HTTP Transport Reference

Introduction

The HTTP transport provides support for exposing services over HTTP and making HTTP client requests from Mule services to external services as part of service event flows. Mule supports inbound, outbound, and polling HTTP endpoints. These endpoints support all common features of the HTTP spec, such as ETag processing, cookies, and keepalive. Both HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 are supported.

HTTP/S endpoints are synchronous by default, so you do not have to set exchange-pattern="request-response". If you set exchange-pattern="one-way", the messages are sent asynchronously. Note: If you’re doing an asynchronous POST, streaming is disabled.

Namespace and Syntax

http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http

XML Schema

Location:

http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd

Syntax

URI example

http://theUser:secret@theHost:port/path?query

XML version

<http:endpoint host="theHost" port="8080" path="/path" user="theUser" password="secret"/>

Escape Your Credentials

If you use a URI-style endpoint and you include the user name and password, escape any characters that are illegal for URIs. Only alphabet, numeric, "-", "_", "." and "+" are allowed. For example, if the user name is user@myco.com, you should enter it as user%40myco.com.

Features

Serves as an HTTP server or client
Create HTTP services such as SOAP, REST or XML-RPC
Make HTTP requests to external services
Support for polling an HTTP endpoints including ETag support
Transfer binary or text files, including forms and attachment
Security including SSL, certificates and Authentication
Build flows to different paths on the same port
Support for reading and writing cookies
Streaming for transferring large files
Custom HTTP header support
Redirect Handling
Handling of Content-Type and Encoding
Serve up static content such as HTML, JavaScript, Images and CSS (since Mule 3.2)

Basic Usage

To create a HTTP server you just need to create a flow with an inbound HTTP endpoint:

<flow name="testComponent">    <http:inbound-endpoint name="clientEndpoint" address="http://localhost:8080/foo"/>    <echo-component/></flow>

This with accept incoming HTTP requests on http://localhost:8080/foo and echo the response back to the client.

To make a client invocation of an HTTP endpoint you need to configure an outbound endpoint on your flow or you can use the MuleClient to invoke an HTTP endpoint directly in your code.

<flow name="OutboundDelete">    <vm:inbound-endpoint path="doDelete"            exchange-pattern="one-way" />    <http:outbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="8080" path="foo"            method="DELETE" exchange-pattern="one-way" />    </flow>

Or from within your code:

MuleClient client = muleContext.getClient();MuleMessage result = client.send("http://localhost:8080/foo", "");

Finally, you can reference an endpoint by name from your Mule configuration in the Mule client. From the previous example we can create a global HTTP endpoint that cna be referenced from the flow or from code:

<http:endpoint name="deleteEndpoint" host="localhost" port="8080" path="foo"            method="DELETE" exchange-pattern="one-way" /><flow name="OutboundDelete">    <vm:inbound-endpoint path="doDelete" exchange-pattern="one-way" />    <http:outbound-endpoint ref="deleteEndpoint"/></flow>

MuleClient client = muleContext.getClient();MuleMessage result = client.send("deleteEndpoint", "");

Global endpoints allow you to remove actual addresses from you code and flows so that you can move Mule applications between environments.

Security

You can use the HTTPS Transport Reference to create secure connections over HTTP. If you want to secure requests to your HTTP endpoint, the HTTP connector supports HTTP Basic/Digest authentication methods (as well as the Mule generic header authentication). To configure HTTP Basic, you configure a Security Endpoint Filter on an HTTP endpoint.

<http:inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:4567">  <spring-sec:http-security-filter realm="mule-realm" /> </http:inbound-endpoint>

You must configure the security manager on the Mule instance against which this security filter authenticates. For information about security configuration options and examples, see Configuring Security.

For general information about endpoint configuration, see Configuring Endpoints.

Sending Credentials

If you want to make an HTTP request that requires authentication, you can set the credentials on the endpoint:

http://user:password@mycompany.com/secure

Cookies

If you want to send cookies along on your outgoing request, simply configure them on the endpoint:

<http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080" method="POST">
  <properties>
    <spring:entry key="cookies">
      <spring:map>
        <spring:entry key="customCookie" value="yes" />
       </spring:map>
    </spring:entry>
  </properties>
</http:outbound-endpoint>

Polling HTTP Services

The HTTP transport supports polling an HTTP URL, which is useful for grabbing periodic data from a page that changes or to invoke a REST service, such as polling an Amazon Queue.

