Apache Karaf provides a friendly OSGi-based container environment to deploy, manage, and most importantly, enjoy your applications. One of the more common projects to be hosted on Karaf is the Apache Camel-based router. In this chapter, we'll explore recipes to help make using Camel on Karaf quick, easy, and fun.

Before we proceed, let's take a closer look at Apache Camel.

Apache Camel provides a rule-based routing and mediation engine for Java, implementing Enterprise Integration Patterns (EIPs) as described in Enterprise Integration Patterns: Designing, Building, and Deploying Messaging Solutions, Gregor Hohpe and Bobby Woolf, Addison Wesley. One of the key features of the Camel library is its domain-specific language to configure routers and mediation. This allows for type-safe completion of rules in an integrated development environment, thereby greatly saving time and reducing complexity.