The Synapse configuration is held in a single XML file called the 'synapse.xml' and this may refer to other configuration fragments and resources - which may be held in an external Registry or Repository. The Synapse release ships with a simple URL based registry implementation that could use a file system, web server etc. as the registry/repository backend. When using the file system, the contents could be held in a version controlled directory so that changes could be controlled and moved from Dev, QA, Staging to Production. The Synapse engine and the simple URL registry implementation support caching and dynamic refreshing of some configuration elements [sequences & endpoints] and resources such as XSLT's, Scripts, XSDs etc. Synapse can be easily integrated with an external registry by implementing the 'org.apache.synapse.registry.Registry' interface.
A Synapse configuration refers to resources stored on an external Registry via 'keys'. The 'localEntry' elements in a configuration provides the capability to define a new resource or configuration fragment; or to override any existing resource available under a registry with a local replacement. An example would be to use a localEntry to override the production endpoint definition for development time. Local entries could direct to an external URL for the resource content, or provide the text or XML content inline.
Synapse accepts messages for mediation via the exposed/enabled transports. These are configured via the 'axis2.xml' configuration file. By default the http, https and VFS transports are enabled. Using the JMS and Mail transports requires that these be enabled and configured for your environment via the axis2.xml file. Once a proxy service is defined, it could be configured to listen for messages on one or more of the enabled transports. A proxy service then listens for messages over the selected transports by exposing a virtual service. A proxy service maybe a SOAP or POX service over http/s or SOAP, POX or Plain Text service for other transports such as JMS and VFS - e.g. CSV content being its payload. Thus Synapse is able to switch between these message formats and transports, as well as introduce or terminate QoS aspects such as WS-Security/RM through proxy services.
Sequences define an ordered execution of a set of 'Mediators', where each 'Mediator' gets full access to the current message flowing through the system. Synapse ships with a common set of mediators that can handle most of the common tasks such as - logging, content based routing, transformations using XSLT/XQuery, validation, BSF scripting language based or Java class based mediation, database reporting or lookup, caching, throttling, cloning, splitting and aggregation etc. Writing a custom mediator in Java is easy and the supplementary documentation provides more details. The 'Class' and 'POJO' mediators allows one to plugin a Java class easily into the Synapse engine with minimal effort.
Typically proxy services associates mediation sequences for processing incoming and outgoing messages. A Synapse configuration holds two special sequences called the 'main' and 'fault' sequences. The 'main' sequence executes for any message that is not received by any particular proxy service. When using the http/s transports - this refers to the concept of 'Message Mediation' where Synapse may be configured as a transparent proxy to its clients. In this scenario, Synapse could receive all messages on the wire and mediate them as necessary and send them to the final destinations. The 'fault' sequence executes whenever Synapse itself encounters an error while processing a message - or when a fault handler has not been defined to handle exceptions. Typically a fault sequence would log the failed message and any other context information.
Endpoints define aspects to be considered when sending a message out from Synapse. Endpoints also allow load balancing, fail-over and timeout scenarios to be handled - or to introduce WS-Security, Addressing or RM for messages sent to an endpoint. An endpoint maybe defined as an Address or using a WSDL definition.
The <registry> element is used to define a remote registry which are referenced from within the configuration. The registry provider specifies an implementation class for the registry used, and optionally a number of configuration parameters may be specified to configure the connection to the registry.
<registry provider="string"/> <parameter name="string">text | xml</parameter>* </registry>
Registry entries loaded from a remote registry are cached within Synapse as dictated by the registry, and reloaded after the cache periods expires. Hence it is possible to define configuration elements such as (dynamic) sequences and endpoints, as well as resources such as XSLT's or XSDs off the registry, and update the configuration as these change dynamically over time.
The <localEntry> element is used to declare registry entries that are local to the Synapse instance, as shown below
<localEntry key="string" [src="url"]>text | xml</localEntry>
These entries are top level entries which are set globally for the entire system. Values of these entries can be retrieved via the extension XPath function "synapse:get-property(prop-name)".
An entry can be static text specified as inline text or static XML specified as an inline XML fragment or specified as a URL (using the src attribute). These local entries can override any existing entries with the same keys of the remote registry.
A <sequence> element is used to define a sequence of mediators that can be invoked later by name.
