Apache Camel is preparing for Post-Quantum Cryptography

Post-Quantum Cryptography has moved from research papers to production standards. NIST finalized FIPS 203 (ML-KEM), FIPS 204 (ML-DSA), and FIPS 205 (SLH-DSA) in August 2024, and the Java ecosystem is catching up fast. JDK 24 shipped with native ML-KEM support via the javax.crypto.KEM API (JEP 496), and JDK 27 will bring PQC directly into TLS with JEP 527.

As Chair of the Apache Camel PMC, I wanted to start preparing Camel for this transition early. Over the past weeks I have been working on the core SSL/TLS infrastructure and building proof-of-concept examples that show Camel can negotiate PQC TLS handshakes across three different JDK versions.

In this post I will walk through what we changed in Camel’s core, why it matters, and how you can try it yourself.

Why PQC matters for integration

If you are building enterprise integrations, chances are you are moving sensitive data between systems over TLS. The “harvest now, decrypt later” threat is real: adversaries can record encrypted traffic today and decrypt it once a sufficiently powerful quantum computer becomes available. For regulated industries, the migration deadline is approaching fast. NSA’s CNSA 2.0 guidance requires PQC for TLS in national security systems by 2033.

For Apache Camel users, this means the framework they use to wire systems together needs to support PQC at the transport layer. That is the direction we are heading, though there is still a good amount of work ahead.

What changed in Camel core

The PQC work started in Camel 4.19.0 and continued into 4.20. It focuses on making PQC TLS configuration as simple as adding a few properties.

Named Groups and Signature Schemes

TLS 1.3 uses named groups to negotiate key exchange algorithms. PQC key exchange requires new named groups like X25519MLKEM768, a hybrid that combines classical X25519 with the post-quantum ML-KEM-768 algorithm. Both run together, so security is maintained even if one is broken.

Before these changes, there was no way to configure named groups through Camel’s SSL configuration. We added namedGroups and signatureSchemes to both SSLContextParameters and the camel.ssl.* configuration properties:

camel.ssl.namedGroups=X25519MLKEM768,x25519
camel.ssl.signatureSchemes=ML-DSA,ECDSA,RSA

We also added include/exclude filters for fine-grained control:

camel.ssl.namedGroupsInclude=X25519MLKEM768,x25519
camel.ssl.namedGroupsExclude=ffdhe2048

Auto-configuration on JDK 25+

On JDK 25 and later (where X25519MLKEM768 is available in the JVM), Camel will automatically reorder the named groups to prefer PQC key exchange. If you have not explicitly configured named groups, Camel sets the ordering to:

X25519MLKEM768, x25519, secp256r1, secp384r1, [JVM defaults]

No configuration required. If your JVM supports it, Camel prefers PQC. You will see a log line confirming it:

INFO  SSLContextParameters - Auto-configured PQC named groups: [X25519MLKEM768, x25519, secp256r1, secp384r1, ...]

This only kicks in when you have not set namedGroups or namedGroupsFilter explicitly, so it will not override your choices.

Self-signed certificates and provider selection

For development and testing, we added camel.ssl.selfSigned=true, which generates a self-signed certificate at startup so you can enable HTTPS without providing a keystore. Combined with camel.ssl.trustAllCertificates=true, this gives you a working TLS setup with zero external files.

We also added camel.ssl.provider so you can select a specific JSSE provider. This is what makes PQC work on JDK 21 and 24 through BouncyCastle:

camel.ssl.provider=BCJSSE

Tracking issues

• CAMEL-23154 - Add PQC named groups support to SSLContextParameters
• CAMEL-23158 - Add PQC named groups and signature schemes to SSL configuration properties
• CAMEL-23159 - Add signatureSchemes to SSLContextParameters

Three proof-of-concept examples

To validate that the approach works in practice, I built three self-contained examples that each perform a real PQC TLS 1.3 handshake using X25519MLKEM768. The examples are available in the camel-pqc-tls repository.

Each example creates an SSLServerSocket and an SSLSocket, performs a TLS 1.3 handshake with PQC key exchange, and verifies the result. No external servers, no mock objects. A real handshake that either succeeds or fails.

All three examples use the same camel.ssl.* property-based configuration. The JDK version and provider differ, but the approach is consistent.

JDK 27: Native PQC in TLS

JDK 27 adds PQC named groups directly to SunJSSE via JEP 527. This is the cleanest path: no third-party TLS providers, no security property workarounds. Everything is built into the JDK.

The application bootstrap is minimal:

public class PQCSSLContextApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        Main main = new Main();
        main.run(args);
    }
}

The entire PQC configuration lives in application.properties:

camel.server.enabled=true
camel.server.port=8443
camel.server.useGlobalSslContextParameters=true

camel.ssl.enabled=true
camel.ssl.secureSocketProtocol=TLSv1.3
camel.ssl.selfSigned=true
camel.ssl.trustAllCertificates=true
camel.ssl.namedGroups=X25519MLKEM768,x25519
camel.ssl.cipherSuites=TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384,TLS_AES_128_GCM_SHA256

That is it. No keystores to generate, no shell scripts to run. Camel generates a self-signed certificate at startup, configures PQC named groups, and serves HTTPS on port 8443.

