How do I use URIs with parameters in XML?

If you try and use one of the Camel URIs in an XML Configuration using the URI query parameter notation, such as:

<route>
  <from uri="direct:start?paramA=1&paramB=2"/>
  <to uri="mock:result"/>
</route>

you might get errors such as…​

Caused by: org.xml.sax.SAXParseException: The reference to entity "paramB" must end with the ';' delimiter.
  at com.sun.org.apache.xerces.internal.util.ErrorHandlerWrapper.createSAXParseException(ErrorHandlerWrapper.java:236)
  at

This is because in XML you need to escape some special XML characters like these:

Special Character How to escape it in XML

&

&amp;

<

&lt;

>

&gt;

So if you write the following XML it should work…​

<route>
  <from uri="direct:start?paramA=1&amp;paramB=2"/>
  <to uri="mock:result"/>
</route>