<sequence name="string" [onError="string"] [key="string"] [trace="enable"]> mediator* </sequence>
If the configuration defines a sequence named "main" then it is considered as the main mediation sequence of Synapse. If such a sequence is not defined locally, and a registry has been specified, the registry is looked up for a key named "main" to find the main mediation sequence. Synapse also supports the specification of mediators directly within the <definitions> tag, and if any mediators are present, will be considered to constitute the main sequence. In the absence of a main sequence, the Synapse runtime will create a default main sequence that consists of an implicit send mediator.
Synapse considers a sequence named "fault", or in its absence a registry entry with a key "fault" as its general fault handler sequence. If Synapse encounters an erroneous situation while processing a message through a sequence, it executes the defined error handling sequence for the current context - which may be specified as the 'onError' sequence for a sequence mediator. If a fault sequence is not specified or cannot be found through the registry, Synapse will create a default fault sequence that will perform a default logging of the message at the log level 'full'.
If an optional error handler sequence name is specified on any sequence through the attribute 'onError', an exception on this sequence will invoke the sequence specified by this key.
A Dynamic Sequence may be defined by specifying a key reference to a registry entry. As the remote registry entry changes, the sequence will dynamically be updated according to the specified cache duration and expiration. If tracing is enabled on a sequence, all messages being processed through the sequence would write tracing information through each mediation step to the trace.log file configured via the log4j.properties configuration. Setting the trace log level to TRACE would additionally dump the message at each mediation.
An <endpoint> element defines a destination for an outgoing message. An endpoint may be specified as an address endpoint, WSDL based endpoint, a load balanced endpoint or a fail-over endpoint as follows:
<endpoint [name="string"] [key="string"][trace="enable"]> address-endpoint | wsdl-endpoint | load-balanced-endpoint | fail-over-endpoint </endpoint>
All above endpoint types can have a name attribute. Such named endpoints can be refered by other endpoints, which only contain the key attribute. For example if there is an endpoint named as "foo", following endpoint can be used in any place, where "foo" has to be used. A tracing enabled endpoint would generate trace information into the trace log for each message that passes through.
<endpoint key="foo"/>
Address endpoint is an endpoint defined by specifying the EPR and other attributes of the endpoint directly in the configuration.The 'uri' attribute of the address element contains the EPR of the target endpoint. Message format for the endpoint and the method to optimize attachments can be specified in the format and optimize attributes respectively. Reliable messaging and security policies for the endpoint can be specified in the policy attribute of the enableRM and enableSec elements respectively. WS-Addressing can be engaged for the messaging going to the endpoint by the enableAddressing element. suspendDurationOnFailure attribute specifies the time duration in seconds to suspend this endpoint, if it is detected as failed. If this attribute is not specified, endpoint will never be recovered after a failure.
Address endpoints can timeout the responses if they failed to arrive Synapse in predefined time duration. This is done by the timeout elements. duration element inside the timeout element contains duration for the timeout in seconds. action element specifies the action to be performed once a timeout occurs. Allowed actions are discard and fault. If discard is specified, responses arriving after the timeout will be discarded without further processing. If fault is specified as the action, fault sequence applicable for the endpoint will be activated as soon as the timeout occurs and responses will not be processed after that.
<address uri="endpoint-address" format="soap11|soap12|pox" [optimize="mtom|swa"]>
<enableRM [policy="key"]/>?
<enableSec [policy="key"]/>?
<enableAddressing/>?
<suspendDurationOnFailure>suspend-duration</suspendDurationOnFailure>?
<timeout>
<duration>timeout-duration</duration>
<action>discard|fault</action>
</timeout>?
</address>
WSDL endpoint is an endpoint based on a WSDL document. It can extract the target EPR from a given WSDL. The WSDL document can be specified either as a URI or as an inlined definition within the configuration. The service and port name containing the target EPR has to be specified in service and port attributes respectively. enableRM, enableSec, enableAddressing, suspendDurationOnFailure and timeout elements are same as for the Address endpoint.
<wsdl [uri="wsdl-uri"] service="qname" port/endpoint="qname">
<wsdl:definition>...</wsdl:definition>?
<wsdl20:description>...</wsdl20:description>?
<enableRM [policy="key"]/>?
<enableSec [policy="key"]/>?
<enableAddressing/>?
<suspendDurationOnFailure>suspend-duration</suspendDurationOnFailure>?
<timeout>
<duration>timeout-duration</duration>
<action>discard|fault</action>
</timeout>?