The handshake verification in the route uses Groovy to access Camel’s global SSLContext:

def sslCtx = camelContext.getSSLContextParameters().createSSLContext(camelContext)
def serverSocket = sslCtx.getServerSocketFactory().createServerSocket(0)
def clientSocket = sslCtx.getSocketFactory().createSocket("localhost", serverSocket.getLocalPort())
def sslParams = clientSocket.getSSLParameters()
sslParams.setNamedGroups(["X25519MLKEM768"] as String[])
clientSocket.setSSLParameters(sslParams)
clientSocket.startHandshake()

The client offers only X25519MLKEM768 with no classical fallback, so a successful handshake definitively proves PQC was negotiated.

JDK 21 and JDK 24: BouncyCastle JSSE

For JDK 21 and 24, the JDK’s SunJSSE does not yet support PQC named groups in TLS. BouncyCastle’s JSSE provider (BCJSSE) bridges this gap.

The configuration is almost identical to JDK 27, with two additions: camel.ssl.provider=BCJSSE to select the BouncyCastle TLS provider, and secp256r1 in the named groups for ECDSA certificate verification:

camel.server.enabled=true
camel.server.port=8443
camel.server.useGlobalSslContextParameters=true

camel.ssl.enabled=true
camel.ssl.provider=BCJSSE
camel.ssl.selfSigned=true
camel.ssl.trustAllCertificates=true
camel.ssl.secureSocketProtocol=TLSv1.3
camel.ssl.namedGroups=X25519MLKEM768,secp256r1

The bootstrap class still needs to register the BouncyCastle providers before Camel starts, and remove ECDH from jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms (which BCJSSE interprets broadly, preventing EC credentials from working):

public class PQCSSLContextApplication {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        String disabled = Security.getProperty("jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms");
        if (disabled != null) {
            disabled = disabled.replaceAll(",\\s*ECDH\\b", "");
            Security.setProperty("jdk.tls.disabledAlgorithms", disabled);
        }
        Security.addProvider(new BouncyCastleProvider());
        Security.insertProviderAt(new BouncyCastleJsseProvider(), 1);

        Main main = new Main();
        main.run(args);
    }
}

The route itself uses camelContext.getSSLContextParameters().createSSLContext(camelContext) to get the SSLContext, just like the JDK 27 example. The only difference is that on JDK 21, the standard SSLParameters.setNamedGroups() API does not exist yet, so the verification route uses BouncyCastle’s BCSSLParameters to set named groups on the client socket:

def sslCtx = camelContext.getSSLContextParameters().createSSLContext(camelContext)
def serverSocket = sslCtx.getServerSocketFactory().createServerSocket(0)
// ...
def bcClientParams = new org.bouncycastle.jsse.BCSSLParameters()
bcClientParams.setNamedGroups(["X25519MLKEM768", "secp256r1"] as String[])
((org.bouncycastle.jsse.BCSSLSocket) cs).setParameters(bcClientParams)
cs.startHandshake()

Earlier versions of these examples had to generate certificates programmatically, build keystores in memory, and create the SSLContext manually in Groovy. All of that is now handled by Camel’s camel.ssl.* configuration.

JDK 24 bonus: native ML-KEM

What makes the JDK 24 example unique is the /api/verify-kem endpoint, which exercises JDK 24’s native javax.crypto.KEM API directly. This endpoint runs cross-provider interoperability tests between the JDK’s built-in ML-KEM implementation and BouncyCastle’s, including key re-encoding through standard X.509/PKCS#8 formats.

One detail worth noting: cross-provider key interoperability requires re-encoding keys through standard formats. When you generate an ML-KEM key pair with one provider and pass the key objects directly to another provider’s KEM.getInstance(), you get an InvalidKeyException. The fix is to export the keys via getEncoded() and re-import them through X509EncodedKeySpec and PKCS8EncodedKeySpec:

def bcKf = KeyFactory.getInstance("ML-KEM", "BC")
def reEncodedPub = bcKf.generatePublic(
    new X509EncodedKeySpec(jdkKp.getPublic().getEncoded()))
def reEncodedPriv = bcKf.generatePrivate(
    new PKCS8EncodedKeySpec(jdkKp.getPrivate().getEncoded()))

This works because both providers use the same standard key encoding formats, even though their internal key representations differ.

Verifying PQC at the network level

Running the examples and seeing pqcVerified: true is one thing. Verifying at the network level that PQC key exchange actually happened is another.

