Spring AMQP

2.4.17

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1. Preface

The Spring AMQP project applies core Spring concepts to the development of AMQP-based messaging solutions. We provide a “template” as a high-level abstraction for sending and receiving messages. We also provide support for message-driven POJOs. These libraries facilitate management of AMQP resources while promoting the use of dependency injection and declarative configuration. In all of these cases, you can see similarities to the JMS support in the Spring Framework. For other project-related information, visit the Spring AMQP project homepage.

2. What’s New

2.1. Changes in 2.4 Since 2.3

This section describes the changes between version 2.4 and version 2.4. See Change History for changes in previous versions.

2.1.1. `@RabbitListener` Changes

MessageProperties is now available for argument matching. See Annotated Endpoint Method Signature for more information.

Async reply types now include CompleteableFuture See Asynchronous @RabbitListener Return Types for more information.

MessageConverter s can now return Optional.empty() for a null value; this is currently implemented by the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter. See Converting from a Message for more information.

2.1.2. `RabbitAdmin` Changes

A new property recoverManualDeclarations allows recovery of manually declared queues/exchanges/bindings. See Recovering Auto-Delete Declarations for more information.

2.1.3. Remoting Support

Support of remoting using Spring Framework’s RMI support is deprecated and will be removed in 3.0. See Spring Remoting with AMQP for more information.

2.1.4. Message Converter Changes

The Jackson2JsonMessageConverter can now determine the charset from the contentEncoding header. See Jackson2JsonMessageConverter for more information.

3. Introduction

This first part of the reference documentation is a high-level overview of Spring AMQP and the underlying concepts. It includes some code snippets to get you up and running as quickly as possible.

3.1. Quick Tour for the impatient

3.1.1. Introduction

This is the five-minute tour to get started with Spring AMQP.

Prerequisites: Install and run the RabbitMQ broker (https://www.rabbitmq.com/download.html). Then grab the spring-rabbit JAR and all its dependencies - the easiest way to do so is to declare a dependency in your build tool. For example, for Maven, you can do something resembling the following:

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.amqp</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-rabbit</artifactId>
  <version>2.4.17</version>
</dependency>

For Gradle, you can do something resembling the following:

compile 'org.springframework.amqp:spring-rabbit:2.4.17'

Compatibility

The minimum Spring Framework version dependency is 5.3.30.

The minimum amqp-client Java client library version is 5.14.3.

Very, Very Quick

This section offers the fastest introduction.

First, add the following import statements to make the examples later in this section work:

import org.springframework.amqp.core.AmqpAdmin;
import org.springframework.amqp.core.AmqpTemplate;
import org.springframework.amqp.core.Queue;
import org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.CachingConnectionFactory;
import org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.ConnectionFactory;
import org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.RabbitAdmin;
import org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.RabbitTemplate;

The following example uses plain, imperative Java to send and receive a message:

ConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new CachingConnectionFactory();
AmqpAdmin admin = new RabbitAdmin(connectionFactory);
admin.declareQueue(new Queue("myqueue"));
AmqpTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory);
template.convertAndSend("myqueue", "foo");
String foo = (String) template.receiveAndConvert("myqueue");

Note that there is also a ConnectionFactory in the native Java Rabbit client. We use the Spring abstraction in the preceding code. It caches channels (and optionally connections) for reuse. We rely on the default exchange in the broker (since none is specified in the send), and the default binding of all queues to the default exchange by their name (thus, we can use the queue name as a routing key in the send). Those behaviors are defined in the AMQP specification.

With XML Configuration

The following example is the same as the preceding example but externalizes the resource configuration to XML:

ApplicationContext context =
    new GenericXmlApplicationContext("classpath:/rabbit-context.xml");
AmqpTemplate template = context.getBean(AmqpTemplate.class);
template.convertAndSend("myqueue", "foo");
String foo = (String) template.receiveAndConvert("myqueue");

<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:rabbit="http://www.springframework.org/schema/rabbit"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/rabbit
           https://www.springframework.org/schema/rabbit/spring-rabbit.xsd
           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
           https://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd">

    <rabbit:connection-factory id="connectionFactory"/>

    <rabbit:template id="amqpTemplate" connection-factory="connectionFactory"/>

    <rabbit:admin connection-factory="connectionFactory"/>

    <rabbit:queue name="myqueue"/>

</beans>

By default, the <rabbit:admin/> declaration automatically looks for beans of type Queue, Exchange, and Binding and declares them to the broker on behalf of the user. As a result, you need not use that bean explicitly in the simple Java driver. There are plenty of options to configure the properties of the components in the XML schema. You can use auto-complete features of your XML editor to explore them and look at their documentation.

With Java Configuration

The following example repeats the same example as the preceding example but with the external configuration defined in Java:

ApplicationContext context =
    new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(RabbitConfiguration.class);
AmqpTemplate template = context.getBean(AmqpTemplate.class);
template.convertAndSend("myqueue", "foo");
String foo = (String) template.receiveAndConvert("myqueue");

........

@Configuration
public class RabbitConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory() {
        return new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitAdmin amqpAdmin() {
        return new RabbitAdmin(connectionFactory());
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate() {
        return new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
    }

    @Bean
    public Queue myQueue() {
       return new Queue("myqueue");
    }
}

With Spring Boot Auto Configuration and an Async POJO Listener

Spring Boot automatically configures the infrastructure beans, as the following example shows:

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    public ApplicationRunner runner(AmqpTemplate template) {
        return args -> template.convertAndSend("myqueue", "foo");
    }

    @Bean
    public Queue myQueue() {
        return new Queue("myqueue");
    }

    @RabbitListener(queues = "myqueue")
    public void listen(String in) {
        System.out.println(in);
    }

}

4. Reference

This part of the reference documentation details the various components that comprise Spring AMQP. The main chapter covers the core classes to develop an AMQP application. This part also includes a chapter about the sample applications.

4.1. Using Spring AMQP

This chapter explores the interfaces and classes that are the essential components for developing applications with Spring AMQP.

