The test component extends the Mock component to support pulling messages from another endpoint on startup to set the expected message bodies on the underlying Mock endpoint. That is, you use the test endpoint in a route and messages arriving on it will be implicitly compared to some expected messages extracted from some other location.

So you can use, for example, an expected set of message bodies as files. This will then set up a properly configured Mock endpoint, which is only valid if the received messages match the number of expected messages and their message payloads are equal.

test:expectedMessagesEndpointUri

Where expectedMessagesEndpointUri refers to some other Component URI that the expected message bodies are pulled from before starting the test.

For example, you could write a test case as follows:

from("seda:someEndpoint").
  to("test:file://data/expectedOutput?noop=true");

If your test then invokes the MockEndpoint.assertIsSatisfied(camelContext) method, your test case will perform the necessary assertions.

Here is a real example test case using Mock and Spring along with its Spring XML.

To see how you can set other expectations on the test endpoint, see the Mock component.