You can use tshark to capture and inspect the TLS handshake:

tshark -i lo -f "tcp port 43567" -Y "tls.handshake" \
    -V -o tls.keylog_file:/dev/null 2>/dev/null | \
    grep -E "(Handshake Protocol|named_group|key_share|supported_groups)"

In the capture you will see the TLS 1.3 HelloRetryRequest flow. The client’s first ClientHello advertises X25519MLKEM768 in its supported_groups extension. The server agrees on the PQC group and sends a HelloRetryRequest asking the client to provide a key share for X25519MLKEM768. The client’s second ClientHello includes a 1216-byte key share, which is the combined X25519 (32 bytes) + ML-KEM-768 (1184 bytes) public key. That 1184-byte ML-KEM component is the unmistakable fingerprint of a post-quantum key exchange.

Side-by-side comparison

Running the examples

All three examples follow the same pattern: select the right JDK, build, and run.

JDK 27

cd pqc-ssl-context
sdk use java 27.ea.11-open
mvn clean compile exec:exec
curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/verify-pqc

JDK 24

cd pqc-kem-jdk24
sdk use java 24.0.1-tem
mvn clean compile exec:exec
curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/verify-pqc
curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/verify-kem

JDK 21

cd pqc-ssl-context-jdk21
sdk use java 21.0.10-tem
mvn clean compile exec:exec
curl -k https://localhost:8443/api/verify-pqc

All three return "pqcVerified": true when the PQC TLS handshake succeeds.

What is not done yet

I want to be clear: this work is not finished. What we have so far is the foundation, and there are real gaps remaining.

The changes so far are in Camel’s core SSL layer. Individual Camel components that use TLS (HTTP, Kafka, JMS, AMQP, and many others) still need to adopt these settings for PQC to actually work end-to-end with each connector. Some components delegate to their own TLS stacks (Netty, Vert.x, the Kafka client library) and will need specific integration work to pass through the PQC named groups. We have started this for Netty, which now has a PQC fallback that auto-applies named groups, but the rest is still ahead of us.

The camel.ssl.selfSigned=true option is useful for demos and development, but production deployments need proper certificates and keystores. The property-based configuration (camel.ssl.keyStore, camel.ssl.trustStore) is already there for that.

The auto-configuration on JDK 25+ is a nice default, but it only helps when the JVM and the remote peer both support PQC named groups. In practice, most peers today will not, and the hybrid approach (X25519MLKEM768 falling back to X25519) handles that gracefully. But we have not tested this against a wide variety of real-world TLS endpoints yet.

The BouncyCastle JSSE path (JDK 21/24) works but requires a bootstrap class to register providers and tweak security properties. We would like to make this smoother, perhaps through auto-detection or a Camel extension, but that is not built yet.

Finally, there is the question of PQC at the application layer (signing, encryption, key encapsulation), not just the transport layer. The camel-pqc component covers some of this, but integrating PQC signatures and key management into Camel’s broader security model is a longer-term effort.

Contributions are welcome if any of this interests you.

References

• FIPS 203 - ML-KEM (Module-Lattice-Based Key-Encapsulation Mechanism) - NIST
• JEP 496: Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Encapsulation Mechanism - OpenJDK
• JEP 527: Quantum-Resistant Module-Lattice-Based Key Agreement for TLS - OpenJDK
• CAMEL-23154: Add PQC named groups support to SSLContextParameters - Apache Camel
• CAMEL-23158: Add PQC named groups and signature schemes to SSL configuration properties - Apache Camel
• CAMEL-23159: Add signatureSchemes to SSLContextParameters - Apache Camel
• BouncyCastle JSSE Provider - BouncyCastle
• CNSA 2.0 Algorithm Guidance - NSA

The CVE stigma: we need a new security culture

If you’ve ever tried to report a security vulnerability to an open source project, you know the feeling. You find something real, you write a detailed report, you follow responsible disclosure, and then… silence. Or worse, pushback. The maintainer tells you it’s not a real issue. The ticket gets closed. Sometimes you get a reply that feels almost hostile, as if you just insulted someone’s work instead of trying to help.

I’ve been involved in open source for a long time and I’ve seen this pattern play out more times than I’d like to admit. There’s a strange dynamic around CVEs in our industry: reporting a vulnerability should be a normal, healthy part of software development, but instead it often feels like an accusation. And for the maintainer on the receiving end, having a CVE allocated against their project can feel like a mark of shame.

This needs to change. And it needs to change fast, because the world around us is changing faster than our culture can keep up.

The reporting nightmare

Let’s talk about what it actually looks like to report a vulnerability to a project. The experience varies wildly depending on the project, but the friction is surprisingly common even in well-established ones.

First you need to figure out if the project even has a security policy. Some projects have a SECURITY.md file, some have a dedicated email, some have nothing at all. You might end up opening a public GitHub issue because there’s no private channel, which kind of defeats the purpose of responsible disclosure.

Then comes the triage. Many maintainers, especially in the smaller projects, are volunteers. They have day jobs. They maintain software because they care about it, not because they’re paid to handle security reports. So your report might sit for weeks. If the maintainer doesn’t agree with your assessment, you’re stuck in a back-and-forth that can drag on for months. I’ve seen cases where a perfectly valid vulnerability was dismissed simply because the maintainer didn’t consider the attack scenario realistic enough.

