Camel Components

Barcode

Since Camel 2.14

The Barcode data format is based on the zxing library. The goal of this component is to create a barcode image from a String (marshal) and a String from a barcode image (unmarshal). You’re free to use all features that zxing offers.

Dependencies

To use the barcode data format in your camel routes, you need to add a dependency on camel-barcode which implements this data format.

If you use maven, you could just add the following to your pom.xml, substituting the version number for the latest & greatest release (see the download page for the latest versions).

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
  <artifactId>camel-barcode</artifactId>
  <version>x.x.x</version>
</dependency>

Barcode Options

The Barcode dataformat supports the following options which are listed below.

Name Default Java Type Description

barcodeFormat (common)

QR_CODE

Enum

Barcode format such as QR-Code. MAXICODE, RSS_14, RSS_EXPANDED and UPC_EAN_EXTENSION cannot be written by marshal, as there is no encoder for them; unmarshal reads the format of the image.

Enum values:

  • AZTEC

  • CODABAR

  • CODE_39

  • CODE_93

  • CODE_128

  • DATA_MATRIX

  • EAN_8

  • EAN_13

  • ITF

  • MAXICODE

  • PDF_417

  • QR_CODE

  • RSS_14

  • RSS_EXPANDED

  • UPC_A

  • UPC_E

  • UPC_EAN_EXTENSION

imageType (common)

PNG

Enum

Image type of the barcode such as png.

Enum values:

  • JPG

  • GIF

  • PNG

width (common)

100

Integer

Width of the barcode.

height (common)

100

Integer

Height of the barcode.

Message Body

The message body at each side of the Barcode data format: Marshal input and Unmarshal input are the bodies marshal and unmarshal can take, and Marshal output and Unmarshal output the body after them.

Side Body Description

Marshal input

text, bytes, stream or file, as text

The text to encode: bytes, a stream or a file are read in the charset of the exchange. It must suit the barcodeFormat, such as digits only for EAN-13.

Marshal output

stream, as binary

The image of the barcode, a PNG unless imageType is JPG or GIF, in the stream cache, or a byte array when stream caching is off.

Unmarshal input

bytes, stream or file, as binary

An image ImageIO reads, such as PNG, JPEG or GIF, of any barcode format ZXing reads, whatever barcodeFormat is.

Unmarshal output

text (java.lang.String), as text

The text of the barcode, with the format found in the BarcodeFormat header and the ZXing result metadata, such as ORIENTATION, as headers.

The bodies are the ones with the default options. A side that is not listed is not known, and tooling does not guess it. The carriers are described in the Camel Catalog.

Usage

In Java, you first create an instance of the barcode data format class. You can use the default constructor, or one of parameterized (see JavaDoc). The default values are:

Parameter Default Value

image type (BarcodeImageType)

PNG

width

100 px

height

100 px

encoding

ISO-8859-1 (the ZXing default), or UTF-8 when the text has characters that ISO-8859-1 cannot represent. A CHARACTER_SET hint overrides it. ZXing uses the encoding for QR-Code, Aztec and PDF417 (and for Data Matrix only with the DATA_MATRIX_COMPACT hint).

barcode format (BarcodeFormat)

QR-Code
Java-only: Java programmatic data format instantiation
// QR-Code default
DataFormat code = new BarcodeDataFormat();

If you want to use ZXing hints, you can use the 'addToHintMap' method of your BarcodeDataFormat instance:

Java-only: Java data format configuration API
code.addToHintMap(DecodeHintType.TRY_HARDER, Boolean.TRUE);

The hints can be added before the data format is started (for example when the route is configured). To remove a hint, such as a default one, use the 'removeFromHintMap' method. The maps returned by 'getWriterHintMap' and 'getReaderHintMap' are read-only. For possible hints, please consult the ZXing documentation.

Marshalling

  • Java

  • YAML

from("direct://code")
  .marshal(code)
  .to("file://barcode_out");
- route:
    from:
      uri: direct://code
      steps:
        - marshal:
            barcode:
              barcodeFormat: QR_CODE
              imageType: PNG
              width: 100
              height: 100
        - to:
            uri: file://barcode_out

You can call the route from a test class with:

Java-only: Java test API (ProducerTemplate)
template.sendBody("direct://code", "This is a testmessage!");

You should find inside the 'barcode_out' folder this image:

image

Unmarshalling

The unmarshaller is generic. For unmarshalling, you can use any BarcodeDataFormat instance. If you’ve two instances, one for (generating) QR-Code and one for PDF417, it doesn’t matter which one will be used.

  • Java

  • YAML

from("file://barcode_in?noop=true")
  .unmarshal(code) // for unmarshalling, the instance doesn't matter
  .to("mock:out");
- route:
    from:
      uri: file://barcode_in
      parameters:
        noop: true
      steps:
        - unmarshal:
            barcode: {}
        - to:
            uri: mock:out

If you’ll paste the QR-Code image above into the 'barcode_in' folder, you should find `This is a testmessage!` inside the mock. You can find the barcode data format as header variable:

Name Type Description

BarcodeFormat

String

Value of com.google.zxing.BarcodeFormat.

If you’ll paste the code 39 barcode that is rotated some degrees into the 'barcode_in' folder, You can find the ORIENTATION as header variable:

Name Type Description

ORIENTATION

Integer

rotate value in degrees .