4.1.1. AMQP Abstractions

Spring AMQP consists of two modules (each represented by a JAR in the distribution): spring-amqp and spring-rabbit. The 'spring-amqp' module contains the org.springframework.amqp.core package. Within that package, you can find the classes that represent the core AMQP “model”. Our intention is to provide generic abstractions that do not rely on any particular AMQP broker implementation or client library. End user code can be more portable across vendor implementations as it can be developed against the abstraction layer only. These abstractions are then implemented by broker-specific modules, such as 'spring-rabbit'. There is currently only a RabbitMQ implementation. However, the abstractions have been validated in .NET using Apache Qpid in addition to RabbitMQ. Since AMQP operates at the protocol level, in principle, you can use the RabbitMQ client with any broker that supports the same protocol version, but we do not test any other brokers at present.

This overview assumes that you are already familiar with the basics of the AMQP specification. If not, have a look at the resources listed in Other Resources

`Message`

The 0-9-1 AMQP specification does not define a Message class or interface. Instead, when performing an operation such as basicPublish(), the content is passed as a byte-array argument and additional properties are passed in as separate arguments. Spring AMQP defines a Message class as part of a more general AMQP domain model representation. The purpose of the Message class is to encapsulate the body and properties within a single instance so that the API can, in turn, be simpler. The following example shows the Message class definition:

public class Message {

    private final MessageProperties messageProperties;

    private final byte[] body;

    public Message(byte[] body, MessageProperties messageProperties) {
        this.body = body;
        this.messageProperties = messageProperties;
    }

    public byte[] getBody() {
        return this.body;
    }

    public MessageProperties getMessageProperties() {
        return this.messageProperties;
    }
}

The MessageProperties interface defines several common properties, such as 'messageId', 'timestamp', 'contentType', and several more. You can also extend those properties with user-defined 'headers' by calling the setHeader(String key, Object value) method.

Starting with versions 1.5.7, 1.6.11, 1.7.4, and 2.0.0, if a message body is a serialized Serializable java object, it is no longer deserialized (by default) when performing toString() operations (such as in log messages). This is to prevent unsafe deserialization. By default, only java.util and java.lang classes are deserialized. To revert to the previous behavior, you can add allowable class/package patterns by invoking Message.addAllowedListPatterns(…). A simple wildcard is supported, for example com.something., *.MyClass. Bodies that cannot be deserialized are represented by byte[<size>] in log messages.

Exchange

The Exchange interface represents an AMQP Exchange, which is what a Message Producer sends to. Each Exchange within a virtual host of a broker has a unique name as well as a few other properties. The following example shows the Exchange interface:

public interface Exchange {

    String getName();

    String getExchangeType();

    boolean isDurable();

    boolean isAutoDelete();

    Map<String, Object> getArguments();

}

As you can see, an Exchange also has a 'type' represented by constants defined in ExchangeTypes. The basic types are: direct, topic, fanout, and headers. In the core package, you can find implementations of the Exchange interface for each of those types. The behavior varies across these Exchange types in terms of how they handle bindings to queues. For example, a Direct exchange lets a queue be bound by a fixed routing key (often the queue’s name). A Topic exchange supports bindings with routing patterns that may include the '*' and '#' wildcards for 'exactly-one' and 'zero-or-more', respectively. The Fanout exchange publishes to all queues that are bound to it without taking any routing key into consideration. For much more information about these and the other Exchange types, see Other Resources.

The AMQP specification also requires that any broker provide a “default” direct exchange that has no name. All queues that are declared are bound to that default Exchange with their names as routing keys. You can learn more about the default Exchange’s usage within Spring AMQP in AmqpTemplate.

Queue

The Queue class represents the component from which a message consumer receives messages. Like the various Exchange classes, our implementation is intended to be an abstract representation of this core AMQP type. The following listing shows the Queue class:

public class Queue  {

    private final String name;

    private volatile boolean durable;

    private volatile boolean exclusive;

    private volatile boolean autoDelete;

    private volatile Map<String, Object> arguments;

    /**
     * The queue is durable, non-exclusive and non auto-delete.
     *
     * @param name the name of the queue.
     */
    public Queue(String name) {
        this(name, true, false, false);
    }

    // Getters and Setters omitted for brevity

}

Notice that the constructor takes the queue name. Depending on the implementation, the admin template may provide methods for generating a uniquely named queue. Such queues can be useful as a “reply-to” address or in other temporary situations. For that reason, the 'exclusive' and 'autoDelete' properties of an auto-generated queue would both be set to 'true'.

See the section on queues in Configuring the Broker for information about declaring queues by using namespace support, including queue arguments.

Binding

Given that a producer sends to an exchange and a consumer receives from a queue, the bindings that connect queues to exchanges are critical for connecting those producers and consumers via messaging. In Spring AMQP, we define a Binding class to represent those connections. This section reviews the basic options for binding queues to exchanges.

You can bind a queue to a DirectExchange with a fixed routing key, as the following example shows:

new Binding(someQueue, someDirectExchange, "foo.bar");

You can bind a queue to a TopicExchange with a routing pattern, as the following example shows:

new Binding(someQueue, someTopicExchange, "foo.*");

You can bind a queue to a FanoutExchange with no routing key, as the following example shows:

new Binding(someQueue, someFanoutExchange);

We also provide a BindingBuilder to facilitate a “fluent API” style, as the following example shows:

Binding b = BindingBuilder.bind(someQueue).to(someTopicExchange).with("foo.*");

For clarity, the preceding example shows the BindingBuilder class, but this style works well when using a static import for the 'bind()' method.

By itself, an instance of the Binding class only holds the data about a connection. In other words, it is not an “active” component. However, as you will see later in Configuring the Broker, the AmqpAdmin class can use Binding instances to actually trigger the binding actions on the broker. Also, as you can see in that same section, you can define the Binding instances by using Spring’s @Bean annotations within @Configuration classes. There is also a convenient base class that further simplifies that approach for generating AMQP-related bean definitions and recognizes the queues, exchanges, and bindings so that they are all declared on the AMQP broker upon application startup.

The AmqpTemplate is also defined within the core package. As one of the main components involved in actual AMQP messaging, it is discussed in detail in its own section (see AmqpTemplate).

4.1.2. Connection and Resource Management

Whereas the AMQP model we described in the previous section is generic and applicable to all implementations, when we get into the management of resources, the details are specific to the broker implementation. Therefore, in this section, we focus on code that exists only within our “spring-rabbit” module since, at this point, RabbitMQ is the only supported implementation.