</wsdl>
A Load balanced endpoint distributes the messages (load) arriving at it among a set of listed endpoints by evaluating the load balancing policy and any other relevant parameters. Policy attribute of the load balance element specifies the load balance policy (algorithm) to be used for selecting the target endpoint. Currently only the roundRobin policy is supported. failover attribute determines if the next endpoint should be selected once the currently selected endpoint has failed. Default is true. The set of endpoints among which the load is distributed can be listed under the loadBalance element. Those endpoints can belong to any endpoint type mentioned in this document. For example, failover endpoints can be listed inside the load balance endpoint to load balance between failover groups.
The optional session element makes the endpoint a session affinity based load balancing endpoint. If it is specified, sessions are bound to endpoints in the first message and all successive messages for those sessions are directed to their associated endpoints. http sessions are supported currently, which identifies sessions based on http cookies. failover attribute mentioned above is not applicable for session affinity based endpoints and it is always set to false. If it is required to have failover behavior in session affinity based load balance endpoints, list failover endpoints as the target endpoints.
<session type="http"/>? <loadBalance [policy="roundRobin"] [failover="true|false"]> <endpoint .../>+ </loadBalance>
Failover endpoints send messages to the listed endpoints with the following failover behavior. At the start, first listed endpoint is selected as the primary and all other endpoints are treated as backups. Incoming messages are always sent only to the primary endpoint. If the primary endpoint fails, next active endpoint is selected as the primary and failed endpoint is marked as inactive. Thus it sends messages successfully as long as there is at least one active endpoint among the listed endpoints.
<failover> <endpoint .../>+ </failover>
A <proxy> element is used to define a Synapse Proxy service.
<proxy name="string" [transports="(http |https |jms )+|all"]>
<description>...</description>?
<target [inSequence="name"] [outSequence="name"] [faultSequence="name"] [endpoint="name"]>
<inSequence>...</inSequence>?
<outSequence>...</outSequence>?
<faultSequence>...</faultSequence>?
<endpoint>...</endpoint>?
</target>?
<publishWSDL key="string" uri="string">
<description>...</description> | <definitions>...</definitions>
<publishWSDL>?
<enableSec/>? // These two tags will removed after the recognition of the Security and RM can be done by looking at policy
<enableRM/>?
<policy key="string">...</policy>? // optional service level policies
// (e.g. WS-Security and/or WS-RM policies)
<parameter name="string"> // optional service parameters
string | xml // (e.g. transport.jms.ConnectionFactory)
</parameter>
</proxy>
A proxy service is created and exposed on the specified transports through the underlying Axis2 instance, exposing service EPR's as per the standard Axis2 conventions - based on the service name. (Note: that currently Axis2 does not allow custom URI's to be set for services on some transports.) The Proxy service could be exposed over all enabled Axis2 transports such as http, https, JMS etc. or on a subset of these. Each service could define the target for received messages as a named sequence or a direct endpoint. Target inSequence or endpoint is required for the proxy configuration, and a target outSequence defines how responses should be handled. Any supplied WS-Policies would apply as service level policies, and any service parameters could be passed into the proxy services' AxisService instance using the parameter elements (e.g. the JMS destination etc). If the proxy service should enable WS-Reliable Messaging or Security, the appropriate modules could be engaged, and specified policies will apply.
A Dynamic Proxy may be defined by specifying the properties of the proxy as dynamic entries by refering them with the key. (For example one could specify the inSequence or endpoint with the remote key, without defining it in the local configuration) As the remote registry entry changes, the properties of the proxy will dynamically be updated accordingly. (Note: proxy service definition itself can not be specified to be dynamic; i.e <proxy key="string"/> is wrong)
Transport specific parameters
| Transport | Require | Parameter | Description |
| JMS | Optional | transport.jms.ConnectionFactory | The JMS connection factory definition (from axis2.xml) to be used to listen for messages for this service |
| Optional | transport.jms.Destination | The JMS Destination name (Defaults to a Queue with the service name) | |
| Optional | transport.jms.ReplyDestination | The Destination where a reply would be posted | |
| VFS | Required | transport.vfs.FileURI | The primary File (or Directory) URI in the vfs* transport format, for this service |
| Required | transport.vfs.ContentType | The content type for messages for this service | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.FileNamePattern | A file name regex pattern to match files against a directory specified by the FileURI | |
| Optional | transport.PollInterval | The poll interval (in seconds) | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.ActionAfterProcess | DELETE or MOVE | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.MoveAfterProcess | The directory to move files after processing (i.e. all files process successfully) | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.ActionAfterErrors | DELETE or MOVE | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.MoveAfterErrors | The directory to move files after errors (i.e. some of the files succeed but some fail) | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.ActionAfterFailure | DELETE or MOVE | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.MoveAfterFailure | The directory to move after failure (i.e. all files fail) | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.ReplyFileURI | Reply file URI | |
| Optional | transport.vfs.ReplyFileName | Reply file name (defaults to response.xml) | |
*VFS Transport URI examples
file:///directory/filename.ext
file:////somehost/someshare/afile.txt
jar:../lib/classes.jar!/META-INF/manifest.mf
jar:zip:outer.zip!/nested.jar!/somedir
ftp://myusername:mypassword@somehost/pub/downloads/somefile.tgz[?vfs.passive=true]
A <task> element is used to define a Synapse Startup Task.
