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VM Connector Reference - Mule 4

VM Connector v2.0

Anypoint Connector for Virtual Machine (VM) (VM Connector) provides intra-app and inter-app communication through transient or persistent asynchronous queues. Transient queues are faster, but not as reliable as persistent queues if the system crashes. Persistent queues, on the other hand, are slower but reliable.

When running on a single instance, persistent queues work by serializing and storing the contents on to disk. When running in cluster mode, persistent queues are instead backed by the memory grid. This means that when a Mule flow uses VM Connector to publish content to a queue, Mule runtime engine (Mule) decides whether to process that message in the same origin node or to send it out to the cluster to be picked up and processed by another node. This is an easy way to distribute load across the cluster and ensure that transactions are always supported.

Each configuration defines its own set of queues, which are visible only to components referencing that configuration.

Configurations


Default Configuration

These are the parameters for the default configuration:

Parameters

Name Type Description Default Value Required

Name

String

The name for this configuration. Connectors reference the configuration with this name.

x

Connection

The connection types that can be provided to this configuration.

x

Queues

Array of Queue

The queues that this configuration owns.

x

Connection Types

Connection

Returns instances of VMConnection.

Parameters
Name Type Description Default Value Required

Reconnection

When the application is deployed, a connectivity test is performed on all connectors. If set to true, deployment fails if the test doesn’t pass after exhausting the associated reconnection strategy.

Associated Operations

Associated Sources

Operations

Consume

<vm:consume>

This operation pulls a message from a queue. If a message is not immediately available, the Consume operation waits for up to the configured queueTimeout value, after which a VM:QUEUE_TIMEOUT error is thrown.

The flow in which the content is consumed cannot contain a Listener (<vm:listener>) source.

Parameters

Name Type Description Default Value Required

Configuration

String

The name of the configuration to use.

x

Transactional Action

Enumeration, one of:

  • ALWAYS_JOIN: The current operation joins to the current transactions. If a transaction doesn’t exist or is not compatible with the operation, the execution fails.

  • JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE: The current operation joins to available transactions. If there is no transaction to join, the current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

  • NOT_SUPPORTED: The current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

The type of joining action that operations can take regarding transactions.

JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE

Queue Name

String

The name of the queue.

x

Timeout

Number

How long to wait for the queue to complete an operation (either publishing or consuming) before failing with a timeout error. The default is 5 seconds.

5

Timeout Unit

Enumeration, one of:

  • NANOSECONDS

  • MICROSECONDS

  • MILLISECONDS

  • SECONDS

  • MINUTES

  • HOURS

  • DAYS

A TimeUnit that qualifies the #timeoutUnit

SECONDS

Target Variable

String

The name of a variable in which the operation’s output is placed.

Target Value

String

An expression that evaluates against the operations’s output. The outcome of this expression is stored in the target variable.

#[payload]

Reconnection Strategy

A retry strategy in case of connectivity errors.

Output

Type

Any

Attributes Type

For Configurations

Throws

  • VM:EMPTY_QUEUE

  • VM:RETRY_EXHAUSTED

  • VM:CONNECTIVITY

Publish

<vm:publish>

This operation publishes the given content into the queue of the given queue name.

Parameters

Name Type Description Default Value Required

Configuration

String

The name of the configuration to use.

x

Content

Any

The content to be published.

#[payload]

Transactional Action

Enumeration, one of:

  • ALWAYS_JOIN: The current operation joins to the current transactions. If a transaction doesn’t exist or is not compatible with the operation, the execution fails.

  • JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE: The current operation joins to available transactions. If there is no transaction to join, the current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

  • NOT_SUPPORTED: The current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

The type of joining action that operations can take regarding transactions.

JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE

Queue Name

String

The name of the queue

x

Timeout

Number

How long to wait for the queue to complete an operation (either publishing or consuming) before failing with a timeout error. The default is 5 seconds.

5

Timeout Unit

Enumeration, one of:

  • NANOSECONDS

  • MICROSECONDS

  • MILLISECONDS

  • SECONDS

  • MINUTES

  • HOURS

  • DAYS

A TimeUnit that qualifies the #timeoutUnit.

SECONDS

Reconnection Strategy

A retry strategy in case of connectivity errors.

For Configurations

Throws

  • VM:RETRY_EXHAUSTED

  • VM:QUEUE_TIMEOUT

  • VM:CONNECTIVITY

Publish Consume

<vm:publish-consume>

This operation publishes the provided content into a queue, and then waits up to the time configured in queueTimeout for a response to be supplied on a temporal reply-To queue that this operation creates automatically.

The temporal reply-To queue is automatically disposed of after a response is received or the timeout expires.

The flow in which the content is published cannot contain a Listener (<vm:listener>) source.