The central component for managing a connection to the RabbitMQ broker is the ConnectionFactory interface. The responsibility of a ConnectionFactory implementation is to provide an instance of org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.Connection, which is a wrapper for com.rabbitmq.client.Connection.

Choosing a Connection Factory

There are three connection factories to chose from

PooledChannelConnectionFactory
ThreadChannelConnectionFactory
CachingConnectionFactory

The first two were added in version 2.3.

For most use cases, the PooledChannelConnectionFactory should be used. The ThreadChannelConnectionFactory can be used if you want to ensure strict message ordering without the need to use Scoped Operations. The CachingConnectionFactory should be used if you want to use correlated publisher confirmations or if you wish to open multiple connections, via its CacheMode.

Simple publisher confirmations are supported by all three factories.

When configuring a RabbitTemplate to use a separate connection, you can now, starting with version 2.3.2, configure the publishing connection factory to be a different type. By default, the publishing factory is the same type and any properties set on the main factory are also propagated to the publishing factory.

`PooledChannelConnectionFactory`

This factory manages a single connection and two pools of channels, based on the Apache Pool2. One pool is for transactional channels, the other is for non-transactional channels. The pools are GenericObjectPool s with default configuration; a callback is provided to configure the pools; refer to the Apache documentation for more information.

The Apache commons-pool2 jar must be on the class path to use this factory.

@Bean
PooledChannelConnectionFactory pcf() throws Exception {
    ConnectionFactory rabbitConnectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();
    rabbitConnectionFactory.setHost("localhost");
    PooledChannelConnectionFactory pcf = new PooledChannelConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory);
    pcf.setPoolConfigurer((pool, tx) -> {
        if (tx) {
            // configure the transactional pool
        }
        else {
            // configure the non-transactional pool
        }
    });
    return pcf;
}

`ThreadChannelConnectionFactory`

This factory manages a single connection and two ThreadLocal s, one for transactional channels, the other for non-transactional channels. This factory ensures that all operations on the same thread use the same channel (as long as it remains open). This facilitates strict message ordering without the need for Scoped Operations. To avoid memory leaks, if your application uses many short-lived threads, you must call the factory’s closeThreadChannel() to release the channel resource. Starting with version 2.3.7, a thread can transfer its channel(s) to another thread. See Strict Message Ordering in a Multi-Threaded Environment for more information.

`CachingConnectionFactory`

The third implementation provided is the CachingConnectionFactory, which, by default, establishes a single connection proxy that can be shared by the application. Sharing of the connection is possible since the “unit of work” for messaging with AMQP is actually a “channel” (in some ways, this is similar to the relationship between a connection and a session in JMS). The connection instance provides a createChannel method. The CachingConnectionFactory implementation supports caching of those channels, and it maintains separate caches for channels based on whether they are transactional. When creating an instance of CachingConnectionFactory, you can provide the 'hostname' through the constructor. You should also provide the 'username' and 'password' properties. To configure the size of the channel cache (the default is 25), you can call the setChannelCacheSize() method.

Starting with version 1.3, you can configure the CachingConnectionFactory to cache connections as well as only channels. In this case, each call to createConnection() creates a new connection (or retrieves an idle one from the cache). Closing a connection returns it to the cache (if the cache size has not been reached). Channels created on such connections are also cached. The use of separate connections might be useful in some environments, such as consuming from an HA cluster, in conjunction with a load balancer, to connect to different cluster members, and others. To cache connections, set the cacheMode to CacheMode.CONNECTION.

This does not limit the number of connections. Rather, it specifies how many idle open connections are allowed.

Starting with version 1.5.5, a new property called connectionLimit is provided. When this property is set, it limits the total number of connections allowed. When set, if the limit is reached, the channelCheckoutTimeLimit is used to wait for a connection to become idle. If the time is exceeded, an AmqpTimeoutException is thrown.

When the cache mode is CONNECTION, automatic declaration of queues and others (See Automatic Declaration of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings) is NOT supported.

Also, at the time of this writing, the amqp-client library by default creates a fixed thread pool for each connection (default size: Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() * 2 threads). When using a large number of connections, you should consider setting a custom executor on the CachingConnectionFactory. Then, the same executor can be used by all connections and its threads can be shared. The executor’s thread pool should be unbounded or set appropriately for the expected use (usually, at least one thread per connection). If multiple channels are created on each connection, the pool size affects the concurrency, so a variable (or simple cached) thread pool executor would be most suitable.

It is important to understand that the cache size is (by default) not a limit but is merely the number of channels that can be cached. With a cache size of, say, 10, any number of channels can actually be in use. If more than 10 channels are being used and they are all returned to the cache, 10 go in the cache. The remainder are physically closed.

Starting with version 1.6, the default channel cache size has been increased from 1 to 25. In high volume, multi-threaded environments, a small cache means that channels are created and closed at a high rate. Increasing the default cache size can avoid this overhead. You should monitor the channels in use through the RabbitMQ Admin UI and consider increasing the cache size further if you see many channels being created and closed. The cache grows only on-demand (to suit the concurrency requirements of the application), so this change does not impact existing low-volume applications.

Starting with version 1.4.2, the CachingConnectionFactory has a property called channelCheckoutTimeout. When this property is greater than zero, the channelCacheSize becomes a limit on the number of channels that can be created on a connection. If the limit is reached, calling threads block until a channel is available or this timeout is reached, in which case a AmqpTimeoutException is thrown.

Channels used within the framework (for example, RabbitTemplate) are reliably returned to the cache. If you create channels outside of the framework, (for example, by accessing the connections directly and invoking createChannel()), you must return them (by closing) reliably, perhaps in a finally block, to avoid running out of channels.

The following example shows how to create a new connection:

CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new CachingConnectionFactory("somehost");
connectionFactory.setUsername("guest");
connectionFactory.setPassword("guest");

Connection connection = connectionFactory.createConnection();

When using XML, the configuration might look like the following example:

<bean id="connectionFactory"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.CachingConnectionFactory">
    <constructor-arg value="somehost"/>
    <property name="username" value="guest"/>
    <property name="password" value="guest"/>
</bean>

There is also a SingleConnectionFactory implementation that is available only in the unit test code of the framework. It is simpler than CachingConnectionFactory, since it does not cache channels, but it is not intended for practical usage outside of simple tests due to its lack of performance and resilience. If you need to implement your own ConnectionFactory for some reason, the AbstractConnectionFactory base class may provide a nice starting point.