<task class="org.my.synapse.Task" name="string">
<property name="stringProp" value="String"/>
<property name="xmlProp">
<somexml>config</somexml>
</property>
<trigger ([[count="10"]? interval="1000"] | [cron="0 * 1 * * ?"] | [once=(true | false)])/>
</task>
A task is created and scheduled to run at the specified time intervals or as specified by the cron expression. The Task class specifies the actual task implementation class (which must implement org.apache.synapse.startup.Task interface) to be executed at the specified interval/s, and name specifies an identifier for the scheduled task. Fields in the task class can be set using properties provided as string literals or as XML fragments. (For example; if the task implementation class has a field named "version" with a corresponding setter method, the configuration value which will be assigned to this field before running the task can be specified using a property with the name version)
There are three different trigger mechanisms to schedule tasks. A simple trigger is specified specifying a 'count' and an 'interval', implying that the task will run a 'count' number of times at specified intervals. A trigger may also be specified as a cron trigger using a cron expression. A one-time trigger is specified using the 'once' attribute as true in the definition and could be specified as true in which case this task will be executed only once just after the initialization of Synapse
A mediator token refers to any of the following tokens:
send | drop | log | property | sequence | validate | makefault | xslt | header | filter | switch | in | out | dblookup | dbreport | RMSequence | throttle | xquery | cache | clone | iterate | aggregate | class | pojoCommand | script | spring
In addition to the above, Synapse will be able to load custom mediators via the J2SE Service Provider model. Mediator extensions must implement the MediatorFactory interface.
The send token represents a <send> element. The <send> element is used to send messages out of Synapse to some endpoint, and stop further mediation of the message. The send mediator also copies any message context properties from the current message context to the reply message received on the execution of the send operation. This allows the reply messages to be correlated to the original messages in a flexible manner. Messages may be correlated by WS-A MessageID, or even simple custom text labels. Also see the property mediator.
In the simplest case, the place to send the message to is implicit in the message (via a property of the message itself)- that is indicated by the following:
<send/>
If the message is to be sent to one or more endpoints, then the following is used:
<send> (endpointref | endpoint)+ </send>
where the endpointref token refers to the following:
<endpoint key="name"/>
and the endpoint token refers to an anonymous endpoint defined.
The drop token refers to a <drop> element which is used to drop a message:
<drop/>
Once the <drop> mediator executes, further processing of the current message stops.
The log token refers to a <log> element which may be used to log messages being mediated:
<log [level="string"] [separator="string"]> <property name="string" (value="literal" | expression="xpath")/>* </log>
The optional level attribute selects a pre-defined subset of properties to be logged.
e.g.
A separator if defined will be used to separate the attributes being logged. The default separator is the ',' comma.
<property name="string" [action=set|remove] (value="literal" | expression="xpath") [scope=transport|axis2|axis2-client]/>
The property token refers to a <property> element which is a mediator that has no direct impact on the message but rather on the message context flowing through Synapse. The properties which does not specify the action thus set on the message context applies only to the current message and can be later retrieved through the synapse:get-property(prop-name) extension function. If a scope is specified for a property, the property could be set as a transport header property or an (underlying) Axis2 message context property, or as a Axis2 client option or as an Axis2 message context property. If a scope is not specified, it will default to the Synapse message context scope. Using the property element with action specified as "remove" you can remove the message context properties if available.