And the CVE system itself doesn’t help. It was designed in a world where software came from vendors with support contracts and SLAs. When you apply it to open source, the assumptions break down. There’s no commercial relationship, no obligation to respond, no dedicated security team. But the expectations from downstream users and scanners remain the same: if there’s a CVE, it must be fixed, and it must be fixed now.

The result is a system that creates pressure without providing resources. Maintainers feel attacked, reporters feel ignored, and the actual security of the software suffers.

The shame problem

Here’s something that doesn’t get discussed enough: many projects treat a CVE as a failure rather then a finding. There’s a cultural undercurrent that says having vulnerabilities in your code means you wrote bad code, that it reflects poorly on you as a developer.

This is wrong, and it’s counterproductive.

Every non-trivial piece of software has bugs. Some of those bugs have security implications. This is not a moral failure, its a statistical certainty. The Linux kernel gets CVEs. OpenSSL gets CVEs. The JDK gets CVEs. These are some of the most reviewed, most tested codebases on the planet. If they have vulnerabilities, your project will too.

But the stigma persists. I’ve seen maintainers downplay severity scores, argue that a bug isn’t exploitable when it clearly is, or simply refuse to acknowledge the issue. In some cases the motivation is understandable: a high-severity CVE can trigger automated alerts across thousands of organizations, creating a firestorm of support requests that a volunteer maintainer is simply not equipped to handle. But ignoring the problem doesn’t make it go away.

The Daniel Stenberg situation with curl is a good example of the other side of this coin. He has been vocal about the flood of bogus CVE reports, many of them AI-generated, that waste maintainer time. He estimates that about 20% of all security submissions to curl are now AI-generated noise, and the rate of genuine vulnerabilities has dropped to around 5%. For every real vulnerability, there are four fake ones. Each fake one consumes hours of expert time to disprove. This is a real problem, and it’s getting worse.

But the solution isn’t to build higher walls around vulnerability reporting. The solution is to build better processes and, more importantly, a better culture.

AI is changing the game whether we like it or not

Here’s where things get interesting and, honestly, a bit uncomfortable for our industry.

In the last couple of years AI systems have gone from theoretical vulnerability discovery to actually finding real zero-day vulnerabilities in production software. This isn’t hype. The evidence is concrete and growing.

Google’s Big Sleep project, a collaboration between Project Zero and DeepMind, found an exploitable stack buffer underflow in SQLite in late 2024. The Project Zero team noted that human researchers couldn’t rediscover the same vulnerability using traditional fuzzing even after 150 CPU hours of testing. Since then, Big Sleep has found over 20 vulnerabilities across projects like FFmpeg and ImageMagick, each discovered and reproduced by the AI agent without human intervention.

Anthropic published findings showing Claude discovering previously unknown vulnerabilities, including in GhostScript, where the model took a creative approach by reading through the Git commit history after more traditional analysis methods failed.

In late 2025 and early 2026, AI systems autonomously discovered zero-day vulnerabilities in Node.js and React. Not toy projects. Not contrived examples. Two of the most widely deployed pieces of JavaScript infrastructure in the world. The vulnerabilities were real, the exploits worked, and patches were necessary.

Researchers from the University of Illinois showed that teams of LLM agents working together could exploit zero-day vulnerabilities with meaningful success rates. Trend Micro’s AESIR platform has contributed to the discovery of 21 CVEs across NVIDIA, Tencent, and MLflow since mid-2025.

The trajectory is clear: AI-discovered CVEs jumped from around 300 in 2023 to over 450 in 2024, and exceeded 1,000 in 2025. This is not slowing down.

The FFmpeg wake-up call

The FFmpeg controversy in late 2025 perfectly illustrates the collision between old culture and new technology. Google’s Big Sleep found 13 vulnerabilities in FFmpeg alone. The volunteer maintainers were understandably frustrated: a trillion-dollar company was using AI to find bugs in their code and then dropping reports on them with a 90-day disclosure countdown, without providing patches or funding.

FFmpeg’s maintainers called some of the findings “CVE slop” and asked Google to either fund the project or stop burdening volunteers with security reports. One maintainer described a bug in a LucasArts Smush codec, an issue affecting only early versions of a 1990s game, flagged as a “medium-impact” security vulnerability. Nick Wellnhofer resigned as maintainer of libxml2, citing the unsustainable workload of addressing security reports without compensation.

The maintainers have a point. But the uncomfortable truth is that those vulnerabilities still exist in the code. The fact that finding them is now cheap and fast doesn’t make them less real.

We need a new culture

So where does this leave us? I think we need to rethink our relationship with security vulnerabilities from the ground up. Here what I believe needs to change.

Vulnerabilities are not failures

We need to stop treating CVEs as marks of shame. A vulnerability report should be treated like a bug report: a normal part of the software lifecycle. The projects that handle CVEs well, with transparency, clear communication, and timely fixes, should be seen as more trustworthy, not less.

