Review of book "Apache Camel Developer's Cookbook"

Spoiler: I have been assigned  to review this "Apache Camel Developer's Cookbook" since I won a free copy in a contest on LinkedIn.

This book should be read by developers already familiar with Camel existence (e.g. read first "Camel in Action" - you will learn how Camel works). It references the most Valuable EIPs with a good discussion and examples (and code maven managed!) about each one. It presents EIPs like Content Based Router, Filter, Wire Tap, Multicast, Content Enricher, Recipient List, Throttler, Load Balancer, Routing Slip, Enricher, Splitter, etc. Its follows the common PACKT's presentation format "Getting ready" / "How to do it..." / "How it works..." / "There's more..." / "See also". It felt like reading Camel's official Documentation but from a user guide's approach and not a detailed reference approach.

What I liked most was a whole a chapter on testing. Integration with Spring (a common usage scenario) is also presented throughout the book. I really liked "Chapter 8: Transactions and Idempotency" where more advanced issues are presented about transactions on a single-resource and on how to implement distributed transactions without XA (hint: using Idempotent EIP).

To sum up:

- Don't read it if this is your first contact with Camel.

- Read it if you want good examples on how to use Camel's patterns and official documentation is not enough for you. Source code provides hands-on experience on all the EIPs presented on the book.