To configure the HTTP Polling receiver, you include an HTTP polling-connector configuration in your Mule configuration:

<http:polling-connector name="PollingHttpConnector" pollingFrequency="30000" reuseAddress="true" />

To use the connector in your endpoints, use:

<http:inbound-endpoint user="marie" password="marie" host="localhost" port="61205"            connector-ref="PollingHttpConnector" />

Handling HTTP Content-Type and Encoding

Sending

The following behavior applies when sending POST request bodies as a client and when returning a response body:

For a String, char[], Reader, or similar:

If the endpoint has encoding set explicitly, use that
Otherwise, take it from the message’s property Content-Type
If none of these is set, use the Mule Context’s configuration default.
For Content-Type, send the message’s property Content-Type but with the actual encoding set.

For binary content, encoding is not relevant. Content-Type is set as follows:

If the Content-Type property is set on the message, send that.
Send "application/octet-stream" as Content-Type if none is set on the message.

Receiving

When receiving HTTP responses, the payload of the MuleMessage is the InputStream of the HTTP response.

Including Custom Header Properties

When making a new HTTP client request, Mule filters out any existing HTTP request headers because they are often from a previous request. For example, if you have an HTTP endpoint that proxies another HTTP endpoint, you wouldn’t want to copy the Content-Type header property from the first HTTP request to the second request.

If you do want to include HTTP headers, you can specify them as properties on the outbound endpoint as follows:

<http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:9002/events"                         connector-ref="HttpConnector" contentType="image/png">    <property key="Accept" value="*.*"/></http:outbound-endpoint>

or use Message Properties Transformer, as follows:

<message-properties-transformer scope="outbound">
    <add-message-property key="Accept" value="*.*"/></message-properties-transformer>
<http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:9002/events"                         connector-ref="HttpConnector" contentType="image/png"/>

Building the Target URL from the Request

The HTTP request URL is available in the Mule header. You can access this using the header expression evaluator #[header:http.request]. For example, if you want to redirect the request to a different server based on a filter, you can build the target URL as shown below:

<http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080#[header:http.request]" />

Handling Redirects

To redirect an HTTP client, you must set two properties on the endpoint. First, set the http.status property to '307', which instructs the client that the resource has be temporarily redirected. Alternatively, you can set the property to '301' for a permanent redirect. Second, set the Location property, which specifies the location where you want to redirect your client.

See the HTTP protocol specification for detailed information about status codes at http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec10.html.

Following is an example of a service that is listening on the local address http://localhost:8080/mine and sends a response with the redirection code, instructing the client to go to http://mulesoft.org/.

<http:inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080/mine" exchange-pattern="request-response">
  <property key="http.status" value="307"/>
  <property key="Location" value="http://mulesoft.org/"/>
</http:inbound-endpoint>

Note: You must set the exchange-pattern attribute to request-response. Otherwise, a response immediately returns while the request is placed on an internal queue.

To follow redirects when making an outbound HTTP call, use the followRedirect attribute:

<http:outbound-endpoint address="http://com.foo/bar" method="GET" exchange-pattern="request-response" followRedirects="true"/>

Getting a Hash Map of POST body params

You can use the custom transformer HttpRequestBodyToParamMap on your inbound endpoint to return the message properties as a hash map of name-value pairs. This transformer handles GET and POST with application/x-www-form-urlencoded content type.

For example:

<http:inbound-endpoint ...>  <http:body-to-parameter-map-transformer /></http:inbound-endpoint>

Processing GET Query Parameters

GET parameters posted to an HTTP inbound endpoint are automatically available in the payload on the Mule Message in their raw form and the query parameters are also passed and stored as inbound-scoped headers of the Mule Message.

For example, the following flow creates a simple HTTP server:

<flow name="flows1Flow1">
    <http:inbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="8081"  encoding="UTF-8"/>
    <logger message="#[groovy:return message.toString();]" level="INFO"/>
</flow>

Doing a request from a browser using the URL:

http://localhost:8081/echo?reverb=4&flange=2

Results in a message payload of /echo?reverb=4&flange=2 and two additional inbound headers on the message reverb=4 and flange=2.

These headers can then be accessed using expressions i.e. #[header:INBOUND:reverb] which can be used by filters and routers or injected into your code.

