MULE create custom agent

Question

I wanted to do some stuff before any mule application starts. As per the Mule documentation we can write a custom Agent for this. However, my agent is not loading when mule starts.

Can anyone help me in providing an example on how to create a custom agent.

I have created a test program for the same as shown below

CustomAgent Class

package agent;

import org.mule.api.MuleException;
import org.mule.api.agent.Agent;
import org.mule.api.lifecycle.InitialisationException;

public class CustomAgent implements Agent{

    public CustomAgent() {

    }

    private String port;

    public String getPort() {
        return port;
    }

    public void setPort(String port) {
        this.port = port;
    }

    @Override
    public void initialise() throws InitialisationException {
        System.out.println("Initialize on port: " + port);

    }

    @Override
    public void start() throws MuleException {
        System.out.println("Started on port: " + port);

    }

    @Override
    public void stop() throws MuleException {
        System.out.println("Stopping the agent");

    }

    @Override
    public void dispose() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub

    }

    @Override
    public void setName(String name) {
        this.port = name;       
    }

    @Override
    public String getName() {
        return port;
    }

    @Override
    public String getDescription() {
        // TODO Auto-generated method stub
        return getName();
    }


}

This is my CustomAgent.xml file

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

<mule xmlns="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core" xmlns:doc="http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/documentation"
    xmlns:spring="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans" version="EE-3.3.3"
    xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
    xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-current.xsd
http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core http://www.mulesoft.org/schema/mule/core/current/mule.xsd">
    <custom-agent name="mycustomagent" class="agent.AgentTest">
        <spring:property name="port" value="8899"></spring:property>
    </custom-agent>
</mule>

I tried exporting a jar file and putting in

MULE_HOME\lib\opt

and

MULE_HOME\lib\user

but its not getting loaded as an agent.

Please help!

Answer 1

You have two options to run the agent in Mule, depending on what's your actual use case:
a. You deploy it as a regular Mule application, i.e., a zip file with the appropriate structure, containing the XML configuration and the agent's class.
b. You package it as a jar and you declare the agent configuration in another Mule application, i.e., including this in that other Mule app:

<custom-agent name="mycustomagent" class="agent.AgentTest">
    <spring:property name="port" value="8899"></spring:property>
</custom-agent>