A ConnectionFactory can be created quickly and conveniently by using the rabbit namespace, as follows:

<rabbit:connection-factory id="connectionFactory"/>

In most cases, this approach is preferable, since the framework can choose the best defaults for you. The created instance is a CachingConnectionFactory. Keep in mind that the default cache size for channels is 25. If you want more channels to be cached, set a larger value by setting the 'channelCacheSize' property. In XML it would look like as follows:

<bean id="connectionFactory"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.CachingConnectionFactory">
    <constructor-arg value="somehost"/>
    <property name="username" value="guest"/>
    <property name="password" value="guest"/>
    <property name="channelCacheSize" value="50"/>
</bean>

Also, with the namespace, you can add the 'channel-cache-size' attribute, as follows:

<rabbit:connection-factory
    id="connectionFactory" channel-cache-size="50"/>

The default cache mode is CHANNEL, but you can configure it to cache connections instead. In the following example, we use connection-cache-size:

<rabbit:connection-factory
    id="connectionFactory" cache-mode="CONNECTION" connection-cache-size="25"/>

You can provide host and port attributes by using the namespace, as follows:

<rabbit:connection-factory
    id="connectionFactory" host="somehost" port="5672"/>

Alternatively, if running in a clustered environment, you can use the addresses attribute, as follows:

<rabbit:connection-factory
    id="connectionFactory" addresses="host1:5672,host2:5672" address-shuffle-mode="RANDOM"/>

See Connecting to a Cluster for information about address-shuffle-mode.

The following example with a custom thread factory that prefixes thread names with rabbitmq-:

<rabbit:connection-factory id="multiHost" virtual-host="/bar" addresses="host1:1234,host2,host3:4567"
    thread-factory="tf"
    channel-cache-size="10" username="user" password="password" />

<bean id="tf" class="org.springframework.scheduling.concurrent.CustomizableThreadFactory">
    <constructor-arg value="rabbitmq-" />
</bean>

AddressResolver

Starting with version 2.1.15, you can now use an AddressResover to resolve the connection address(es). This will override any settings of the addresses and host/port properties.

Naming Connections

Starting with version 1.7, a ConnectionNameStrategy is provided for the injection into the AbstractionConnectionFactory. The generated name is used for the application-specific identification of the target RabbitMQ connection. The connection name is displayed in the management UI if the RabbitMQ server supports it. This value does not have to be unique and cannot be used as a connection identifier — for example, in HTTP API requests. This value is supposed to be human-readable and is a part of ClientProperties under the connection_name key. You can use a simple Lambda, as follows:

connectionFactory.setConnectionNameStrategy(connectionFactory -> "MY_CONNECTION");

The ConnectionFactory argument can be used to distinguish target connection names by some logic. By default, the beanName of the AbstractConnectionFactory, a hex string representing the object, and an internal counter are used to generate the connection_name. The <rabbit:connection-factory> namespace component is also supplied with the connection-name-strategy attribute.

An implementation of SimplePropertyValueConnectionNameStrategy sets the connection name to an application property. You can declare it as a @Bean and inject it into the connection factory, as the following example shows:

@Bean
public SimplePropertyValueConnectionNameStrategy cns() {
    return new SimplePropertyValueConnectionNameStrategy("spring.application.name");
}

@Bean
public ConnectionFactory rabbitConnectionFactory(ConnectionNameStrategy cns) {
    CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new CachingConnectionFactory();
    ...
    connectionFactory.setConnectionNameStrategy(cns);
    return connectionFactory;
}

The property must exist in the application context’s Environment.

When using Spring Boot and its autoconfigured connection factory, you need only declare the ConnectionNameStrategy @Bean. Boot auto-detects the bean and wires it into the factory.

Blocked Connections and Resource Constraints

The connection might be blocked for interaction from the broker that corresponds to the Memory Alarm. Starting with version 2.0, the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.Connection can be supplied with com.rabbitmq.client.BlockedListener instances to be notified for connection blocked and unblocked events. In addition, the AbstractConnectionFactory emits a ConnectionBlockedEvent and ConnectionUnblockedEvent, respectively, through its internal BlockedListener implementation. These let you provide application logic to react appropriately to problems on the broker and (for example) take some corrective actions.

When the application is configured with a single CachingConnectionFactory, as it is by default with Spring Boot auto-configuration, the application stops working when the connection is blocked by the Broker. And when it is blocked by the Broker, any of its clients stop to work. If we have producers and consumers in the same application, we may end up with a deadlock when producers are blocking the connection (because there are no resources on the Broker any more) and consumers cannot free them (because the connection is blocked). To mitigate the problem, we suggest having one more separate CachingConnectionFactory instance with the same options — one for producers and one for consumers. A separate CachingConnectionFactory is not possible for transactional producers that execute on a consumer thread, since they should reuse the Channel associated with the consumer transactions.

Starting with version 2.0.2, the RabbitTemplate has a configuration option to automatically use a second connection factory, unless transactions are being used. See Using a Separate Connection for more information. The ConnectionNameStrategy for the publisher connection is the same as the primary strategy with .publisher appended to the result of calling the method.

Starting with version 1.7.7, an AmqpResourceNotAvailableException is provided, which is thrown when SimpleConnection.createChannel() cannot create a Channel (for example, because the channelMax limit is reached and there are no available channels in the cache). You can use this exception in the RetryPolicy to recover the operation after some back-off.

Configuring the Underlying Client Connection Factory

The CachingConnectionFactory uses an instance of the Rabbit client ConnectionFactory. A number of configuration properties are passed through (host, port, userName, password, requestedHeartBeat, and connectionTimeout for example) when setting the equivalent property on the CachingConnectionFactory. To set other properties (clientProperties, for example), you can define an instance of the Rabbit factory and provide a reference to it by using the appropriate constructor of the CachingConnectionFactory. When using the namespace (as described earlier), you need to provide a reference to the configured factory in the connection-factory attribute. For convenience, a factory bean is provided to assist in configuring the connection factory in a Spring application context, as discussed in the next section.