Serving Static Content

The HTTP connector can be used as a web server to deliver static content such as images, HTML, JavaScript, CSS files etc. To enable this, configure a flow with an HTTP static-resource-handler:

<flow name="main-http">
    <http:inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080/static"/>
    <http:static-resource-handler resourceBase="${app.home}/docroot" defaultFile="index.html"/>
</flow>

The important attribute here is the resourceBase since it defines where on the local system that files are served from. Typically, this should be set to ${app.home}/docroot, but it can point to any fully qualified location.

The default file allows you to specify the default resource to load if none is specified. If not set the default is index.html.

When developing your Mule application, the docroot directory should be located at <project.home>/src/main/app/docroot.

Content-Type Handling

The static-resource-handler uses the same mime type mapping system as the JDK, if you need to add your own mime type to file extension mappings, you need to add a the following file to your application <project home>/src/main/resources/META-INF/mime.types. With content similar to:

image/png                   pngtext/plain                  txt cgi java

This maps the mime type to one or more file extensions.

Examples

The following provides some common usage examples that help you understand how to use HTTP and Mule.

Mule Flow

Polling HTTP

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http" xmlns:vm="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm"    xmlns:test="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test"
    xsi:schemaLocation="
       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test/3.2/mule-test.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm/3.2/mule-vm.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd">
    <!-- We are using two different types of HTTP connector so we must declare them both in the config -->
    <http:polling-connector name="PollingHttpConnector" pollingFrequency="30000" reuseAddress="true" />    <http:connector name="HttpConnector" />
    <flow name="polling">
        <http:inbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="8080" connector-ref="PollingHttpConnector" exchange-pattern="one-way">
            <property key="Accept" value="application/xml" />
        </http:inbound-endpoint>
        <vm:outbound-endpoint path="toclient" exchange-pattern="one-way" />
    </flow>
    <flow name="polled">
        <inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080" connector-ref="HttpConnector" />        <test:component>
            <test:return-data>foo</test:return-data>
        </test:component>
    </flow>
</mule>

Mule Service

Polling HTTP

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core"      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"      xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"      xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http"      xmlns:vm="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm"      xmlns:test="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test"      xsi:schemaLocation="       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/test/3.2/mule-test.xsd       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm/3.2/mule-vm.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd">    <http:polling-connector name="PollingHttpConnector" pollingFrequency="30000" reuseAddress="true"/>    <http:connector name="HttpConnector"/>
    <vm:connector name="vmQueue"/>
    <model name="http polling test model">
        <service name="polling">
            <inbound>
                <http:inbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="8080"                          connector-ref="PollingHttpConnector" exchange-pattern="one-way">
                    <property key="Accept" value="application/xml"/>
                </http:inbound-endpoint>
            </inbound>
            <test:component/>
            <outbound>
                <pass-through-router>
                    <outbound-endpoint address="vm://toclient" exchange-pattern="one-way"/>
                </pass-through-router>
            </outbound>
        </service>
        <service name="polled">
            <inbound>
                <inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080"                                  connector-ref="HttpConnector"/>
            </inbound>
            <test:component>
                <test:return-data>foo</test:return-data>
            </test:component>
        </service>
    </model>
</mule>

Mule Flow

WebServer - Static Content

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core"      xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"      xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http"
      xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd
      http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http
      http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd">
    <flow name="httpWebServer">
        <http:inbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:8080/static"/>
        <http:static-resource-handler resourceBase="${app.home}/docroot"                defaultFile="index.html"/>
    </flow>
</mule>

Mule Flow

Setting Cookies on a Request

<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"    xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"    xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http" xmlns:vm="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm"    xsi:schemaLocation="       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm/3.2/mule-vm.xsd">    <http:connector name="httpConnector" enableCookies="true" />    <flow name="testService">        <vm:inbound-endpoint path="vm-in" exchange-pattern="one-way" />        <http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:${port1}"            method="POST" exchange-pattern="one-way" content-type="text/xml">            <properties>                <spring:entry key="cookies">                    <spring:map>                        <spring:entry key="customCookie" value="yes"/>                        <spring:entry key="expressionCookie" value="#[header:INBOUND:COOKIE_HEADER]"/>                    </spring:map>                </spring:entry>            </properties>        </http:outbound-endpoint>    </flow></mule>