There are some well-defined properties that you can get/set:
There are also some Axis2 and module properties that are useful to set (with scope="axis2"):
<sequence key="name"/>
A sequence ref token refers to a <sequence> element which is used to invoke a named sequence of mediators.
<validate [source="xpath"]>
<property name="validation-feature-id" value="true|false"/>*
<schema key="string"/>+
<on-fail>
mediator+
</on-fail>
</validate>
The <validate> mediator validates the result of the evaluation of the source xpath expression, against the schema specified. If the source attribute is not specified, the validation is performed against the first child of the SOAP body of the current message. If the validation fails, the on-fail sequence of mediators is executed. Properties could be used to turn on/off some of the underlying features of the validator (See http://xerces.apache.org/xerces2-j/features.html)
<makefault [version="soap11|soap12"]> <code (value="literal" | expression="xpath")/> <reason (value="literal" | expression="xpath")> <node>? <role>? <detail>? </makefault>
The <makefault> mediator transforms the current message into a fault message, but does NOT send it. The <send> mediator needs to be invoked to send a fault message created this way. The fault message "to" header is set to the "faultTo" of the original message if such a header existed on the original message.
<xslt key="string" [source="xpath"]> <property name="string" (value="literal" | expression="xpath")/>* <feature name="string" value="true| false" /> </xslt>
The <xslt> mediator applies the specified XSLT transformation to the given element. If the source element is not specified, it defaults to the first child of the soap body. Optionally parameters (XSLT) could be passed into the transformations through the <property> elements.The <feature> defines a any feature which should be set to the TransformerFactory by explicitly. The feature 'http://ws.apache.org/ns/synapse/transform/feature/dom' turns on DOM based transformations instead of serializing elements into Byte streams and/or temporary files. However, this may not prove to be stable for all scenarios - especially for large message transformation.
<header name="qname" (value="literal" | expression="xpath") [action="set"]/> <header name="qname" action="remove"/>
The <header> mediator sets or removes a specified header from the current soap message. Currently the set header only supports simple valued headers. In the future we may extend this to have XML structured headers by embedding the XML content within the element itself. The optional action attribute specifies whether the mediator should set or remove the header. If omitted, it defaults to a set-header.
<filter (source="xpath" regex="string") | xpath="xpath"> mediator+ </filter>
The <filter> mediator either test the given xpath expression as a boolean expression, or match the evaluation result of a source xpath expression against the given regular expression. If the test succeeds, the filter mediator will execute the enclosed mediators in sequence.
<switch source="xpath">
<case regex="string">
mediator+
</case>+
<default>
mediator+
</default>?
</switch>
The <switch> mediator will evaluate the given source xpath expression into its string value, and match it against the given regular expressions. If the specified cases does not match and a default case exists, it will be executed.
<in>
mediator+ </in>
<out> mediator+ </out>
The In and Out mediators will execute the child mediators over the current message if the message matches the direction of the mediator. Hence all incoming messages would pass through the "<in>" mediators and vice versa.
<dblookup>
<connection>
<pool>
(
<driver/>
<url/>
<user/>
<password/>
|
<dsName/>
<icClass/>
<url/>
<user/>
<password/>
)
<property name="name" value="value"/>*
</pool>
</connection>
<statement>
<sql>select something from table where something_else = ?</sql>
<parameter [value="" | expression=""] type="int|string"/>*
<result name="string" column="int|string"/>*
</statement>+
</dblookup>
The dblookup mediator is capable of executing an arbitrary SQL select statement, and then set some resulting values as local message properties on the message context. The DB connection used maybe looked up from an external DataSource or specified in-line, in which case an Apache DBCP connection pool is established and used. Apache DBCP connection pools support the following properties:
More than one statement may be specified, and the SQL statement may specify parameters which could be specified as values or expressions. The types of parameters could be any valid SQL types. Only the first row of a result set will be considered and any others are ignored. The single <result> element contains the 'name' and the column' attributes. The 'name' attribute defines the name under which the result is stored in the Synapse message context, and the column attribute specifies a column number or name .
<dbreport>
<connection>
<pool>
(
<driver/>
<url/>
<user/>
<password/>
|
<dsName/>
<icClass/>
<url/>
<user/>
<password/>
)
<property name="name" value="value"/>*
</pool>
</connection>
<statement>
<sql>insert into something values(?, ?, ?, ?)</sql>
<parameter [value="" | expression=""] type="int|string"/>*
</statement>+
</dblreport>
The dbreport mediator is very similar to the dblookup mediator, but writes information to a Database, using the specified insert SQL statement.