<rabbit:connection-factory
      id="connectionFactory" connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory"/>

The 4.0.x client enables automatic recovery by default. While compatible with this feature, Spring AMQP has its own recovery mechanisms and the client recovery feature generally is not needed. We recommend disabling amqp-client automatic recovery, to avoid getting AutoRecoverConnectionNotCurrentlyOpenException instances when the broker is available but the connection has not yet recovered. You may notice this exception, for example, when a RetryTemplate is configured in a RabbitTemplate, even when failing over to another broker in a cluster. Since the auto-recovering connection recovers on a timer, the connection may be recovered more quickly by using Spring AMQP’s recovery mechanisms. Starting with version 1.7.1, Spring AMQP disables amqp-client automatic recovery unless you explicitly create your own RabbitMQ connection factory and provide it to the CachingConnectionFactory. RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory instances created by the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean also have the option disabled by default.

`RabbitConnectionFactoryBean` and Configuring SSL

Starting with version 1.4, a convenient RabbitConnectionFactoryBean is provided to enable convenient configuration of SSL properties on the underlying client connection factory by using dependency injection. Other setters delegate to the underlying factory. Previously, you had to configure the SSL options programmatically. The following example shows how to configure a RabbitConnectionFactoryBean:

<rabbit:connection-factory id="rabbitConnectionFactory"
    connection-factory="clientConnectionFactory"
    host="${host}"
    port="${port}"
    virtual-host="${vhost}"
    username="${username}" password="${password}" />

<bean id="clientConnectionFactory"
        class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.RabbitConnectionFactoryBean">
    <property name="useSSL" value="true" />
    <property name="sslPropertiesLocation" value="file:/secrets/rabbitSSL.properties"/>
</bean>

See the RabbitMQ Documentation for information about configuring SSL. Omit the keyStore and trustStore configuration to connect over SSL without certificate validation. The next example shows how you can provide key and trust store configuration.

The sslPropertiesLocation property is a Spring Resource pointing to a properties file containing the following keys:

keyStore=file:/secret/keycert.p12
trustStore=file:/secret/trustStore
keyStore.passPhrase=secret
trustStore.passPhrase=secret

The keyStore and truststore are Spring Resources pointing to the stores. Typically this properties file is secured by the operating system with the application having read access.

Starting with Spring AMQP version 1.5,you can set these properties directly on the factory bean. If both discrete properties and sslPropertiesLocation is provided, properties in the latter override the discrete values.

Starting with version 2.0, the server certificate is validated by default because it is more secure. If you wish to skip this validation for some reason, set the factory bean’s skipServerCertificateValidation property to true. Starting with version 2.1, the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean now calls enableHostnameVerification() by default. To revert to the previous behavior, set the enableHostnameVerification property to false.

Starting with version 2.2.5, the factory bean will always use TLS v1.2 by default; previously, it used v1.1 in some cases and v1.2 in others (depending on other properties). If you need to use v1.1 for some reason, set the sslAlgorithm property: setSslAlgorithm("TLSv1.1").

Connecting to a Cluster

To connect to a cluster, configure the addresses property on the CachingConnectionFactory:

@Bean
public CachingConnectionFactory ccf() {
    CachingConnectionFactory ccf = new CachingConnectionFactory();
    ccf.setAddresses("host1:5672,host2:5672,host3:5672");
    return ccf;
}

The underlying connection factory will attempt to connect to each host, in order, whenever a new connection is established. Starting with version 2.1.8, the connection order can be made random by setting the addressShuffleMode property to RANDOM; the shuffle will be applied before creating any new connection. Starting with version 2.6, the INORDER shuffle mode was added, which means the first address is moved to the end after a connection is created. You may wish to use this mode with the RabbitMQ Sharding Plugin with CacheMode.CONNECTION and suitable concurrency if you wish to consume from all shards on all nodes.

@Bean
public CachingConnectionFactory ccf() {
    CachingConnectionFactory ccf = new CachingConnectionFactory();
    ccf.setAddresses("host1:5672,host2:5672,host3:5672");
    ccf.setAddressShuffleMode(AddressShuffleMode.RANDOM);
    return ccf;
}

Routing Connection Factory

Starting with version 1.3, the AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory has been introduced. This factory provides a mechanism to configure mappings for several ConnectionFactories and determine a target ConnectionFactory by some lookupKey at runtime. Typically, the implementation checks a thread-bound context. For convenience, Spring AMQP provides the SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory, which gets the current thread-bound lookupKey from the SimpleResourceHolder. The following examples shows how to configure a SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory in both XML and Java:

<bean id="connectionFactory"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory">
    <property name="targetConnectionFactories">
        <map>
            <entry key="#{connectionFactory1.virtualHost}" ref="connectionFactory1"/>
            <entry key="#{connectionFactory2.virtualHost}" ref="connectionFactory2"/>
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

<rabbit:template id="template" connection-factory="connectionFactory" />

public class MyService {

    @Autowired
    private RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate;

    public void service(String vHost, String payload) {
        SimpleResourceHolder.bind(rabbitTemplate.getConnectionFactory(), vHost);
        rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(payload);
        SimpleResourceHolder.unbind(rabbitTemplate.getConnectionFactory());
    }

}

It is important to unbind the resource after use. For more information, see the JavaDoc for AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory.

Starting with version 1.4, RabbitTemplate supports the SpEL sendConnectionFactorySelectorExpression and receiveConnectionFactorySelectorExpression properties, which are evaluated on each AMQP protocol interaction operation (send, sendAndReceive, receive, or receiveAndReply), resolving to a lookupKey value for the provided AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory. You can use bean references, such as @vHostResolver.getVHost(#root) in the expression. For send operations, the message to be sent is the root evaluation object. For receive operations, the queueName is the root evaluation object.

The routing algorithm is as follows: If the selector expression is null or is evaluated to null or the provided ConnectionFactory is not an instance of AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory, everything works as before, relying on the provided ConnectionFactory implementation. The same occurs if the evaluation result is not null, but there is no target ConnectionFactory for that lookupKey and the AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory is configured with lenientFallback = true. In the case of an AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory, it does fallback to its routing implementation based on determineCurrentLookupKey(). However, if lenientFallback = false, an IllegalStateException is thrown.