The CVE system needs reform

The current system wasn’t designed for the open source world. We need better processes for triaging reports, especially now that AI tools can generate them at scale. The OpenSSF and OWASP are working on this, but progress is slow. We need clear guidelines for what constitutes a valid report, better tooling for maintainers to handle volume, and a way to distinguish between genuine findings and noise.

Funding must follow expectations

If the industry expects open source maintainers to handle security reports with the same rigor as commercial vendors, then funding needs to follow. You can’t demand enterprise-grade security response from volunteers working on their spare time. Organizations that depend on open source software need to invest in the projects they rely on. This means direct funding, dedicated security resources, or at minimum, contributing patches alongside vulnerability reports.

Security education needs an update

Most developers learn about security as a set of rules: don’t use eval, sanitize your inputs, use parameterized queries. This is necessary but not sufficient. We need to teach developers that vulnerabilities are inevitable, that finding them is good, and that the process of fixing them is a skill worth developing. Security should be part of the development culture, not an external audit that happens once a year.

Prepare for the AI flood

AI-powered vulnerability discovery is here and it’s only going to accelerate. Bruce Schneier has noted that the latest models can analyze substantial codebases and produce candidate vulnerabilities in hours or minutes, fundamentally altering the economics of vulnerability discovery. Multi-agent systems where specialized LLMs collaborate on code analysis, exploit development, and verification are outperforming single-model approaches.

This means every project, regardless of size, will face an increasing volume of vulnerability reports. We need to build the infrastructure, both technical and cultural, to handle this. That includes better automated triage, clearer severity standards, and a shared understanding that a rising CVE count doesn’t mean software is getting worse. It means we’re getting better at finding problems.

Conclusion

The security landscape is shifting under our feet. AI tools are finding real vulnerabilities in real software at a pace that human researchers can’t match. Our vulnerability reporting and handling processes, built for a slower era, are showing cracks everywhere.

The answer isn’t to dismiss the findings or shoot the messenger. It’s to grow up as an industry. Treat vulnerabilities as the normal engineering challenge they are. Fund the maintainers who keep critical infrastructure running. Reform the systems that create perverse incentives. And prepare for a world where the volume of discovered vulnerabilities will only increase.

We’ve been treating CVEs as something to be ashamed of. It’s time to start treating them as something to be proud of fixing.

References

• From Naptime to Big Sleep: Using Large Language Models To Catch Vulnerabilities In Real-World Code - Google Project Zero
• Google says its AI-based bug hunter found 20 security vulnerabilities - TechCrunch
• 0-Days - Anthropic Red Team - Anthropic
• The Recent CVEs in React and Node.js Were Found by an AI - winfunc
• Teams of LLM Agents Can Autonomously Exploit Zero-Day Vulnerabilities - Socket.dev
• Introducing AESIR: Finding Zero-Day Vulnerabilities at the Speed of AI - Trend Micro
• Autonomous Discovery of Critical Zero-Days - ZeroPath
• FFmpeg Calls Google’s AI Bug Reports “CVE Slop” - It’s FOSS
• FFmpeg volunteer maintainers struggling to keep pace with AI-generated bug reports - TechSpot
• FFmpeg to Google: Fund Us or Stop Sending Bugs - Slashdot
• Open Source Maintainers Are Drowning in Junk Bug Reports Written By AI - Slashdot
• Vulnerability Enumeration Conundrum: an Open Source Perspective on CVE and CWE - OpenSSF
• What’s Wrong with Open Source, and How to Fix It - Assured
• Beyond CVEs: Building a More Secure Open Source Ecosystem - Galah Cyber
• Hexstrike-AI: When LLMs Meet Zero-Day Exploitation - Check Point

Building Intelligent Document Processing with Apache Camel: Docling meets LangChain4j

In the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-powered applications, the ability to process and understand documents has become increasingly crucial. Whether you’re dealing with PDFs, Word documents, or PowerPoint presentations, extracting meaningful insights from unstructured data is a challenge many developers face daily.

In this post, we’ll explore how Apache Camel’s new AI components enable developers to build sophisticated RAG (Retrieval Augmented Generation) pipelines with minimal code. We’ll combine the power of Docling for document conversion with LangChain4j for AI orchestration, all orchestrated through Camel’s YAML DSL.

The Challenge: Document Intelligence at Scale

Companies are drowning in documents. Legal firms process contracts, healthcare providers manage medical records, and financial institutions analyze reports. The traditional approach of manual document review simply doesn’t scale.

So this a possible space where we could apply RAG and Apache Camel. The steps:

• Convert documents from any format to structured text
• Extract key insights and summaries
• Answer questions about document content
• Process documents in real-time as they arrive

This is where the combination of Docling and LangChain4j shines, and Apache Camel provides the perfect integration layer to bring them together.

Meet the Components

Camel-Docling: Enterprise Document Conversion

The camel-docling component integrates IBM’s Docling library, an AI-powered document parser that can handle various formats including PDF, Word, PowerPoint, and more. What makes Docling special is its ability to preserve document structure while converting to clean Markdown, HTML, or JSON.

