Instruct RabbitMQ to resend undelivered messages periodically - rabbitmq

Background
We're using langohr to interact with RabbitMQ. We've tried two different approaches to let RabbitMQ resend messages that has not yet been properly handled by our service. One way that works is to send a basic.nack with requeue set to the true but this will resend the message immediately until the service responds with a basic.ack. This is a bit problematic if the service for example tries to persist the message to a datastore that is currently down (and is down for a while). It would be better for us to just fetch the undelivered messages say every 20 seconds or so (i.e. we neither do a basic.ack or basic.nack if the datastore is down, we just let the messages be retained in the queue). We've tried to implement this using an ExecutorService whose gist is implemented like this:
(let [chan (lch/open conn)] ; We create a new channel since channels in Langohr are not thread-safe
(log/info "Triggering \"recover\" for channel" chan)
(try
(lb/recover chan)
(catch Exception e (log/error "Failed to call recover" e))
(finally (lch/close chan))))
Unfortunately this doesn't seem to work (the messages are not redelivered and just remains in the queue). If we restart the service the queued messages are consumed correctly. However we have other services that are implemented using spring-rabbitmq (in Java) and they seem to be taking care of this out of the box. I've tried looking in the source code to figure out how they do it but I haven't managed to do so yet.
Question
How do you instruct RabbitMQ to (re-)deliver messages in the queue periodically (preferably using Langohr)?

I am not sure what you are doing with your Spring AMQP apps, but there's nothing built into RabbitMQ for this.
However, it's pretty easy to set up dead-lettering using a TTL to requeue back to the original queue after some period of time. See this answer for examples, links etc.
EDIT
However, Spring AMQP does have a retry interceptor which can be configured to suspend the consumer thread for some period(s) during retry.
Stateful retry rejects and requeues; stateless retry handles the retries internally and has no interaction with the broker during retries.

See this answer which has instructions: we Nack the message, the nack puts the message into a holding queue for N seconds, then it TTLs out of that queue and into another queue that puts it back in the original queue.
It took a little bit of work to setup, but it works great!

Related

ActiveMQ CMS: Can messages be lost between creating a consumer and setting a listener?

Setting up a CMS consumer with a listener involves two separate calls: first, acquiring a consumer:
cms::MessageConsumer* cms::Session::createConsumer( const cms::Destination* );
and then, setting a listener on the consumer:
void cms::MessageConsumer::setMessageListener( cms::MessageListener* );
Could messages be lost if the implementation subscribes to the destination (and receives messages from the broker/router) before the listener is activated? Or are such messages queued internally and delivered to the listener upon activation?
Why isn't there an API call to create the consumer with a listener as a construction argument? (Is it because the JMS spec doesn't have it?)
(Addendum: this is probably a flaw in the API itself. A more logical order would be to instantiate a consumer from a session, and have a cms::Consumer::subscribe( cms::Destination*, cms::MessageListener* ) method in the API.)
I don't think the API is flawed necessarily. Obviously it could have been designed a different way, but I believe the solution to your alleged problem comes from the start method on the Connection object (inherited via Startable). The documentation for Connection states:
A CMS client typically creates a connection, one or more sessions, and a number of message producers and consumers. When a connection is created, it is in stopped mode. That means that no messages are being delivered.
It is typical to leave the connection in stopped mode until setup is complete (that is, until all message consumers have been created). At that point, the client calls the connection's start method, and messages begin arriving at the connection's consumers. This setup convention minimizes any client confusion that may result from asynchronous message delivery while the client is still in the process of setting itself up.
A connection can be started immediately, and the setup can be done afterwards. Clients that do this must be prepared to handle asynchronous message delivery while they are still in the process of setting up.
This is the same pattern that JMS follows.
In any case I don't think there's any risk of message loss regardless of when you invoke start(). If the consumer is using an auto-acknowledge mode then messages should only be automatically acknowledged once they are delivered synchronously via one of the receive methods or asynchronously through the listener's onMessage. To do otherwise would be a bug in my estimation. I've worked with JMS for the last 10 years on various implementations and I've never seen any kind of condition where messages were lost related to this.
If you want to add consumers after you've already invoked start() you could certainly call stop() first, but I don't see any problem with simply adding them on the fly.

API design around RabbitMQ for publisher/subscriber

TL;DR - Whats the best way to expose RabbitMQ to a consumer via REST API?
I'm creating an API to publish and consume message from RabbitMQ. In my current design, the publisher is going to make a POST request. My API will route the POST request to the exchange. In this way, the publisher doesn't have to know the server address, exchange name etc. while publishing.
Now the consumer part is where I'm not sure how to proceed.
At the beginning there will be no queues. When a new consumer wants to subscribe to a TOPIC, then I will create a queue and bind it to the exchange. I need help with answers to few questions -
Once I create a queue for the consumer, what's the next step to let the consumer get messages from that queue?
I make the consumer ask for a batch of messages(say 50 messages) from the queue. Then once I receive an ack from the consumer I will send the next 50 messages from queue. If I don't receive an ack I will requeue the 50 messages back into the queue. Isn't this expensive in terms of opening and closing connection between the consumer and my API?
If there is a better approach then please suggest
In general, your idea of putting RMQ behind a REST API is a good one. You don't want to expose RMQ to the world, directly.
For the specific questions:
Once I create a queue for the consumer, what's the next step to let the consumer get messages from that queue?
Have you read the tutorials? I would start there, for the language you are working with: http://www.rabbitmq.com/getstarted.html
Isn't this expensive in terms of opening and closing connection between the consumer and my API?
Don't open and close connections for each batch of messages.
Your application instance (the "consumer" app) should have a single connection. That connection stays open as long as you need it - across as many calls to RabbitMQ as you want.
I typically open my RMQ connection as soon as the app starts, and I leave it open until the app shuts down.
Within the consumer app, using that one single connection, you will create multiple channels through the connection. A channel is where the actual work is done.
Depending on your language, you will have a single channel per thread; a single channel per queue being consumed; etc
You can create and destroy channels very quickly, unlike connections.
More specifically with your idea of batch processing, this will be handled by putting a consumer prefetch limit on your consumer and then requiring messages to be acknowledged after processing it.

