Is there an Elixir alternative to Apache Camel?

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Hi,

We are exploring creating an integration system to connect and communicate with systems outside of our company. We are leaning towards adopting Apache Camel. However, a few of us would rather work with the Beam than the JVM.

Is there any integration system in Elixir that is similar to Apache Camel? I have tried searching, but search is sort of broken on the internet right now. I am getting a lot of garbage pages. I am going to keep looking, though.

That said, if someone in the Elixir community knows the answer, that would be awesome. I would love to add that hypothetical framework to the proposal

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Never heard of Camel before but had a peek at the docs…

Instead of “Elixir alternative to Camel,” I think the better question to ask is: What are you trying to do in Camel and how can you do that with Elixir instead?

Just from skimming the docs, I see hints of plain Elixir/OTP features, Phoenix, and GenStage/Broadway.

Take this reply with a grain of salt. I am biased. I cringed when I saw “Enterprise Integration Pattern.”

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Thanks so much for your response. I think this was very useful. I am going to explore and present Elixir/Beam as an alternative.

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If you have existing dependencies written in Java or other JVM language, or the “enterprisey” aspect is guiding the decision, maybe the BEAM or anything else might be a hard sell.

But it seems there’s room for proposing alternatives, in which case you could compare the many patterns of message-based communication listed in EIPs :: Apache Camel with native/equivalent solutions in the BEAM (as in previous answers in the thread).

Reminds me of that slide comparing BEAM with other stacks, how it replaces a lot of separate components. The legendary talk The Soul of Erlang & Elixir by Saša Jurić https://youtu.be/JvBT4XBdoUE?si=pyKU-_EOHzrTsH1Q&t=36m40s.

Good luck!

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There’s always JInterface (kind of kidding, I have no experience with it)…

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I’d say use Camel as a glue to move messages from external systems to internally managed RabbitMQ and the use Elixir for processing.

This was a feasible approach a few years back and I can only imagine Camel getting better since then.

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This talk is amazing. Thanks for linking to it. We currently don’t run JVM in our systems. We would introduce either JVM or BEAM. For once, there is a bias in favor of BEAM, but we still have to make our case. That talk is a strong case :smiley:

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This is an option that I had not thought about. I will keep it in mind

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Are you actually needing the rule-based payload routing functionality of Apache Camel? If not then I am not sure what’s the issue in adopting literally any message queue. :thinking:

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A quick update. First of all, thanks so much for your replies. Your insights and links helped me a lot with the research.

As of right now, we are going to move forward with Elixir using GenStage as the core of the system. I am writing a prototype right now to make sure we don’t run into any blocker that can doom the project.

Again, thanks so much for sharing your thoughts.

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