Using JSON in REST services in Apache Camel

This is a demo that shows how to use Apache Camel on Spring Boot to expose a REST service with JSON payloads.

It shows how to use Camel's REST binding mode to automatically convert POJOs (Plain Old Java Objects) into JSON in the response. In Camel, JSON support is provided by the camel-jackson-starter dependency.

For more info, check out the accompanying YouTube video and blog post!

• Video: Adding JSON to my REST API (YouTube) - This example has been slightly modified (some might say improved!) from the YouTube video.
• Blog: Create a REST service in Apache Camel (tomd.xyz)

And for more tutorials check out https://www.tutorialworks.com.

To run

You'll need Apache Maven installed. Then run:

mvn clean spring-boot:run

And the service will be accessible at:

http://localhost:8080/services/go-sports

To test

You can use an API testing tool like curl to test the GET operation of the service:

curl http://localhost:8080/services/go-sports

Which should return a response like this, showing all the sports in the repository. You can format the output nicely using a tool like jq:

[
  {
    "name": "American Football",
    "players": 11,
    "league": "NFL"
  },
  {
    "name": "Basketball",
    "players": 5,
    "league": "NBA"
  },
  {
    "name": "Baseball",
    "players": 9,
    "league": "MLB"
  },
  {
    "name": "Volleyball",
    "players": 6,
    "league": "NVA"
  }
]

To add a new Sport to the database with curl, send a POST request:

curl -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -X POST --data '{ "name": "Football", "players": 11, "league": "Premier League" }' http://localhost:8080/services/go-sports

If you're using another REST testing tool like Insomnia, make sure that it includes the header Content-Type: application/json in the request.

Changing the base API URL

If you don't like /services/ and you want to change the root URL used for all Camel servlet endpoints (which includes REST services like this one) then edit this line in application.properties:

camel.servlet.mapping.context-path=/services/*

That's it!

That's all there is to it. You can now use the REST service to add and retrieve sports in JSON format.

We're keeping it simple here, using a simple Java object to store the sports. But in real usage you might swap out the SportRepository class with a different class to store and retrieve the data from a database.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0. See the LICENSE file for more info.

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