Mule Service

Setting Cookies on a Request

<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core"    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"    xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"    xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http"    xmlns:vm="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm"    xsi:schemaLocation="       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/vm/3.2/mule-vm.xsd">    <http:connector name="httpConnector" enableCookies="true"/>    <model name="main">        <service name="testService">            <inbound>                <vm:inbound-endpoint path="vm-in" exchange-pattern="one-way"/>            </inbound>            <outbound>                <pass-through-router>                    <http:outbound-endpoint address="http://localhost:${port1}" method="POST"                         exchange-pattern="one-way">                        <properties>                            <spring:entry key="Content-Type" value="text/xml" />                            <spring:entry key="cookies">                                <spring:map>                                    <spring:entry key="customCookie" value="yes"/>                                    <spring:entry key="expressionCookie"                          value="#[header:INBOUND:COOKIE_HEADER]"/>                                </spring:map>                            </spring:entry>                        </properties>                    </http:outbound-endpoint>                </pass-through-router>            </outbound>        </service>    </model></mule>

Configuration Reference

Connector

Allows Mule to communicate over HTTP. All parts of the HTTP spec are covered by Mule, so you can expect ETags to be honored as well as keep alive semantics and cookies.

Attributes of <connector…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
cookieSpec	enumeration	no	The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.
proxyHostname	string	no	The proxy host name or address.
proxyPassword	string	no	The password to use for proxy access.
proxyPort	port number	no	The proxy port number.
proxyUsername	string	no	The username to use for proxy access.
proxyNtlmAuthentication	boolean	no	Whether the proxy authentication scheme is NTLM or not. This property is required in order to use the right credentials under that scheme. Default is false
enableCookies	boolean	no	Whether to support cookies.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

cookieSpec

enumeration

no

The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.

proxyHostname

string

no

The proxy host name or address.

proxyPassword

string

no

The password to use for proxy access.

proxyPort

port number

no

The proxy port number.

proxyUsername

string

no

The username to use for proxy access.

proxyNtlmAuthentication

boolean

no

Whether the proxy authentication scheme is NTLM or not. This property is required in order to use the right credentials under that scheme. Default is false

enableCookies

boolean

no

Whether to support cookies.

Child Elements of <connector…>

Name

Cardinality

Description

This connector also accepts all the attributes from the TCP connector.

For example:

<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core"       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"       xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"       xmlns:http="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http"    xsi:schemaLocation="       http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/3.2/mule.xsd       http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/http/3.2/mule-http.xsd">    <http:connector name="HttpConnector" enableCookies="true" keepAlive="true"/>...</mule>

Polling connector

Allows Mule to poll an external HTTP server and generate events from the result. This is useful for pull-only web services.

Attributes of <polling-connector…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
cookieSpec	enumeration	no	The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.
proxyHostname	string	no	The proxy host name or address.
proxyPassword	string	no	The password to use for proxy access.
proxyPort	port number	no	The proxy port number.
proxyUsername	string	no	The username to use for proxy access.
proxyNtlmAuthentication	boolean	no	Whether the proxy authentication scheme is NTLM or not. This property is required in order to use the right credentials under that scheme. Default is false
enableCookies	boolean	no	Whether to support cookies.
pollingFrequency	long	no	The time in milliseconds to wait between each request to the remote HTTP server.
checkEtag	boolean	no	Whether the ETag header from the remote server is processed if the header is present.
discardEmptyContent	boolean	no	Whether Mule should discard any messages from the remote server that have a zero content length. For many services a zero length would mean there was no data to return. If the remote HTTP server does return content to say that that the request is empty, users can configure a content filter on the endpoint to filter these messages out.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

cookieSpec

enumeration

no

The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.

proxyHostname

string

no

The proxy host name or address.

proxyPassword

string

no

The password to use for proxy access.

proxyPort

port number

no

The proxy port number.

proxyUsername

string

no

The username to use for proxy access.

proxyNtlmAuthentication

boolean

no

Whether the proxy authentication scheme is NTLM or not. This property is required in order to use the right credentials under that scheme. Default is false

enableCookies

boolean

no

Whether to support cookies.

pollingFrequency

long

no

The time in milliseconds to wait between each request to the remote HTTP server.

checkEtag

boolean

no

Whether the ETag header from the remote server is processed if the header is present.

discardEmptyContent

boolean

no

Whether Mule should discard any messages from the remote server that have a zero content length. For many services a zero length would mean there was no data to return. If the remote HTTP server does return content to say that that the request is empty, users can configure a content filter on the endpoint to filter these messages out.

Child Elements of <polling-connector…>

Name

Cardinality

Description

This connector also accepts all the attributes from the TCP connector.

For more information, see "Polling HTTP Services".