<RMSequence (correlation="xpath" [last-message="xpath"]) | single="true" [version="1.0|1.1"]/>
The <RMSequence> mediator can be used to create a sequence of messages to communicate via WS-Reliable Messaging with an WS-RM enabled endpoint (<enableRM>). The simple use case of this mediator is to specify a single="true" property, because this means that only one message is involved in the same sequence. However if multiple messages should be sent in the same sequence, the correlation property should be used with a XPath expression that selects an unique element value from the incoming message. With the result of the XPath expression, Synapse can group messages together that belong to the same sequence. To close the sequence neatly, for the last message of the sequence also an XPath expression should be specified. With the version attribute the WS-RM specification version to be used can be specified, 1.0 or 1.1.
<throttle [onReject="string"] [onAccept="string"] [id="string"]>
<policy key="string"/> | <policy>..</policy>
<onReject>..</onReject>
<onAccept>..</onAccept>
</throttle>
The Throttle mediator can be used for rate limiting as well as concurrency based limiting. A WS-Policy dictates the throttling configuration and may be specified inline or loaded from the registry. The Throttle mediator could be added in the request path for rate limiting and concurrent access limitation. When using for concurrent access limitation, the same throttle mediator ID must be triggered on the response flow so that completed responses are deducted from the available limit. The acceptance or rejection sequence is executed depending on the evaluation of the throttling policy against the current message.
<xquery [key="string"] [target="xpath"]>
<variable name="string" type="string" [key="string"] [expression="xpath"]/>?
</xquery>
The XQuery mediator can be used to perform an XQuery transformation. The 'variable' elements define a variable that could be bound to the dynamic context of the XQuery engine in order to access those variables through the XQuery script . The name of the variable corresponds to the name of variable declaration in the XQuery script. The 'type' of the variable must be a valid type defined by the JSR-000225 (XQJ API). The supported types are:
The expressions will be evaluated against the current SOAP envelope.
<cache (id="string")? hashGenerator="class" scope="string" timeout="milliseconds">
<onCacheHit (sequence="key")?>
(mediator)+
</onCacheHit>
<implementation type=(memory | disk) maxSize="int"/>
</cache>
The <cache> mediator will evaluate the hash value of the incoming message as described in the hash generator implementation (which should be a class implementing the org.wso2.caching.digest.DigestGenerator interface) and looks in a cache for a matching response. If the generated hash value has been found in the cache then the cache mediator will execute the onCacheHit sequence which can be specified inline or refered to the registry.
<clone continueParent=(true | false)>
<target to="uri" [soapAction="qname"] sequence="sequence_ref" endpoint="endpoint_ref">
<sequence>
(mediator)+
</sequence>
<endpoint>
endpoint
</endpoint>
</target>
</clone>
The <clone> mediator closely resembles the Message Splitter EIP and will split the message into number of identical messages all of which are identical with the cloning message and processed parallelly using either the specified sequence or endpoint (or both). Cloning message (parent) can be continued or dropped depending on the boolean value of the continueParent attribute which defaults to false and drops the parent when false. This drop is not a general drop, rather stop the message processing but does not closes the transport channel, leaving the ability of one or a set of cloned message responses to be sent back to the caller
<iterate continueParent=(true | false) preservePayload=(true | false) (attachPath="xpath")? expression="xpath">
<target to="uri" [soapAction="qname"] sequence="sequence_ref" endpoint="endpoint_ref">
<sequence>
(mediator)+
</sequence>
<endpoint>
endpoint
</endpoint>
</target>
</iterate>
The <iterate> mediator implements another EIP and will split the message in to number of different messages derived from the parent message by finding the matching elements of the XPATH expression specified in the configuration. New messages will be created for each and every matching element and processed parallelly using either the specified sequence or endpoint or both. Parent message can be continued or dropped in the same way as in the clone mediator. Iterate parent drop also is a channel blocking drop as per in the clone mediator.
<aggregate>
<corelateOn expression="xpath"/>
<completeCondition timeout="time-in-seconds">
<messageCount min="int-min" max="int-max"/>
</completeCondition>
<onComplete expression="xpath" sequence="sequence-ref">
(mediator +)?