The namespace support also provides the send-connection-factory-selector-expression and receive-connection-factory-selector-expression attributes on the <rabbit:template> component.

Also, starting with version 1.4, you can configure a routing connection factory in a listener container. In that case, the list of queue names is used as the lookup key. For example, if you configure the container with setQueueNames("thing1", "thing2"), the lookup key is [thing1,thing]" (note that there is no space in the key).

Starting with version 1.6.9, you can add a qualifier to the lookup key by using setLookupKeyQualifier on the listener container. Doing so enables, for example, listening to queues with the same name but in a different virtual host (where you would have a connection factory for each).

For example, with lookup key qualifier thing1 and a container listening to queue thing2, the lookup key you could register the target connection factory with could be thing1[thing2].

The target (and default, if provided) connection factories must have the same settings for publisher confirms and returns. See Publisher Confirms and Returns.

Starting with version 2.4.4, this validation can be disabled. If you have a case that the values between confirms and returns need to be unequal, you can use AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory#setConsistentConfirmsReturns to turn of the validation. Note that the first connection factory added to AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory will determine the general values of confirms and returns.

It may be useful if you have a case that certain messages you would to check confirms/returns and others you don’t. For example:

@Bean
public RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate() {
    final com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory cf = new com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory();
    cf.setHost("localhost");
    cf.setPort(5672);

    CachingConnectionFactory cachingConnectionFactory = new CachingConnectionFactory(cf);
    cachingConnectionFactory.setPublisherConfirmType(CachingConnectionFactory.ConfirmType.CORRELATED);

    PooledChannelConnectionFactory pooledChannelConnectionFactory = new PooledChannelConnectionFactory(cf);

    final Map<Object, ConnectionFactory> connectionFactoryMap = new HashMap<>(2);
    connectionFactoryMap.put("true", cachingConnectionFactory);
    connectionFactoryMap.put("false", pooledChannelConnectionFactory);

    final AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory routingConnectionFactory = new SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory();
    routingConnectionFactory.setConsistentConfirmsReturns(false);
    routingConnectionFactory.setDefaultTargetConnectionFactory(pooledChannelConnectionFactory);
    routingConnectionFactory.setTargetConnectionFactories(connectionFactoryMap);

    final RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate = new RabbitTemplate(routingConnectionFactory);

    final Expression sendExpression = new SpelExpressionParser().parseExpression(
            "messageProperties.headers['x-use-publisher-confirms'] ?: false");
    rabbitTemplate.setSendConnectionFactorySelectorExpression(sendExpression);
}

This way messages with the header x-use-publisher-confirms: true will be sent through the caching connection and you can ensure the message delivery. See Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information about ensuring message delivery.

Queue Affinity and the `LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory`

When using HA queues in a cluster, for the best performance, you may want to connect to the physical broker where the lead queue resides. The CachingConnectionFactory can be configured with multiple broker addresses. This is to fail over and the client attempts to connect in order. The LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory uses the REST API provided by the management plugin to determine which node is the lead for the queue. It then creates (or retrieves from a cache) a CachingConnectionFactory that connects to just that node. If the connection fails, the new lead node is determined and the consumer connects to it. The LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory is configured with a default connection factory, in case the physical location of the queue cannot be determined, in which case it connects as normal to the cluster.

The LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory is a RoutingConnectionFactory and the SimpleMessageListenerContainer uses the queue names as the lookup key as discussed in Routing Connection Factory above.

For this reason (the use of the queue name for the lookup), the LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory can only be used if the container is configured to listen to a single queue.

The RabbitMQ management plugin must be enabled on each node.

This connection factory is intended for long-lived connections, such as those used by the SimpleMessageListenerContainer. It is not intended for short connection use, such as with a RabbitTemplate because of the overhead of invoking the REST API before making the connection. Also, for publish operations, the queue is unknown, and the message is published to all cluster members anyway, so the logic of looking up the node has little value.

The following example configuration shows how to configure the factories:

@Autowired
private ConfigurationProperties props;

@Bean
public CachingConnectionFactory defaultConnectionFactory() {
    CachingConnectionFactory cf = new CachingConnectionFactory();
    cf.setAddresses(this.props.getAddresses());
    cf.setUsername(this.props.getUsername());
    cf.setPassword(this.props.getPassword());
    cf.setVirtualHost(this.props.getVirtualHost());
    return cf;
}

@Bean
public LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory queueAffinityCF(
        @Qualifier("defaultConnectionFactory") ConnectionFactory defaultCF) {
    return new LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory(defaultCF,
            StringUtils.commaDelimitedListToStringArray(this.props.getAddresses()),
            StringUtils.commaDelimitedListToStringArray(this.props.getAdminUris()),
            StringUtils.commaDelimitedListToStringArray(this.props.getNodes()),
            this.props.getVirtualHost(), this.props.getUsername(), this.props.getPassword(),
            false, null);
}

Notice that the first three parameters are arrays of addresses, adminUris, and nodes. These are positional in that, when a container attempts to connect to a queue, it uses the admin API to determine which node is the lead for the queue and connects to the address in the same array position as that node.

Starting with version 2.4.8, the RabbitMQ http-client is no longer used to access the Rest API. Instead, by default, the WebClient from Spring Webflux is used if spring-webflux is on the class path; otherwise a RestTemplate is used.

To add WebFlux to the class path:

Example 1. Maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.amqp</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-rabbit</artifactId>
</dependency>

Example 2. Gradle

compile 'org.springframework.amqp:spring-rabbit'

You can also use other REST technology by implementing LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory.NodeLocator and overriding its createClient, ``restCall, and optionally, close methods.

lqcf.setNodeLocator(new NodeLocator<MyClient>() {

    @Override
    public MyClient createClient(String userName, String password) {
        ...
    }

    @Override
    public HashMap<String, Object> restCall(MyClient client, URI uri) {
        ...
    });

});

The framework provides the WebFluxNodeLocator and RestTemplateNodeLocator, with the default as discussed above.

Publisher Confirms and Returns

Confirmed (with correlation) and returned messages are supported by setting the CachingConnectionFactory property publisherConfirmType to ConfirmType.CORRELATED and the publisherReturns property to 'true'.