Rest service component

Built-in RestServiceWrapper can be used to proxy REST style services as local Mule components.

Attributes of <rest-service-component…>

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
httpMethod	enumeration	no	GET	The HTTP method to use when making the service request.
serviceUrl		yes		The service URL to use when making the request. This should not contain any parameters, since these should be configured on the component. The service URL can contain Mule expressions, so the URL can be dynamic for each message request.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

httpMethod

enumeration

no

GET

The HTTP method to use when making the service request.

serviceUrl

yes

The service URL to use when making the request. This should not contain any parameters, since these should be configured on the component. The service URL can contain Mule expressions, so the URL can be dynamic for each message request.

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…>

Name	Cardinality	Description
error-filter	0..1	An error filter can be used to detect whether the response from the remote service resulted in an error.
payloadParameterName	0..*	If the payload of the message is to be attached as a URL parameter, this should be set to the parameter name. If the message payload is an array of objects that multiple parameters can be set to, use each element in the array.
requiredParameter	0..*	These are parameters that must be available on the current message for the request to be successful. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.
optionalParameter	0..*	These are parameters that if they are on the current message will be added to the request, otherwise they will be ignored. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

Name

Cardinality

Description

error-filter

0..1

An error filter can be used to detect whether the response from the remote service resulted in an error.

payloadParameterName

0..*

If the payload of the message is to be attached as a URL parameter, this should be set to the parameter name. If the message payload is an array of objects that multiple parameters can be set to, use each element in the array.

requiredParameter

0..*

These are parameters that must be available on the current message for the request to be successful. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

optionalParameter

0..*

These are parameters that if they are on the current message will be added to the request, otherwise they will be ignored. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

Inbound endpoint

An inbound HTTP endpoint exposes a service over HTTP, essentially making it an HTTP server. If polling of a remote HTTP service is required, this endpoint should be configured with a polling HTTP connector.

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <inbound-endpoint…>

For example:

<http:inbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="63081" path="services/Echo" keep-alive="true"/>

The HTTP inbound endpoint attributes override those specified for the default inbound endpoint attributes.

Outbound endpoint

The HTTP outbound endpoint allows Mule to send requests to external servers or Mule inbound HTTP endpoints using the HTTP protocol.

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
followRedirects	boolean	no	If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

followRedirects

boolean

no

If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <outbound-endpoint…>

For example:

<http:outbound-endpoint host="localhost" port="8080" method="POST"/>

The HTTP outbound endpoint attributes override those specified for the default outbound endpoint attributes.

Endpoint

Configures a 'global' HTTP endpoint that can be referenced by services. Services can augment the configuration defined in the global endpoint with local configuration elements.

Attributes of <endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
followRedirects	boolean	no	If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

followRedirects

boolean

no

If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL. It must not start with a slash.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <endpoint…>

For example:

<http:endpoint name="serverEndpoint1" host="localhost" port="60199" path="test1" />

The HTTP endpoint attributes override those specified for the default global endpoint attributes.

HTTP Transport

The HTTP transport provides support for exposing services over HTTP and making HTTP client requests from Mule services to external services as part of service event flows. Mule supports inbound, outbound, and polling HTTP endpooints. These endpoints support all common features of the HTTP spec, such as ETag processing, cookies, and keepalive. Both HTTP 1.0 and 1.1 are supported.

Connector

Allows Mule to communicate over HTTP. All parts of the HTTP spec are covered by Mule, so you can expect ETags to be honored as well as keep alive semantics and cookies.

Attributes of <connector…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
cookieSpec	enumeration	no	The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.
proxyHostname	string	no	The proxy host name or address.
proxyPassword	string	no	The password to use for proxy access.
proxyPort	port number	no	The proxy port number.
proxyUsername	string	no	The username to use for proxy access.
enableCookies	boolean	no	Whether to support cookies.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

cookieSpec

enumeration

no

The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.

proxyHostname

string

no

The proxy host name or address.

proxyPassword

string

no

The password to use for proxy access.

proxyPort

port number

no

The proxy port number.

proxyUsername

string

no

The username to use for proxy access.

enableCookies

boolean

no

Whether to support cookies.

No Child Elements of <connector…>

Inbound endpoint

An inbound HTTP endpoint exposes a service over HTTP, essentially making it an HTTP server. If polling of a remote HTTP service is required, this endpoint should be configured with a polling HTTP connector.