Key features:

• Multiple Operations: Convert to Markdown, HTML, JSON, or extract structured data
• Flexible Deployment: Works with both CLI and API (docling-serve) modes
• Content Control: Return content directly in the message body or as file paths
• OCR Support: Handle scanned documents with optical character recognition

Camel-LangChain4j: AI Orchestration Made Simple

The camel-langchain4j-chat component provides seamless integration with Large Language Models through the LangChain4j framework. It supports various LLM providers including OpenAI, Ollama, and more.

Perfect for:

• Document analysis and summarization
• Question-answering systems
• Content generation
• RAG implementations

Building a RAG Pipeline with YAML

Let’s walk through a complete example that demonstrates the power of combining these components. Our goal is to create a system that automatically processes documents, analyzes them with AI, and generates comprehensive reports: a classic example.

Architecture Overview

The flow is straightforward:

1. Watch a directory for new documents
2. Convert documents to Markdown using Docling
3. Send the converted content to an LLM for analysis
4. Generate a comprehensive analysis report
5. Clean up processed files

All of this is defined declaratively in YAML, making it easy to understand and modify.

Setting Up the Infrastructure

First, we need our services running. Thanks to camel infra command, this is pretty simple:

# Start Docling (if camel infra supports it)
$ jbang -Dcamel.jbang.version=4.16.0-SNAPSHOT camel@apache/camel infra run docling

# Start Ollama (if camel infra supports it)
$ jbang -Dcamel.jbang.version=4.16.0-SNAPSHOT camel@apache/camel infra run ollama

Or we could use docker

# Start Docling-Serve
$ docker run -d -p 5001:5001 --name docling-serve ghcr.io/docling-project/docling-serve:latest

# Start Ollama
$ docker run -d -p 11434:11434 --name ollama ollama/ollama:latest

# Pull orca-mini model
$ docker exec -it ollama ollama pull orca-mini

We could also use docker-compose:

$ docker compose up -d
$ docker exec -it ollama ollama pull orca-mini

Configuring the Chat Model

We use a Groovy script bean to configure our LangChain4j chat model:

- beans:
  - name: chatModel
    type: "#class:dev.langchain4j.model.ollama.OllamaChatModel"
    scriptLanguage: groovy
    script: |
      import dev.langchain4j.model.ollama.OllamaChatModel
      import static java.time.Duration.ofSeconds

      return OllamaChatModel.builder()
        .baseUrl("{{ollama.base.url}}")
        .modelName("{{ollama.model.name}}")
        .temperature(0.3)
        .timeout(ofSeconds(120))
        .build()

Notice how we use property placeholders ({{ollama.base.url}}) which Camel automatically resolves. This makes the configuration flexible and environment-agnostic.

The Main RAG Route

Here’s where the magic happens. The route watches for documents, processes them through Docling, and analyzes them with our LLM:

- route:
    id: document-analysis-workflow
    from:
      uri: file:{{documents.directory}}
      parameters:
        include: ".*\\.(pdf|docx|pptx|html|md)"
        noop: true
        idempotent: true
      steps:
        - log: "Processing document: ${header.CamelFileName}"

        # Convert GenericFile to file path
        - setBody:
            simple: "${body.file.absolutePath}"

        # Convert to Markdown
        - to:
            uri: docling:CONVERT_TO_MARKDOWN
            parameters:
              useDoclingServe: true
              doclingServeUrl: "{{docling.serve.url}}"
              contentInBody: true

        # Prepare AI prompt
        - setBody:
            simple: |
              You are a helpful document analysis assistant. Please analyze
              the following document and provide:
              1. A brief summary (2-3 sentences)
              2. Key topics and main points
              3. Any important findings or conclusions

              Document content:
              ${exchangeProperty.convertedMarkdown}

        # Get AI analysis
        - to:
            uri: langchain4j-chat:analysis
            parameters:
              chatModel: "#chatModel"

Interactive Q&A API

We also provide an HTTP endpoint for asking questions about documents:

- route:
    id: document-qa-api
    from:
      uri: platform-http:/api/ask
      steps:
        # Find latest document
        # Convert with Docling
        # Prepare RAG prompt with user question
        # Get answer from LLM

This enables interactive workflows:

$ curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/ask \
  -d "What are the main topics in this document?"

Future Enhancements

Possible developments could be:

• Vector Storage Integration: Combine with camel-langchain4j-embeddings to store document chunks in vector databases for more sophisticated retrieval.
• Multi-Model Workflows: Use different models for different tasks - fast models for classification, powerful models for analysis.
• Streaming Responses: For long documents, stream LLM responses back to the client as they’re generated.
• Custom Tools: Integrate camel-langchain4j-tools to give the LLM access to external data sources.