</onComplete>
<invalidate sequence="sequence-ref" timeout="time-in-seconds">
(mediator +)?
</invalidate>
</aggregate>
The <aggregate> mediator implements the Message Aggregator EIP and will aggregate the messages splitted using either the clone or iterate mediators. At the same time it can aggregate messages on the presence of matching elements specified by the corelateOn XPATH expression. Aggregate will collect the messages coming in to that until the messages on the aggregation satisfies the complete condition. On completion of the aggregation it will execute the aggregated message using the onComplete sequence. Aggregated message will be created by combining the messages participating in the aggregation using the onComplete XPATH expression. If a particular aggregation fails to complete in a pre configured time, then that particular aggregation will be invalidated using the invalidate sequence.
<class name="class-name">
<property name="string" value="literal">
(either literal or XML child)
</property>
</class>
The <class> mediator creates an instance of the specified class and sets it as a mediator. The class must implement the org.apache.synapse.api.Mediator interface. If any properties are specified, the corresponding setter methods are invoked on the class, once, during initialization.
<pojoCommand name="class-name">
<property name="string" value="literal">
(either literal or XML child)
</property>
<property name="string" expression="xpath"/>
</pojoCommand>
The <pojoCommand> mediator creates an instance of the specified command class (which may implement the org.apache.synapse.Command interface or should have a public void method named "execute"). If any properties are specified, the corresponding setter methods are invoked on the class and called the execute method of the command executed.
Synapse supports Mediators implemented in a variety of scripting languages such as JavaScript, Python or Ruby. There are two ways of defining script mediators, either with the script program statements stored in a separate file which is referenced via the local or remote registry entry, or with the script program statements embedded in-line within the Synapse configuration. A script mediator using a script off the registry (local or remote) is defined as follows:
<script key="string" language="string" [function="script-function-name"]/>
The property key is the registry key to load the script. The language attribute specifies the scripting language of the script code (e.g. "js" for Javascript, "rb" for ruby, "groovy" for Groovy, "py" for Python..). The function is an optional attribute defining the name of the script function to invoke, if not specified it defaults to a function named 'mediate'. The function is passed a single parameter - which is the Synapse MessageContext. The function may return a boolean, if it does not, then true is assumed, and the script mediator returns this value. An inline script mediator has the script source embedded in the configuration as follows:
<script language="string">...script source code...<script/>
The execution context environment of the script has access to the Synapse MessageContext predefined in a script variable named 'mc' . An example of an inline mediator using JavaScript/E4X which returns false if the SOAP message body contains an element named 'symbol' which has a value of 'IBM' would be:
<script language="js">mc.getPayloadXML()..symbol != "IBM";<script/>
Synapse uses the Apache Bean Scripting Framework for the scripting language support, any script language supported by BSF may be used to implement a Synapse Mediator.
Implementing a Mediator with a script language can have advantages over using the built in Synapse Mediator types or implementing a custom Java class Mediator. Script Mediators have all the flexibility of a class Mediator with access to the Synapse MessageContext and SynapseEnvironment APIs, and the ease of use and dynamic nature of scripting languages allows rapid development and prototyping of custom mediators. An additional benefit of some scripting languages is that they have very simple and elegant XML manipulation capabilities, for example JavaScript E4X or Ruby REXML, so this makes them well suited for use in the Synapse mediation environment. For both types of script mediator definition the MessageContext passed into the script has additional methods over the standard Synapse MessageContext to enable working with the XML in a way natural to the scripting language. For example when using JavaScript getPayloadXML and setPayloadXML, E4X XML objects, and when using Ruby, REXML documents.
The Synapse configuration language could be easily extended, with configuration extensions as well as mediation extensions. The Spring mediator is such an example.
A Spring configuration could be created as a localEntry or remote registry entry providing a URL or a key reference to a Registry. The configuration is then created on first use or as necessary (as per registry lookup semantics) by the mediators which reference this configuration.
<localEntry key="string"/> <localEntry key="string" src="url"/>
The name attribute specifies a unique name for the configuration, and the src, key or inlined XML references to the Spring configuration
<spring:spring bean="exampleBean1" key="string"/>
The <spring> element creates an instance of a mediator, which is managed by Spring. This Spring bean must implement the Mediator interface for it to act as a Mediator. The key will reference the Spring ApplicationContext/Configuration used for the bean