LevelDB

Since Camel 2.10

Leveldb is a very lightweight and embeddable key value database. It allows, together with Camel, providing persistent support for various Camel features such as Aggregator.

Current features it provides:

  • LevelDBAggregationRepository

Using LevelDBAggregationRepository

LevelDBAggregationRepository is an AggregationRepository which on the fly persists the aggregated messages. This ensures that you will not lose messages, as the default aggregator will use an in-memory only AggregationRepository.

It has the following options:

Option Type Description

repositoryName

String

A mandatory repository name. Allows you to use a shared LevelDBFile for multiple repositories.

persistentFileName

String

Filename for the persistent storage. If no file exists on startup, a new file is created.

levelDBFile

LevelDBFile

Use an existing configured org.apache.camel.component.leveldb.LevelDBFile instance.

sync

boolean

Whether the LevelDBFile should sync on writing or not. Default is false. By sync on writing ensures that it’s always waiting for all writes to be spooled to disk and thus will not lose updates. See LevelDB docs for more details about async vs. sync writes.

returnOldExchange

boolean

Whether the get operation should return the old existing Exchange if any existed. By default, this option is false to optimize as we do not need the old exchange when aggregating.

useRecovery

boolean

Whether recovery is enabled. This option is by default true. When enabled, the Camel Aggregator automatically recovers failed aggregated exchange and have them resubmitted.

recoveryInterval

long

If recovery is enabled, then a background task is run every x’th time to scan for failed exchanges to recover and resubmit. By default, this interval is 5000 milliseconds.

maximumRedeliveries

int

Allows you to limit the maximum number of redelivery attempts for a recovered exchange. If enabled, then the Exchange will be moved to the dead letter channel if all redelivery attempts failed. By default, this option is disabled. If this option is used then the deadLetterUri option must also be provided.

deadLetterUri

String

An endpoint uri for a Dead Letter Channel where exhausted recovered Exchanges will be moved. If this option is used then the maximumRedeliveries option must also be provided.

The repositoryName option must be provided. Then either the persistentFileName or the levelDBFile must be provided.

What is preserved when persisting

LevelDBAggregationRepository will only preserve any Serializable compatible message body data types. Message headers must be primitive / string / numbers / etc. If a data type is not such a type its dropped and a WARN is logged. And it only persists the Message body and the Message headers. The Exchange properties are not persisted.

Recovery

The LevelDBAggregationRepository will by default recover any failed Exchange. It does this by having a background task that scans for failed Exchanges in the persistent store. You can use the checkInterval option to set how often this task runs. The recovery works as transactional which ensures that Camel will try to recover and redeliver the failed Exchange. Any Exchange found to be recovered will be restored from the persistent store and resubmitted and send out again.

The following headers are set when an Exchange is being recovered/redelivered:

Header Type Description

Exchange.REDELIVERED

Boolean

It is set to true to indicate the Exchange is being redelivered.

Exchange.REDELIVERY_COUNTER

Integer

The redelivery attempt, starting from 1.

Only when an Exchange has been successfully processed it will be marked as complete which happens when the confirm method is invoked on the AggregationRepository. This means if the same Exchange fails again, it will be kept retried until it succeeds.

You can use option maximumRedeliveries to limit the maximum number of redelivery attempts for a given recovered Exchange. You must also set the deadLetterUri option so Camel knows where to send the Exchange when the maximumRedeliveries was hit.

You can see some examples in the unit tests of camel-leveldb, for example, this test.

Serialization mechanism

Component serializes by using Java serialization mechanism by default.

You can use serialization via Jackson (using json). Jackson’s serialization brings better performance, but also several limitations.

Example of jackson serialization:

LevelDBAggregationRepository repo = ...; //initialization of repository
repo.setSerializer(new JacksonLevelDBSerializer());

Limitation of jackson serializer is caused by binary data:

  • If payload is a raw data (byte[]), it is saved into DB without using Jackson

  • If payload contains objects with binary fields. Those fields won’t be serialized/deserialized correctly. Customized serializer can be used to solve this problem. Please use custom serializer with Jackson by providing own Module:

SimpleModule simpleModule = new SimpleModule();
simpleModule.addSerializer(ObjectWithBinaryField.class, new ObjectWithBinaryFieldSerializer()); //custom serializer
simpleModule.addDeserializer(ObjectWithBinaryField.class, new ObjectWithBinaryFieldDeserializer()); //custom deserializer

repo.setSerializer(new JacksonLevelDBSerializer(simpleModule));

Using LevelDBAggregationRepository in Java DSL

In this example we want to persist aggregated messages in the target/data/leveldb.dat file.

Using LevelDBAggregationRepository in Spring XML

The same example but using Spring XML instead:

Dependencies

To use LevelDB in your Camel routes, you need to add a dependency on camel-leveldb.

If you use Maven, you could add the following to your pom.xml, substituting the version number for the latest & greatest release.

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-leveldb</artifactId>
  <version>x.y.z</version>
</dependency>

Spring Boot Auto-Configuration

When using leveldb 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-leveldb-starter</artifactId>
  <version>x.x.x</version>
  <!-- use the same version as your Camel core version -->
</dependency>

The component has no Spring Boot auto configuration options.

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