Move message From one Queue to other Queue without deleting it Rabbitmq

I have the following problem.
My program sends messages directly to the Queue (without exchange). I need to monitor incoming of new messages and send them to other Queue without removing them from source queue.
I don't have access to program code, so I'm not able to publish messages to exchange first.
Is it possible to solve this problem using the management web interface of RabbitMQ?
I tried to use shovel plugin, but it removes all messages from source queue after ack.
First to clear up few things:
My program sends messages directly to the Queue (without exchange) This is not true, at the very least (and most likely in this case) nameless exchange is used.
removes all messages from source queue after ack
this is by design and therefore perfectly fine.
You should never keep messages in the queue, queue is made to be consumed. As Derick Bailey says here
RabbitMQ is not a database. RabbitMQ is a message broker and queueing system.
on the same link you will find your answer. I cannot give a concrete one since you didn't provide motivation, but whatever it is keeping messages in the queue is never good!
Maybe you want to log/store your message first and then process it with the consequence of processing being some 3rd action or whatever...

RabbitMQ - purge a queue from all of its unacked messages

I have thousands of unacked messages in my dev environment which I can't restart.
Is there a way to remove (purge) all messages even if they are unacknowledged?
Close the channel that the unacked messages reside on, which will nack them back into the queue, then call purge.
You have to make consumer ack them (or nack) and only after that they will be removed. Alternatively you can shutdown consumers and purge the queue completely.
If you are looking for some way to purge all unacked messages - there are no such feature nor in AMQP protocol neither in RabbitMQ.
It looks like your consumer is the cause of the problem, so you have to adjust it (rewrite) to release message immediately after it processed or failed.
Once there are no "ready" messages in the queue, delete it and recreate.
YOU WILL LOSE THE QUEUE CONTENTS with this method.
You need to put messages back into the queue before you can purge them:
close the channel
close the connection (the script doesn't work for me)
As an alternative, this doesn't require to wait:
delete and recreate the queue
restart the server
You need to call basic.recover to force all unacked messages to be re-enqueued to a channel that failed. Be aware of the errata concerning this function specifying that only the requeue mode is supported by RabbitMQ.
For software developer use below code.
channel.purgeQueue(queue-name);
if we use this code the Queue will be clear and same queue will exist.
One way this can happen is if the consumer is stuck recycling the same messages due to a processing error. In this case, the RabbitMQ queue management interface may show the messages as Unacked, but really they are being read from the queue and processed (to the point of the failure) then requeued (to enable a retry) at a rapid pace -- maybe thousands of times per second.
During this loop, the messages exist briefly in the Ready state, but are immediately removed again by you application -- and the cycle begins again. As an example, this auto-requeue behavior is the default for Spring AMQP.
Since the messages are never left in the Ready state, the Management Interface's Get Message(s) button is unlikely work. What can work, if you have queue access, is to run a separate custom consumer instance, perhaps locally, but with the specific intent of removing and not requeuing the messages in question.
By RabbitMQ's Fair Dispatch mechanism, your additional consumer will likely receive the messages in question and have the opportunity to perform your custom handling.
You might even write a custom utility to do this, with logic to filter, analyze, or deadletter the messages of interest.
If you want to clear the contents of the queue, then you can use the AMQP method queue.purge: There is queue purge in AMQP: http://www.rabbitmq.com/amqp-0-9-1-reference.html#queue.purge
You could do similar using the management plugin.

Re-queue Amqp message at tail of Queue

I have a project setup using Spring and RabbitMQ. Currently it is possible for my application to receive an amqp message that cannot be processed until another asynchronous process has completed (legacy and totally detached, i have no control). So the result is i may have to wait on processing a message for some amount of time. The result of this is an exception in a transformer.
When the message is NACK'd back to rabbitMQ it is putting it back into the head of the queue and re-pulling it immediately. If i get unprocessable messages equal to the number of concurrent listeners my workflow locks up. It spins its wheels waiting for messages to become processable, even though there are valid processable messages waiting behind in the queue.
Is there a way to reject and amqp message and have it go back to the tail of the queue instead? From my research rabbitMQ worked this way at one time, but now i appear to get the head of the queue exclusively.
My config is rather straight forward, but for continuity here it is...
Connection factory is: org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.CachingConnectionFactory
RabbitMQ 3.1.1
Spring Integration: 2.2.0
<si:channel id="channel"/>
<si-amqp:inbound-channel-adapter
queue-names="commit" channel="channel" connection-factory="amqpConnectionFactory"
acknowledge-mode="AUTO" concurrent-consumers="${listeners}"
channel-transacted="true"
transaction-manager="transactionManager"/>
<si:chain input-channel="channel" output-channel="nullChannel">
<si:transformer ref="transformer"></si:transformer>
<si:service-activator ref="activator"/>
</si:chain>
You are correct that RabbitMQ was changed some time ago. There is nothing in the API to change the behavior.
You can, of course, put an error-channel on the inbound adapter, followed by a transformer (expression="payload.failedMessage"), followed by an outbound adapter configured with an appropriate exchange/routing-key to requeue the message at the back of the queue.
You might want to add some additional logic in the error flow to check the exception type (payload.cause) and decide which action you want.
If the error flow itself throws an exception, the original message will be requeued at the head, as before; if it exits normally, the message will be acked.