If you want to stop the route you are currently using, you can’t do it using

context.stopRoute()

because it will wait for the current “inflight” message to be processed until “the end”.

So you need to do this async:

// ....
  private void shutdownRoute() {
    ShutdownRoute shutdownRoute = new ShutdownRoute(camelContext);
    new Thread(shutdownRoute).start();
    try {
      Thread.sleep(1000); // makes sure route is stop before this message finished 
    } catch (InterruptedException e) {
      // whatever
    }
  }
// ...

class ShutdownRoute implements Runnable {
  /** log instance */
  private Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(ShutdownRoute.class.getName());
  
  private final CamelContext context;
  
  ShutdownRoute(final CamelContext cContext) {
    context = cContext;
    
  }
  
  @Override
  public void run() {
    try {      
      context.stopRoute(YOUR_ROUTE_ID);
    } catch (Exception e) {
      log.error("Failed to stop route",e);
    }
  }
}

We do this when using the circuit breaker pattern. In the error handling processor we check if the circuit breaker goes to the OPEN state. If so, the route stops itself. Via another route we check periodically if the circuit breaker is in the HALF-OPEN state and start the route again.

At one point in our latest project using Apache Camel, I wanted to stop a message from being further processed depending on a condition. This is quite easy to do with the route builder, for example:

from("direct:example")
  .choice()
    .when(header("someheader").isEqualTo("bla"))
      .stop()
  .end()

If you already know that a message needs to be stopped right away in a Processor or a AggregationStrategy, there is an easy way to signal this without a seperate “stop-branch” in the route. You simply set the header ROUTE_STOP to TRUE like this:

if  (....) { // stop here 
      original.setProperty(Exchange.ROUTE_STOP, Boolean.TRUE);
      return original;
}

And the message will not be further processed.