Try It Yourself

The complete example is available in the Apache Camel repository under camel-jbang-examples/docling-langchain4j-rag. To run it:

$ jbang -Dcamel.jbang.version=4.16.0-SNAPSHOT camel@apache/camel run \
  --fresh \
  --dep=camel:docling \
  --dep=camel:langchain4j-chat \
  --dep=camel:platform-http \
  --dep=dev.langchain4j:langchain4j:1.6.0 \
  --dep=dev.langchain4j:langchain4j-ollama:1.6.0 \
  --properties=application.properties \
  docling-langchain4j-rag.yaml

Don’t forget to copy the sample.md into the documents directory!

Watch the logs as your document is processed, analyzed, and cleaned up automatically!

Conclusion

The combination of Apache Camel’s integration capabilities, Docling’s document conversion power, and LangChain4j’s AI orchestration creates a compelling platform for building intelligent document processing systems.

What makes this especially powerful is the declarative nature of the solution. The entire workflow is defined in ~350 lines of readable YAML, making it easy to understand, modify, and extend.

We’d love to hear about what you build with these components. Share your experiences on the Apache Camel mailing list or join us on Zulip chat!

Stay tuned for more examples combining Camel’s growing AI component ecosystem. The future of integration is intelligent, and we’re just getting started.

Happy integrating!

Load properties from Vault/Secrets cloud services: introducing Camel Context automatic refresh on secrets updates

Starting from Camel 3.19.0 we have four cloud services supported for loading properties as secrets:

• AWS Secret Manager
• Google Cloud Secret Manager
• Azure Key Vault
• Hashicorp Vault

One of the problems we faced in the development was related to finding a way to automatically refresh the secret value on the secrets update.

The main players in the cloud game are providing solutions based on their services: AWS provides multiple ways to be notified about secret updates and secret rotations through AWS Cloudtrail or AWS Cloud events, GCP leverages Google Pubsub to deliver messages with events related to secret, while Azure provides multiple ways of getting notified about events related to a vault in the Azure Key Vault service, mostly by using Azure Eventgrid as an intermediate service. Hashicorp Vault as of today doesn’t provide an API to get secrets notification.

Enabling Automatic Camel context reloading after Secrets Refresh

AWS Secrets Manager

The automatic context reloading could be achieved through Camel’s main properties. In particular, the authentication to AWS service (Cloudtrail) could be set through the default credentials provider or through access key/secret key/region credentials. The camel’s main properties are:

camel.vault.aws.refreshEnabled=true 
camel.vault.aws.refreshPeriod=60000 
camel.vault.aws.secrets=Secret 
camel.main.context-reload-enabled = true

where camel.vault.aws.refreshEnabled will enable the automatic context to reload, camel.vault.aws.refreshPeriod is the interval of time between two different checks for update events, and camel.vault.aws.secrets is a regex representing the secrets we want to track for updates. The property camel.vault.aws.secrets is not mandatory: if not specified the task responsible for checking updates events will take into account the properties with an aws: prefix.

The mechanism behind this feature, for what is related to AWS Secrets Manager, involves the AWS Cloudtrail service. The task will search for Secrets in camel properties associated with AWS prefixes and look for events in the Cloudtrail entries related to them. Once the task will find an update operation it will trigger the context reloading.

At the following URL, we provide a simple example through camel-jbang: AWS Secrets Manager Example

Google Secret Manager

The automatic context reloading could be achieved through Camel’s main properties. In particular, the authentication to Google service (Pubsub) could be set through the default google instance or through the service account key file. The camel’s main properties are:

camel.vault.gcp.projectId= projectId 
camel.vault.gcp.refreshEnabled=true 
camel.vault.gcp.refreshPeriod=60000 
camel.vault.gcp.secrets=hello* 
camel.vault.gcp.subscriptionName=subscriptionName 
camel.main.context-reload-enabled = true

where camel.vault.gcp.refreshEnabled will enable the automatic context reloading, camel.vault.gcp.refreshPeriod is the interval of time between two different checks for update events, and camel.vault.gcp.secrets is a regex representing the secrets we want to track for updates. The property camel.vault.gcp.secrets is not mandatory: if not specified the task responsible for checking updates events will take into account the properties with a gcp: prefix. The camel.vault.gcp.subscriptionName is the subscription name created about the Google PubSub topic associated with the tracked secrets.

This mechanism while making use of the notification system related to Google Secret Manager: through this feature, every secret could be associated with one up to ten Google Pubsub Topics. These topics will receive events related to the life cycle of the secret.

