Integrating Apache Camel with Apache Syncope - part III

This is the third in a series of blog posts about integrating Apache Camel with Apache Syncope. The first post introduced the new Apache Camel provisioning manager that is available in Apache Syncope 2.0.0, and gave an example of how we can modify the default behaviour to send an email to an administrator when a user was created. The second post showed how an administrator can keep track of user password changes for auditing purposes. In this post we will show how to integrate Syncope with Apache ActiveMQ using Camel.

1) The use-case

The use-case is that Apache Syncope is used for Identity Management in a large organisation. When users are created we would like to be able to gather certain information about the new users and process it dynamically in some way. In particular, we are interested in the age of the new users and the country in which they are based. Perhaps at the reception desk of the company HQ we display a map with the number of employees in each country highlighted. To decouple whatever applications are processing the data from Syncope itself, we will use a messaging solution, namely Apache ActiveMQ. When new users are created, we will modify the default Camel route to send a message to two topics corresponding to the age and location of the user.

2) Download and configure Apache ActiveMQ

The first step is to download Apache ActiveMQ (currently 5.14.0). Unzip it and start it via:

• bin/activemq start 

Now go to the web interface of ActiveMQ - 'http://localhost:8161/admin/', logging in with credentials 'admin/admin'. Click on the "Queues" tab and create two new queues called 'age' and 'country'.

3) Download and configure Apache Syncope

Download and extract the standalone version of Apache Syncope 2.0.0. Before we start it we will copy the jars we need to get Camel working with ActiveMQ in Syncope. In the "webapps/syncope/WEB-INF/lib" directory of the Apache Tomcat instance bundled with Syncope, copy the following jars:

• From $ACTIVEMQ_HOME/lib: activemq-client-5.14.0.jar + activemq-spring-5.14.0.jar + hawtbuf-1.11.jar + geronimo-j2ee-management_1.1_spec-1.0.1.jar
• From $ACTIVEMQ_HOME/lib/camel: activemq-camel-5.14.0.jar + camel-jms-2.16.3.jar
• From $ACTIVEMQ_HOME/lib/optional: activemq-pool-5.14.0.jar + activemq-jms-pool-5.14.0.jar + spring-jms-4.1.9.RELEASE.jar

Next we need to create a Camel spring configuration file containing a bean with the address of the broker. Add the following file to the Tomcat lib directory (called "camelRoutesContext.xml"):

Now we can start the embedded Apache Tomcat instance. Open a browser and navigate to 'http://localhost:9080/syncope-console' logging in with 'admin/password'. The first thing we need to do is to configure user attributes for "age" and "country". Go to "Configuration/Types" in the left-hand menu, and click on the "Schemas" tab. Create two plain (mandatory) schema types: "age" of type "String" and "country" of type "Long". Now click on the "AnyTypeClasses" tab and create a new AnyTypeClass selecting the two plain schema types we just created. Finally, click on the "AnyType" tab and edit the "USER". Add the new AnyTypeClass you created and hit "save".

Now we will modify the Camel route invoked when a user is created. Click on "Extensions/Camel Routes" in the left-hand configuration menu. Edit the "createUser" route and add the following above the "bean method" part:

• <setBody><simple>${body.plainAttrMap[age].values[0]}</simple></setBody>
• <to uri="activemq:age"/>
• <setBody><simple>${exchangeProperty.actual.plainAttrMap[country].values[0]}</simple></setBody>
• <to uri="activemq:country"/>

This should be fairly straightforward to follow. We are setting the message body to be the age of the newly created User, and dispatching that message to the "age" queue. We then follow the same process for the "country". We also need to change "body" in the "bean method" line to "exchangeProperty.actual", this is because we have redefined what the body is for each of the Camel routes above.

Now let's create some new users. Click on the "Realms" menu and select the "USER" tab. Create new users "alice" in country "usa" of age "25" and "bob" in country "canada" of age "27". Now let's look at the ActiveMQ console again. We should see two new messages in each of the queues as follows, ready to be consumed: