I've tried to give the kafka component a whirl (disclaimer - I am new to both camel and kafka).
Tried this and got this exception when sending a message to kafka In my spring class that produces: @Autowired private ProducerTemplate template; public void sendKakfaMessage(Integer id){ template.sendBodyAndHeader("direct:testingKafka", String.valueOf(id), KafkaConstants.PARTITION_KEY, "1"); } In my route in a configuration class @Bean public RouteBuilder routeBuilder() { return new RouteBuilder() { @Override public void configure() throws Exception { from("direct:testingKafka").to("kafka:localhost:9092?topic=test"); } }; } Gives me the below exception. Caused by: java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.String cannot be cast to [B at kafka.serializer.DefaultEncoder.toBytes(Encoder.scala:34) at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler$$anonfun$serialize$1.apply(DefaultEventHandler.scala:128) at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler$$anonfun$serialize$1.apply(DefaultEventHandler.scala:125) at scala.collection.TraversableLike$$anonfun$map$1.apply(TraversableLike.scala:244) at scala.collection.TraversableLike$$anonfun$map$1.apply(TraversableLike.scala:244) at scala.collection.IndexedSeqOptimized$class.foreach(IndexedSeqOptimized.scala:33) at scala.collection.mutable.WrappedArray.foreach(WrappedArray.scala:34) at scala.collection.TraversableLike$class.map(TraversableLike.scala:244) at scala.collection.AbstractTraversable.map(Traversable.scala:105) at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler.serialize(DefaultEventHandler.scala:125) at kafka.producer.async.DefaultEventHandler.handle(DefaultEventHandler.scala:52) at kafka.producer.Producer.send(Producer.scala:76) at kafka.javaapi.producer.Producer.send(Producer.scala:33) at org.apache.camel.component.kafka.KafkaProducer.process(KafkaProducer.java:78) at org.apache.camel.util.AsyncProcessorConverterHelper$ProcessorToAsyncProcessorBridge.process(AsyncProcessorConverterHelper.java:61) at org.apache.camel.processor.SendProcessor.process(SendProcessor.java:113) -- View this message in context: http://camel.465427.n5.nabble.com/Camel-Kafka-Component-tp5749525p5756454.html Sent from the Camel Development mailing list archive at Nabble.com.