At the following URL, we provide a simple example through camel-jbang: Google Secret Manager Example

Azure Key Vault

The automatic context reloading could be achieved through Camel’s main properties. In particular, the authentication to Azure service (Storage Blob) could be set through client id/client secret/tenant id. The camel’s main properties are:

camel.vault.azure.refreshEnabled=true 
camel.vault.azure.refreshPeriod=60000 
camel.vault.azure.secrets=Secret 
camel.vault.azure.eventhubConnectionString=eventhub_conn_string 
camel.vault.azure.blobAccountName=blob_account_name 
camel.vault.azure.blobContainerName=blob_container_name 
camel.vault.azure.blobAccessKey=blob_access_key 
camel.main.context-reload-enabled = true

where camel.vault.azure.refreshEnabled will enable the automatic context to reload, camel.vault.azure.refreshPeriod is the interval of time between two different checks for update events, and camel.vault.azure.secrets is a regex representing the secrets we want to track for updates. The property camel.vault.azure.eventhubConnectionString is the eventhub connection string to get notifications from, camel.vault.azure.blobAccountName, camel.vault.azure.blobContainerName, and camel.vault.azure.blobAccessKey are the Azure Storage Blob parameters for the checkpoint store needed by Azure Eventhub. The property camel.vault.azure.secrets is not mandatory: if not specified the task responsible for checking updates events will take into account the properties with an azure: prefix.

At the following URL, we provide a simple example through camel-jbang: Azure Key Vault Example

A real example

While working on the feature I tried to set up a real use-case scenario. In my case, I’ve been trying to update a database administrator password while a running camel integration was querying the database.

This is well explained in this example the reader could run through camel-jbang: MySQL Database Password Refresh Example

Future

In the next Camel development for what concerns the secret updates feature, we would like to provide the ability to select a different kinds of tasks/policies to trigger a context reloading. For example, we would like to support the secret rotations events coming from AWS Services supporting the rotation. This is in our roadmap.

If you find this feature useful and you feel there is something to improve, don’t hesitate to contact us via the usual channels: Camel Support

Thanks for your attention and see you online.

Load properties from Vault/Secrets cloud services: an update

In Camel 3.16.0 we introduced the ability to load properties from vault and use them in the Camel context.

This post aims to show the updates and improvements we’ve done in the last two releases.

Supported Services

In 3.16.0 we’re supporting two of the main services available in the cloud space:

• AWS Secret Manager
• Google Cloud Secret Manager

In 3.19.0, to be released, we’re going to have four services available:

• AWS Secret Manager
• Google Cloud Secret Manager
• Azure Key Vault
• Hashicorp Vault

Setting up the Properties Function

Each of the Secret management cloud services require different parameters to complete authentication and authorization.

For both the Properties Functions currently available we provide two different approaches:

• Environment variables
• Main Configuration properties

You already have the information for AWS and GCP in the old blog post.

Let’s explore Azure Key Vault and Hashicorp Vault.

AWS Secrets Manager

The Azure Key Vault Properties Function configurations through enviroment variables are the following:

export $CAMEL_VAULT_AZURE_TENANT_ID=tenantId
export $CAMEL_VAULT_AZURE_CLIENT_ID=clientId
export $CAMEL_VAULT_AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET=clientSecret
export $CAMEL_VAULT_AZURE_VAULT_NAME=vaultName

While as Main Configuration properties it is possible to define the credentials through the following:

camel.vault.azure.tenantId = accessKey
camel.vault.azure.clientId = clientId
camel.vault.azure.clientSecret = clientSecret
camel.vault.azure.vaultName = vaultName

To recover a secret from azure you might run something like:

<camelContext>
    <route>
        <from uri="direct:start"/>
        <to uri="{{azure:route}}"/>
    </route>
</camelContext>

Hashicorp Vault

The Hashicorp Vault Properties Function configurations through enviroment variables are the following:

export $CAMEL_VAULT_HASHICORP_TOKEN=token
export $CAMEL_VAULT_HASHICORP_ENGINE=secretKey
export $CAMEL_VAULT_HASHICORP_HOST=host
export $CAMEL_VAULT_HASHICORP_PORT=port
export $CAMEL_VAULT_HASHICORP_SCHEME=http/https

While as Main Configuration properties it is possible to define the credentials through the following:

camel.vault.hashicorp.token = token
camel.vault.hashicorp.engine = engine
camel.vault.hashicorp.host = host
camel.vault.hashicorp.port = port
camel.vault.hashicorp.scheme = scheme

To recover a secret from Hashicorp Vault you might run something like:

<camelContext>
    <route>
        <from uri="direct:start"/>
        <to uri="{{hashicorp:route}}"/>
    </route>
</camelContext>

Multi fields Secrets and Default value

As for AWS Secrets Manager and Google Secrets Manager, the multi fields secrets and default value are both supported by Azure Key Vault and Hashicorp Vault Properties functions.

Versioning

In the next Camel version we are going to release the support for recovering a secret with a particular version. This will be supported by all the vault we currently support in Camel.

In particular you’ll be able to recover a specific version of a secrets with the following syntax.

<camelContext>
    <route>
        <from uri="direct:start"/>
        <log message="Username is {{hashicorp:database/username:admin@2}}"/>
    </route>
</camelContext>

In this example we’re going to recover the field username from the secret database, with version “2”. In case the version is not available, we’re going to have a default value of ‘admin’.

Future

We plan to work on the ability to reload the whole context once a secret has been rotated or updated. This is something still in the design phase, but we really would like to see it implemented soon.

Stay tuned for more news!