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <inbound-endpoint…>

Outbound endpoint

The HTTP outbound endpoint allows Mule to send requests to external servers or Mule inbound HTTP endpoints using the HTTP protocol.

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
followRedirects	boolean	no	If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

followRedirects

boolean

no

If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <outbound-endpoint…>

Endpoint

Configures a 'global' HTTP endpoint that can be referenced by services. Services can augment the configuration defined in the global endpoint with local configuration elements.

Attributes of <endpoint…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
followRedirects	boolean	no	If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).
user	string	no	The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.
password	string	no	The password for the user.
host	string	no	The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.
port	port number	no	The port number to use when a connection is made.
path	string	no	The path for the HTTP URL.
contentType	string	no	The HTTP ContentType to use.
method	httpMethodTypes	no	The HTTP method to use.
keep-alive	boolean	no	Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

followRedirects

boolean

no

If a request if made using GET that responds with a redirectLocation header, setting this to true will make the request on the redirect URL. This only works when using GET since you cannot automatically follow redirects when perfroming a POST (a restriction according to RFC 2616).

user

string

no

The user name (if any) that will be used to authenticate against.

password

string

no

The password for the user.

host

string

no

The host to connect to. For inbound endpoints, this should be an address of a local network interface.

port

port number

no

The port number to use when a connection is made.

path

string

no

The path for the HTTP URL.

contentType

string

no

The HTTP ContentType to use.

method

httpMethodTypes

no

The HTTP method to use.

keep-alive

boolean

no

Controls if the socket connection is kept alive. If set to true, a keep-alive header with the connection timeout specified in the connector will be returned. If set to false, a "Connection: close" header will be returned.

No Child Elements of <endpoint…>

Transformers

These are transformers specific to this transport. Note that these are added automatically to the Mule registry at start up. When doing automatic transformations these will be included when searching for the correct transformers.

Name	Description
http-response-to-object-transformer	A transformer that converts an HTTP response to a Mule Message. The payload may be a String, stream, or byte array.
http-response-to-string-transformer	Converts an HTTP response payload into a string. The headers of the response will be preserved on the message.
object-to-http-request-transformer	This transformer will create a valid HTTP request using the current message and any HTTP headers set on the current message.
message-to-http-response-transformer	This transformer will create a valid HTTP response using the current message and any HTTP headers set on the current message.
body-to-parameter-map-transformer	This transformer parses the body of a HTTP request into a Map.

Name

Description

http-response-to-object-transformer

A transformer that converts an HTTP response to a Mule Message. The payload may be a String, stream, or byte array.

http-response-to-string-transformer

Converts an HTTP response payload into a string. The headers of the response will be preserved on the message.

object-to-http-request-transformer

This transformer will create a valid HTTP request using the current message and any HTTP headers set on the current message.

message-to-http-response-transformer

This transformer will create a valid HTTP response using the current message and any HTTP headers set on the current message.

body-to-parameter-map-transformer

This transformer parses the body of a HTTP request into a Map.

Filters

Filters can be used to control which data is allowed to continue in the flow.

Name	Description
request-wildcard-filter	(As of 2.2.2) The request-wildcard-filter element can be used to restrict the request by applying wildcard expressions to the URL.

Name

Description

request-wildcard-filter

(As of 2.2.2) The request-wildcard-filter element can be used to restrict the request by applying wildcard expressions to the URL.

Polling connector

Allows Mule to poll an external HTTP server and generate events from the result. This is useful for pull-only web services.

Attributes of <polling-connector…>

Name	Type	Required	Description
cookieSpec	enumeration	no	The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.
proxyHostname	string	no	The proxy host name or address.
proxyPassword	string	no	The password to use for proxy access.
proxyPort	port number	no	The proxy port number.
proxyUsername	string	no	The username to use for proxy access.
enableCookies	boolean	no	Whether to support cookies.
pollingFrequency	long	no	The time in milliseconds to wait between each request to the remote HTTP server.
checkEtag	boolean	no	Whether the ETag header from the remote server is processed if the header is present.
discardEmptyContent	boolean	no	Whether Mule should discard any messages from the remote server that have a zero content length. For many services a zero length would mean there was no data to return. If the remote HTTP server does return content to say that that the request is empty, users can configure a content filter on the endpoint to filter these messages out.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

cookieSpec

enumeration

no

The cookie specification to be used by this connector when cookies are enabled.

proxyHostname

string

no

The proxy host name or address.

proxyPassword

string

no

The password to use for proxy access.

proxyPort

port number

no

The proxy port number.

proxyUsername

string

no

The username to use for proxy access.

enableCookies

boolean

no

Whether to support cookies.

pollingFrequency

long

no

The time in milliseconds to wait between each request to the remote HTTP server.

checkEtag

boolean

no

Whether the ETag header from the remote server is processed if the header is present.

discardEmptyContent

boolean

no

Whether Mule should discard any messages from the remote server that have a zero content length. For many services a zero length would mean there was no data to return. If the remote HTTP server does return content to say that that the request is empty, users can configure a content filter on the endpoint to filter these messages out.

