Built-In Type Converters

Overview

This section describes the conversions supported by the master type converter. These conversions are built into the FUSE Mediation Router core.

Usually, the type converter is called through convenience functions, such as Message.getBody(Class<T> type) or Message.getHeader(String name, Class<T> type). It is also possible to invoke the master type converter directly. For example, if you have an exchange object, exchange, you could convert a given value to a String as shown in Example 1.4.

Example 1.4. Converting a Value to a String

org.apache.camel.TypeConverter tc = exchange.getContext().getTypeConverter();
String str_value = tc.convertTo(String.class, value);

Basic type converters

FUSE Mediation Router provides built-in type converters that perform conversions to and from the following basic types:

java.io.File
String
byte[] and java.nio.ByteBuffer
java.io.InputStream and java.io.OutputStream
java.io.Reader and java.io.Writer
java.io.BufferedReader and java.io.BufferedWriter
java.io.StringReader

However, not all of these conversions are supported. The built-in converter is mainly focused on providing conversions from the File and String types. The File type can be converted to any of the preceding types, accept Reader, Writer, and StringReader. The String type can be converted to File, byte[], ByteBuffer, InputStream, or StringReader. The conversion from String to File works by interpreting the string as a file name. The trio of String, byte[], and ByteBuffer are completely inter-convertible.

Note

	Note
You can explicitly specify which character encoding to use for conversion from `byte[]` to `String` and from `String` to `byte[]` by setting the `Exchange.CHARSET_NAME` exchange property in the current exchange. For example, to perform conversions using the UTF-8 character encoding, call `exchange.setProperty("Exchange.CHARSET_NAME", "UTF-8")`. The supported character sets are described in the `java.nio.charset.Charset` class.

You can explicitly specify which character encoding to use for conversion from byte[] to String and from String to byte[] by setting the Exchange.CHARSET_NAME exchange property in the current exchange. For example, to perform conversions using the UTF-8 character encoding, call exchange.setProperty("Exchange.CHARSET_NAME", "UTF-8"). The supported character sets are described in the java.nio.charset.Charset class.

String
InputStream
Source
StreamSource
DOMSource

Custom type converters

FUSE Mediation Router also enables you to implement your own custom type converters. For details on how to implement a custom type converter, see Type Converters.