When these options are set, Channel instances created by the factory are wrapped in an PublisherCallbackChannel, which is used to facilitate the callbacks. When such a channel is obtained, the client can register a PublisherCallbackChannel.Listener with the Channel. The PublisherCallbackChannel implementation contains logic to route a confirm or return to the appropriate listener. These features are explained further in the following sections.

See also simplePublisherConfirms in Scoped Operations.

For some more background information, see the blog post by the RabbitMQ team titled Introducing Publisher Confirms.

Connection and Channel Listeners

The connection factory supports registering ConnectionListener and ChannelListener implementations. This allows you to receive notifications for connection and channel related events. (A ConnectionListener is used by the RabbitAdmin to perform declarations when the connection is established - see Automatic Declaration of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings for more information). The following listing shows the ConnectionListener interface definition:

@FunctionalInterface
public interface ConnectionListener {

    void onCreate(Connection connection);

    default void onClose(Connection connection) {
    }

    default void onShutDown(ShutdownSignalException signal) {
    }

}

Starting with version 2.0, the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.Connection object can be supplied with com.rabbitmq.client.BlockedListener instances to be notified for connection blocked and unblocked events. The following example shows the ChannelListener interface definition:

@FunctionalInterface
public interface ChannelListener {

    void onCreate(Channel channel, boolean transactional);

    default void onShutDown(ShutdownSignalException signal) {
    }

}

See Publishing is Asynchronous — How to Detect Successes and Failures for one scenario where you might want to register a ChannelListener.

Logging Channel Close Events

Version 1.5 introduced a mechanism to enable users to control logging levels.

The CachingConnectionFactory uses a default strategy to log channel closures as follows:

Normal channel closes (200 OK) are not logged.
If a channel is closed due to a failed passive queue declaration, it is logged at debug level.
If a channel is closed because the basic.consume is refused due to an exclusive consumer condition, it is logged at INFO level.
All others are logged at ERROR level.

To modify this behavior, you can inject a custom ConditionalExceptionLogger into the CachingConnectionFactory in its closeExceptionLogger property.

Runtime Cache Properties

Staring with version 1.6, the CachingConnectionFactory now provides cache statistics through the getCacheProperties() method. These statistics can be used to tune the cache to optimize it in production. For example, the high water marks can be used to determine whether the cache size should be increased. If it equals the cache size, you might want to consider increasing further. The following table describes the CacheMode.CHANNEL properties:

Table 1. Cache properties for CacheMode.CHANNEL
Property	Meaning
connectionName	The name of the connection generated by the `ConnectionNameStrategy`.
channelCacheSize	The currently configured maximum channels that are allowed to be idle.
localPort	The local port for the connection (if available). This can be used to correlate with connections and channels on the RabbitMQ Admin UI.
idleChannelsTx	The number of transactional channels that are currently idle (cached).
idleChannelsNotTx	The number of non-transactional channels that are currently idle (cached).
idleChannelsTxHighWater	The maximum number of transactional channels that have been concurrently idle (cached).
idleChannelsNotTxHighWater	The maximum number of non-transactional channels have been concurrently idle (cached).

The following table describes the CacheMode.CONNECTION properties:

Table 2. Cache properties for CacheMode.CONNECTION
Property	Meaning
connectionName:<localPort>	The name of the connection generated by the `ConnectionNameStrategy`.
openConnections	The number of connection objects representing connections to brokers.
channelCacheSize	The currently configured maximum channels that are allowed to be idle.
connectionCacheSize	The currently configured maximum connections that are allowed to be idle.
idleConnections	The number of connections that are currently idle.
idleConnectionsHighWater	The maximum number of connections that have been concurrently idle.
idleChannelsTx:<localPort>	The number of transactional channels that are currently idle (cached) for this connection. You can use the `localPort` part of the property name to correlate with connections and channels on the RabbitMQ Admin UI.
idleChannelsNotTx:<localPort>	The number of non-transactional channels that are currently idle (cached) for this connection. The `localPort` part of the property name can be used to correlate with connections and channels on the RabbitMQ Admin UI.
idleChannelsTxHighWater:<localPort>	The maximum number of transactional channels that have been concurrently idle (cached). The localPort part of the property name can be used to correlate with connections and channels on the RabbitMQ Admin UI.
idleChannelsNotTxHighWater:<localPort>	The maximum number of non-transactional channels have been concurrently idle (cached). You can use the `localPort` part of the property name to correlate with connections and channels on the RabbitMQ Admin UI.

The cacheMode property (CHANNEL or CONNECTION) is also included.

Figure 1. JVisualVM Example

RabbitMQ Automatic Connection/Topology recovery

Since the first version of Spring AMQP, the framework has provided its own connection and channel recovery in the event of a broker failure. Also, as discussed in Configuring the Broker, the RabbitAdmin re-declares any infrastructure beans (queues and others) when the connection is re-established. It therefore does not rely on the auto-recovery that is now provided by the amqp-client library. The amqp-client, has auto recovery enabled by default. There are some incompatibilities between the two recovery mechanisms so, by default, Spring sets the automaticRecoveryEnabled property on the underlying RabbitMQ connectionFactory to false. Even if the property is true, Spring effectively disables it, by immediately closing any recovered connections.

By default, only elements (queues, exchanges, bindings) that are defined as beans will be re-declared after a connection failure. See Recovering Auto-Delete Declarations for how to change that behavior.

4.1.3. Adding Custom Client Connection Properties

The CachingConnectionFactory now lets you access the underlying connection factory to allow, for example, setting custom client properties. The following example shows how to do so:

connectionFactory.getRabbitConnectionFactory().getClientProperties().put("thing1", "thing2");

These properties appear in the RabbitMQ Admin UI when viewing the connection.

4.1.4. `AmqpTemplate`

As with many other high-level abstractions provided by the Spring Framework and related projects, Spring AMQP provides a “template” that plays a central role. The interface that defines the main operations is called AmqpTemplate. Those operations cover the general behavior for sending and receiving messages. In other words, they are not unique to any implementation — hence the “AMQP” in the name. On the other hand, there are implementations of that interface that are tied to implementations of the AMQP protocol. Unlike JMS, which is an interface-level API itself, AMQP is a wire-level protocol. The implementations of that protocol provide their own client libraries, so each implementation of the template interface depends on a particular client library. Currently, there is only a single implementation: RabbitTemplate. In the examples that follow, we often use an AmqpTemplate. However, when you look at the configuration examples or any code excerpts where the template is instantiated or setters are invoked, you can see the implementation type (for example, RabbitTemplate).

