Camel in Action, Second Edition is Complete!

Camel in Action Website

We did it again +Claus Ibsen :-) Camel in Action, 2nd edition is printing as I type this blog and will be in book stores in a few weeks. Time to celebrate!

Our theme this time around is more - more of everything to help you get started with Apache Camel and more for seasoned integration vets too. Well, this has kinda been the approach in Apache Camel since the last book as well. Let's look at some stats from the Camel versions used in each book edition:

Camel 2.5.0	Camel 2.20.1
>80 components	>280 components
482,779 LOC	1307016 LOC
23 named contributors	497 named contributors

So yeah, Camel is a lot bigger this time round and so our book had to be too :-) It's amazing how much the project has grown TBH. The component count has more than tripled, LOC near that as well and the number of contributors has just blown up. Now, granted back in the early days of Camel we used SVN which didn't allow named contributors to be counted until they were actual Apache Camel committers themselves (GitHub PRs to the rescue!!). Still, I estimate the actual number of contributors has doubled at the very least.

It's not just components that have been added to Camel either. This time we needed to cover more topics like: microservices, RESTful web services, containers (think docker/kubernetes), clustering, reactive apps, security, and even IoT. Like last time we had a guest author contribute a chapter about a new emerging technology. Big thanks to Henryk Konsek for contributing the chapter on IoT. Neither myself or Claus has any experience in IoT so we probably wouldn't have covered it if we didn't get an expert on board :-)

A huge thanks to Claus for being such a pleasure to work with (albeit being a bit hard to keep up with ;-) ). Looking forward to next time round!

And finally, let me leave you with one of my favourite lines from our book:

"To the Apache Camel community - may this book be a helpful companion on your journeys with Camel"

Camel in Action v2 Update

Manning just published a new MEAP of Camel in Action this week so I figured I'd give a little update on our loooong journey with the 2nd edition :-)

The latest MEAP contains one new chapter, in addition to some fixes in other chapters. The basic outline for the "Developing Camel projects" chapter is:

• Creating Camel projects with Maven
• Creating Camel projects in the Eclipse IDE
• Debugging with Camel
• Creating custom components 
• Creating custom interceptors
• Creating custom data formats
• Using the API component framework

A lot of this still applied from the first edition with the exception of debugging, custom data format creation, and using the super cool API component framework.

Claus is busy working on a more interesting chapter titled simply "Microservices". Yes, we are devoting a whole chapter to this buzzword :-) Really, it was unavoidable as Camel has been growing to have 1st class support for great frameworks like Spring Boot and Wildfly Swarm. Also microservices is just a little bit popular right now ;-)

So what's next? Well, we only have a handful of chapters left to write and hope to have it all handed in by the end of the year. So you can expect a print copy early next year after Manning polishes our work. 

Cheers!

Team Programming Competition Results

On Friday I sponsored a team programming competition at Memorial University here in St. John's. Like the previous competition this year, I presented a signed copy of Camel in Action to each of the 1st place winners. Congratulations to Melissa Reid and Ken Collingwood for winning!

Full results of the competition were posted on Jamie's blog.

Programming Competitions on the Rock

This past Friday I sponsored a programming competition at Memorial University here in St. John's. Was a great turn out - much more than I can remember back in the day when I competed in these things... Jamie posted the full results since he helped organize the event.

On behalf of FuseSource I presented a prize to the 1st place winner, Robert Robere. Robert, of course, won a signed copy of Camel in Action - what else? :)

Looking forward to the next one in 3 weeks!

Camel in Action is complete!

So we did it. Camel in Action is headed to the press! Time for beers and all that, but first a little blog post :)

I had to actually search through my mail to find out when I started on this project. Turns out I got involved mid September 2009 which puts the time in about 15 months. Claus started before that so his month count is higher - poor guy ;) So it was a pretty big chunk of time for both of us but not too bad for a technical book I'm told.

We set out to create something that the growing Apache Camel community needed badly - a great reference for newbies and experts alike. I'd like to think we accomplished that goal. Seems the early access readers agree too.

Thanks to all who were involved in producing this book. We had tons of very helpful reviewers, Manning staff, and even multiple foreword writers - there were a lot of people involved in creating this other than Claus or myself. Of course, we officially thanked the folks involved in the acknowledgements section so be sure to look there if you helped out :)

I have yet to see anything other than a PDF copy of the book (which should be released tomorrow) so I'm really looking forward to when the print copies start showing up in 10 days!

Also, feel free to use the "camel50" code for 50% off when ordering through http://manning.com/CamelinAction

Now its time to celebrate.

Understanding Camel components

We've updated Camel in Action today with 3 new chapters. That brings the total to 11 out of 13 chapters, which means we are getting close :)

One of the chapters is all about Camel components. The list of components in Camel has really exploded over the last few years. Camel ships with 76 components right now and there are dozens more available separately from other community sites. I mean, when presented with most integration scenarios we can easily say

"There's a Camel component for that."

So out of these components, which ones did we choose to cover? To make the content fit into one chapter we covered 11 components in 7 sections:

Section	Components covered
Working with files	file, ftp
Asynchronous Messaging using the JMS component	jms
Web Services and the CXF Component	cxf
Networking with the MINA component	mina
Working with databases	jdbc, jpa
In-memory asynchronous messaging	seda, vm
Automating tasks	timer, quartz

Why these components? Well, we felt that these were the most widely used and thus essential knowledge for any Camel user. Of course, other components are covered elsewhere in the book but not in as much detail as these.

Feel free to check out chapter 7 Understanding components in the latest book update or browse the chapters examples.

New Camel in Action Chapters

Today we posted 2 new chapters for the Camel in Action MEAP. Claus will most likely fill you in about the chapter on bean integration soon. Let me give you a little info about chapter 2 now though. Chapter 2 is basically all about routing - a pretty fundamental topic for Camel! I cover route creation in Java and Spring, as well as several EIPs. Since it is such an early chapter its pretty hand-holding throughout - you don't need to know Spring or EIPs beforehand, for instance.

I also introduce a new running example to the book: Rider Auto Parts. You may remember them from the DZone article Integration Nirvana I wrote earlier this year.

We actually started using a Google Code project for hosting the books source code so you can see the code for chapter 2 here:
http://code.google.com/p/camelinaction/source/checkout

In the coming months the source from other chapters will also be added. As always, we love feedback in the book's forum.

Camel in Action

As Claus just announced, we are writing a book with Hadrian on Apache Camel entitled "Camel in Action".

There has been a real need for such a book for a long time. We're hoping to fill the gap in the current documentation thats out there and provide a go to resource for new and experienced users alike.

A neat thing about writing at Manning is that readers can see the book as its being written (in all its rough glory :)) and provide feedback directly to us. Also its early enough in the writing process so that you could have real influence on what topics get included!

Feel free to check out the book and forums.