a simple URI format for referring to EndpointInfo (was Re: Introducing Apache Camel)

[James Strachan <ja...@gmail.com>]

Apologies if this is a dumb question but I've noodled the wiki & code
and not seen anything like this yet so thought I'd ask.

Often the EndpointInfo is configured via XML (JAXB/Spring stuff). I'm
wondering has anyone ever figured out a simple String URI <->
EndpointInfo converter to deal with common cases? I realise that
EndpointInfo is a complex object and the URI could get pretty complex;
I'm just looking for something that solves the common 80% of cases
(e.g. HTTP endpoint at some address).

In ActiveMQ and ServiceMix we've got kinda hooked on URIs as a nice
alternative to XML

Here's the various URIs supported in ActiveMQ
http://activemq.apache.org/configuring-transports.html

e.g. here's a couple of specific URIs
http://activemq.apache.org/failover-transport-reference.html
http://activemq.apache.org/broker-configuration-uri.html

Here's examples of the ServiceMix URIs supported
http://incubator.apache.org/servicemix/uris.html


So I was wondering if we could do something similar in CXF; have a
simple way to convert a String URI into an EndpointInfo object; this
would ease Camel integration for a start as its currently using a
single URI to do the routing of HTTP / JBI / JMS / MINA / files / XMPP
etc.

I was thinking we could use something similar to ServiceMix such as

interface:qname
service:qname
endpoint:qname (the endpoint name)
address:uri

To allow an endpointInfo to be specified by interface / service /
endpoint name / address etc. Then there's always the handy URI query
arguments to customize things further.

e.g.

service:myServiceNamespace:localServiceName?binding.bindingId=cheese

FWIW when folks use CXF from inside  Camel, we're currently just
stripping off the "cxf:" prefix and then interpreting the rest as an
EndpointInfo (which is hackily hard coded to take the rest as a http
address :)


Thoughts?
-- 

James
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