Parameters

Name Type Description Default Value Required

Configuration

String

The name of the configuration to use.

x

Content

Any

The content to be published

#[payload]

Transactional Action

Enumeration, one of:

  • ALWAYS_JOIN: The current operation joins to the current transactions. If a transaction doesn’t exist or is not compatible with the operation, the execution fails.

  • JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE: The current operation joins to available transactions. If there is no transaction to join, the current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

  • NOT_SUPPORTED: The current operation executes outside of existing transactions.

The type of joining action that operations can take regarding transactions.

JOIN_IF_POSSIBLE

Queue Name

String

The name of the queue

x

Timeout

Number

How long to wait for the queue to complete an operation (either publishing or consuming) before failing with a timeout error. The default is 5 seconds.

5

Timeout Unit

Enumeration, one of:

  • NANOSECONDS

  • MICROSECONDS

  • MILLISECONDS

  • SECONDS

  • MINUTES

  • HOURS

  • DAYS

A TimeUnit that qualifies the #timeoutUnit

SECONDS

Target Variable

String

The name of a variable in which the operation’s output is placed.

Target Value

String

An expression to evaluate against the operation’s output and the outcome of that expression is stored in the target variable.

#[payload]

Reconnection Strategy

A retry strategy in case of connectivity errors.

Output

Type

Any

Attributes Type

For Configurations

Throws

  • VM:RETRY_EXHAUSTED

  • VM:QUEUE_TIMEOUT

  • VM:CONNECTIVITY

Sources

Listener

<vm:listener>

A source that creates and listens on VM queues. VM queues are created by placing listeners on them, which is why this listener contains parameters for a queue’s behavior, such as whether or not it is persistent, the maximum capacity, and so on.

Parameters

Name Type Description Default Value Required

Configuration

String

The name of the configuration to use.

x

Number Of Consumers

Number

The number of concurrent consumers to place on the queue. As the number of consumers increases, so does the speed at which this source pushes messages into the owning flow. The default is 4 concurrent consumers.

4

Transactional Action

Enumeration, one of:

  • ALWAYS_BEGIN

  • NONE

The type of beginning action that sources can take regarding transactions.

NONE

Transaction Type

Enumeration, one of:

  • LOCAL

  • XA

The type of transaction to create. Availability depends on the Mule version.

LOCAL

Redelivery Policy

Defines a policy for processing the redelivery of a message.

Queue Name

String

The name of the queue.

x

Timeout

Number

How long to wait for the queue to complete an operation (either publishing or consuming) before failing with a timeout error. The default is 5 seconds.

5

Timeout Unit

Enumeration, one of:

  • NANOSECONDS

  • MICROSECONDS

  • MILLISECONDS

  • SECONDS

  • MINUTES

  • HOURS

  • DAYS

A TimeUnit that qualifies the #timeoutUnit

SECONDS

Reconnection Strategy

A retry strategy in case of connectivity errors.

Content

Any

#[payload]

Output

Type

Any

Attributes Type

For Configurations

Types

Reconnection

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Fails Deployment

Boolean

When the application is deployed, a connectivity test is performed on all connectors. If set to true, deployment fails if the test doesn’t pass after exhausting the associated reconnection strategy.

Reconnection Strategy

The reconnection strategy to use.

Reconnect

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Frequency

Number

How often in milliseconds to reconnect.

Count

Number

How many reconnection attempts to make.

blocking

Boolean

If false, the reconnection strategy runs in a separate, non-blocking thread.

true

Reconnect Forever

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Frequency

Number

How often in milliseconds to reconnect.

blocking

Boolean

If false, the reconnection strategy runs in a separate, non-blocking thread.

true

Queue

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Queue Name

String

The name of the queue

x

Queue Type

Enumeration, one of:

  • TRANSIENT

  • PERSISTENT

Specifies whether the queue is persistent or transient

TRANSIENT

Max Outstanding Messages

Number

Specifies the number of messages that can be queued before blocking starts. When the value is 0, blocking starts immediately.

0

VM Message Attributes

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Queue Name

String

Name of the queue the content came from.

Timestamp

DateTime

Time that the content was retrieved.

Redelivery Policy

Field Type Description Default Value Required

Max Redelivery Count

Number

The maximum number of times a message can be redelivered and processed unsuccessfully before triggering process-failed message.

Use Secure Hash

Boolean

Whether to use a secure hash algorithm to identify a redelivered message.

Message Digest Algorithm

String

The secure hashing algorithm to use. If not set, the default is SHA-256.

Id Expression

String

Defines one or more expressions to use to determine when a message has been redelivered. This property can be set only if useSecureHash is false.

Object Store

ObjectStore

The object store where the redelivery counter for each message is stored.

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