ESB Mediators

A mediator is the basic message processing unit and a fundamental part the ESB profile. A mediator can take a message, carry out some predefined actions on it, and output the modified message. For example, the Clone mediator splits a message into several clones, the Send mediator sends the messages, and the Aggregate mediator collects and merges the responses before sending them back to the client. 

The ESB profile ships with a range of mediators capable of carrying out various tasks on input messages, including functionality to match incompatible protocols, data formats and interaction patterns across different resources. Data can be split, cloned, aggregated, and enriched, allowing the ESB profile to match the different capabilities of services. XQuery and XSLT allow rich transformations on the messages. Rule-based message mediation allows users to cope with the uncertainty of business logic. Content-based routing using XPath filtering is supported in different flavors, allowing users to get the most convenient configuration experience. Built-in capability to handle Transactions allows message mediation to be done transactionally inside the ESB profile. With the eventing capabilities of the ESB profile, EDA based components can be easily interconnected, allowing the ESB profile to be used in the front-end of an organisation's SOA infrastructure.

A mediator is a full-powered processing unit in the ESB profile of WSO2 EI. At run-time, a mediator has access to all the parts of the ESB profile along with the current message and can do virtually anything with the message. At the run-time, a message is injected in to the mediator with the ESB profile information. Then this mediator can do virtually anything with the message. A user can write a mediator and put it into the ESB profile. This custom mediator and any other built-in mediator will be exactly the same as the API and the privileges (Refer to more information in Creating Custom Mediators).

A mediation sequence, commonly called a "sequence", is a list of mediators. That means, it can hold other mediators and execute them. It is part of the ESB profile's core and message mediation cannot live without this mediator. When a message is delivered to a sequence, it sends the message through all its child mediators. For more information, see Mediation Sequences.

The Process of message mediation is depicted in the diagram below.

In case an error occurs in the main sequence while processing, the message goes to the fault sequence.

When adding a mediator to a sequence, you can configure the mediator in design view or in source view. Usually, a mediator is configured using XML. Source view provides the XML representation of the configurations done in the UI. When you edit the source XML all changes immediately reflect in the design view as well.

Each mediator has its own XML configuration. You can change the following mediators using their source view:

• Aggregate Mediator
• Cache Mediator
• Filter Mediator
• In Mediator
• Iterate Mediator
• Out Mediator
• Sequence Mediator
• Synapse Mediator
• Template Mediator
• Validate Mediator
   

Mediators in a sequence can be one of the following types:

• Node mediators - Contains child mediators.
• Leaf mediators - Does not hold any other child mediators.

Mediators are classified as follows based on whether or not they access the message's content: 

• Content-aware mediators: These mediators always access the message content when mediating messages (e.g., Enrich mediator).
• Content-unaware mediators: These mediators never access the message content when mediating messages (e.g., Send mediator).
• Conditionally content-aware mediators: These mediators could be either content-aware or content-unaware depending on their exact instance configuration. For an example a simple Log Mediator instance (i.e. configured as <log/>) is content-unaware. However a log mediator configured as <log level=”full”/> would be content-aware since it is expected to log the message payload.

Mediators are considered to be one of the main mechanisms for extending an EI. You can create custom mediators and add them to the ESB profile. This custom mediator and any other built-in mediator will be exactly the same as the API and the privileges.

The standard mediators in the ESB profile are listed in the table below. Click a link for details on that mediator. There are also many samples that demonstrate how to use mediators.

The WSO2 EI mediator catalog