Today, MuleSoft released a brand new product, Mule Data Integrator, which is available for download here. Mule Data Integrator (MDI) is free for developers to use and includes an Eclipse-based designer that is fully integrated with Mule IDE.
Last week I posted about Writing Mule Transformers, this week I’m going to continue with some more advanced features users can take advantage of.
Lifecycle
All objects in Mule have lifecycle associated with them. Lifecycle calls can be added as necessary. For transformers, there are two lifecycle methods that are most useful.
By default the AbstractEventAwareTransfromer and AbstractTransformer both implement the org.mule.api.lifecycle.Initialisable interface. This means that once all bean properties are set on the transformer (if any) the doInitialise() method will be called. This is useful for transformers to do any initialization or validation work. For example, the transformer may need to load an external file resource in order to be able to perform its function, this should be done in the doInitialise() method.
Additionally, transformers may want to clear up resources when the transformer is no longer needed. To do this a transformer just needs to implement org.mule.api.lifecycle.Disposable and implement the dispose() method. (more…)
Transformers in Mule are simple objects that convert the current message from one type to another. The interface for a transformer is simple, but there are some tips and tricks for getting the most out of transformers. For this post we will define a transformer the converts from an Order object to HTML so that we can email the details of an order to a customer. (more…)
The Mule expression framework was one of the new features in Mule 2. It provides a very powerful way to make queries on incoming messages and use the results to control how Mule behaves. Mule already supports a variety of expression languages such as Xpath and Groovy. There is also expressions for navigating the current message headers, payload and attachments. (more…)