No Child Elements of <polling-connector…>

Rest service component

Built-in RestServiceWrapper can be used to proxy REST style services as local Mule components.

Attributes of <rest-service-component…>

Name	Type	Required	Default	Description
httpMethod	enumeration	no	GET	The HTTP method to use when making the service request.
serviceUrl		yes		The service URL to use when making the request. This should not contain any parameters, since these should be configured on the component. The service URL can contain Mule expressions, so the URL can be dynamic for each message request.

Name

Type

Required

Default

Description

httpMethod

enumeration

no

GET

The HTTP method to use when making the service request.

serviceUrl

yes

The service URL to use when making the request. This should not contain any parameters, since these should be configured on the component. The service URL can contain Mule expressions, so the URL can be dynamic for each message request.

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…>

Name	Cardinality	Description
error-filter	0..1	An error filter can be used to detect whether the response from the remote service resulted in an error.
payloadParameterName	0..*	If the payload of the message is to be attached as a URL parameter, this should be set to the parameter name. If the message payload is an array of objects that multiple parameters can be set to, use each element in the array.
requiredParameter	0..*	These are parameters that must be available on the current message for the request to be successful. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.
optionalParameter	0..*	These are parameters that if they are on the current message will be added to the request, otherwise they will be ignored. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

Name

Cardinality

Description

error-filter

0..1

An error filter can be used to detect whether the response from the remote service resulted in an error.

payloadParameterName

0..*

If the payload of the message is to be attached as a URL parameter, this should be set to the parameter name. If the message payload is an array of objects that multiple parameters can be set to, use each element in the array.

requiredParameter

0..*

These are parameters that must be available on the current message for the request to be successful. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

optionalParameter

0..*

These are parameters that if they are on the current message will be added to the request, otherwise they will be ignored. The Key maps to the parameter name, the value can be any one of the valid expressions supported by Mule.

Request wildcard filter

(As of 2.2.2) The request-wildcard-filter element can be used to restrict the request by applying wildcard expressions to the URL.

No Child Elements of <request-wildcard-filter…>

Introduction

Namespace and Syntax

XML Schema

Syntax

Features

Basic Usage

Security

Sending Credentials

Cookies

Polling HTTP Services

Handling HTTP Content-Type and Encoding

Sending

Receiving

Including Custom Header Properties

Building the Target URL from the Request

Handling Redirects

Getting a Hash Map of POST body params

Processing GET Query Parameters

Serving Static Content

Content-Type Handling

Examples

Mule Flow

Mule Service

Mule Flow

Mule Flow

Mule Service

Configuration Reference

Connector

Attributes of <connector…​>

Child Elements of <connector…​>

Polling connector

Attributes of <polling-connector…​>

Child Elements of <polling-connector…​>

Rest service component

Attributes of <rest-service-component…​>

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…​>

Inbound endpoint

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…​>

Outbound endpoint

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…​>

Endpoint

Attributes of <endpoint…​>

HTTP Transport

Connector

Attributes of <connector…​>

Inbound endpoint

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…​>

Outbound endpoint

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…​>

Endpoint

Attributes of <endpoint…​>

Transformers

Filters

Polling connector

Attributes of <polling-connector…​>

Rest service component

Attributes of <rest-service-component…​>

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…​>

Request wildcard filter

Attributes of <connector…>

Child Elements of <connector…>

Attributes of <polling-connector…>

Child Elements of <polling-connector…>

Attributes of <rest-service-component…>

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…>

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…>

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…>

Attributes of <endpoint…>

Attributes of <connector…>

Attributes of <inbound-endpoint…>

Attributes of <outbound-endpoint…>

Attributes of <endpoint…>

Attributes of <polling-connector…>

Attributes of <rest-service-component…>

Child Elements of <rest-service-component…>