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# Mule Components

> For the full documentation index, see: https://docs.mulesoft.com/llms.txt

The main building blocks of Mule applications are components. Components execute business logic on
the messages that flow through your Mule applications. There are a couple types of component: Core
components and the components that belong to connectors and modules.

## Core Components

These are individual components that are part of the core of the functionality of Mule Runtime. Here
is a sampling of the features that core components let you add to your apps:

- Asynchronous processing of parts of a flow or subflow

- Batch processing of messages

- Initiating subflows

- Logging

- Setting payloads

- Transforming messages with the DataWeave language

- Creating Try scopes in your flows so that you can catch and respond to errors

For example, the Choice router is a component that dynamically routes messages through a flow
according to a set of DataWeave expressions that evaluate message content. Each expression is
associated with a different routing option. The effect is to add conditional processing to a flow,
similar to an `if`/`then`/`else` code block in most programming languages.

![The Core components for Mule applications listed in Anypoint Studio](/mulesoft/current/en-us/mule-runtime/latest/_images/about-mule-apps-core-components.png)

Figure 1. A List of the Core Components in Anypoint Studio

For component documentation, see [Core Components](https://docs.mulesoft.com/mule-runtime/latest/about-components).

## Connectors

Connectors group together components that were created to facilitate the integration of MuleSoft
applications with any external resources, such as third-party APIs or standard integration
protocols. They enable connectivity to SaaS and on-premises applications, systems, and services.

For example, the Salesforce Connector provides components that let you use the Salesforce platform
APIs to perform a large number of different operations.

![The Salesforce connector and its operations listed in Anypoint Studio](/mulesoft/current/en-us/mule-runtime/latest/_images/about-mule-apps-salesforce-connector.png)

Figure 2. The Salesforce connector and its operations listed in Anypoint Studio

## Modules

Modules group together components that were created to add flexibility to your applications by
allowing you to aggregate values compress data, use Java features, use extra features for processing
JSON, and more. The features that modules offer are more at the level of traditional application
coding.

For example, the XML module provides components that can process and extract data from an XML
document.

![The XML module and its components listed in Anypoint Studio](/mulesoft/current/en-us/mule-runtime/latest/_images/about-mule-apps-xml-module.png)

Figure 3. The XML module and its components listed in Anypoint Studio

## See Also

- [Connectors and Modules (for Mule 4)](https://docs.mulesoft.com/connectors/)