As mentioned earlier, the AmqpTemplate interface defines all of the basic operations for sending and receiving messages. We will explore message sending and reception, respectively, in Sending Messages and Receiving Messages.

Adding Retry Capabilities

Starting with version 1.3, you can now configure the RabbitTemplate to use a RetryTemplate to help with handling problems with broker connectivity. See the spring-retry project for complete information. The following is only one example that uses an exponential back off policy and the default SimpleRetryPolicy, which makes three tries before throwing the exception to the caller.

The following example uses the XML namespace:

<rabbit:template id="template" connection-factory="connectionFactory" retry-template="retryTemplate"/>

<bean id="retryTemplate" class="org.springframework.retry.support.RetryTemplate">
    <property name="backOffPolicy">
        <bean class="org.springframework.retry.backoff.ExponentialBackOffPolicy">
            <property name="initialInterval" value="500" />
            <property name="multiplier" value="10.0" />
            <property name="maxInterval" value="10000" />
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

The following example uses the @Configuration annotation in Java:

@Bean
public RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate() {
    RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
    RetryTemplate retryTemplate = new RetryTemplate();
    ExponentialBackOffPolicy backOffPolicy = new ExponentialBackOffPolicy();
    backOffPolicy.setInitialInterval(500);
    backOffPolicy.setMultiplier(10.0);
    backOffPolicy.setMaxInterval(10000);
    retryTemplate.setBackOffPolicy(backOffPolicy);
    template.setRetryTemplate(retryTemplate);
    return template;
}

Starting with version 1.4, in addition to the retryTemplate property, the recoveryCallback option is supported on the RabbitTemplate. It is used as a second argument for the RetryTemplate.execute(RetryCallback<T, E> retryCallback, RecoveryCallback<T> recoveryCallback).

The RecoveryCallback is somewhat limited, in that the retry context contains only the lastThrowable field. For more sophisticated use cases, you should use an external RetryTemplate so that you can convey additional information to the RecoveryCallback through the context’s attributes. The following example shows how to do so:

retryTemplate.execute(
    new RetryCallback<Object, Exception>() {

        @Override
        public Object doWithRetry(RetryContext context) throws Exception {
            context.setAttribute("message", message);
            return rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(exchange, routingKey, message);
        }

    }, new RecoveryCallback<Object>() {

        @Override
        public Object recover(RetryContext context) throws Exception {
            Object message = context.getAttribute("message");
            Throwable t = context.getLastThrowable();
            // Do something with message
            return null;
        }
    });
}

In this case, you would not inject a RetryTemplate into the RabbitTemplate.

Publishing is Asynchronous — How to Detect Successes and Failures

Publishing messages is an asynchronous mechanism and, by default, messages that cannot be routed are dropped by RabbitMQ. For successful publishing, you can receive an asynchronous confirm, as described in Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns. Consider two failure scenarios:

Publish to an exchange but there is no matching destination queue.
Publish to a non-existent exchange.

The first case is covered by publisher returns, as described in Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns.

For the second case, the message is dropped and no return is generated. The underlying channel is closed with an exception. By default, this exception is logged, but you can register a ChannelListener with the CachingConnectionFactory to obtain notifications of such events. The following example shows how to add a ConnectionListener:

this.connectionFactory.addConnectionListener(new ConnectionListener() {

    @Override
    public void onCreate(Connection connection) {
    }

    @Override
    public void onShutDown(ShutdownSignalException signal) {
        ...
    }

});

You can examine the signal’s reason property to determine the problem that occurred.

To detect the exception on the sending thread, you can setChannelTransacted(true) on the RabbitTemplate and the exception is detected on the txCommit(). However, transactions significantly impede performance, so consider this carefully before enabling transactions for just this one use case.

Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns

The RabbitTemplate implementation of AmqpTemplate supports publisher confirms and returns.

For returned messages, the template’s mandatory property must be set to true or the mandatory-expression must evaluate to true for a particular message. This feature requires a CachingConnectionFactory that has its publisherReturns property set to true (see Publisher Confirms and Returns). Returns are sent to the client by it registering a RabbitTemplate.ReturnsCallback by calling setReturnsCallback(ReturnsCallback callback). The callback must implement the following method:

void returnedMessage(ReturnedMessage returned);

The ReturnedMessage has the following properties:

message - the returned message itself
replyCode - a code indicating the reason for the return
replyText - a textual reason for the return - e.g. NO_ROUTE
exchange - the exchange to which the message was sent
routingKey - the routing key that was used

Only one ReturnsCallback is supported by each RabbitTemplate. See also Reply Timeout.

For publisher confirms (also known as publisher acknowledgements), the template requires a CachingConnectionFactory that has its publisherConfirm property set to ConfirmType.CORRELATED. Confirms are sent to the client by it registering a RabbitTemplate.ConfirmCallback by calling setConfirmCallback(ConfirmCallback callback). The callback must implement this method:

void confirm(CorrelationData correlationData, boolean ack, String cause);

The CorrelationData is an object supplied by the client when sending the original message. The ack is true for an ack and false for a nack. For nack instances, the cause may contain a reason for the nack, if it is available when the nack is generated. An example is when sending a message to a non-existent exchange. In that case, the broker closes the channel. The reason for the closure is included in the cause. The cause was added in version 1.4.

Only one ConfirmCallback is supported by a RabbitTemplate.

When a rabbit template send operation completes, the channel is closed. This precludes the reception of confirms or returns when the connection factory cache is full (when there is space in the cache, the channel is not physically closed and the returns and confirms proceed normally). When the cache is full, the framework defers the close for up to five seconds, in order to allow time for the confirms and returns to be received. When using confirms, the channel is closed when the last confirm is received. When using only returns, the channel remains open for the full five seconds. We generally recommend setting the connection factory’s channelCacheSize to a large enough value so that the channel on which a message is published is returned to the cache instead of being closed. You can monitor channel usage by using the RabbitMQ management plugin. If you see channels being opened and closed rapidly, you should consider increasing the cache size to reduce overhead on the server.

Before version 2.1, channels enabled for publisher confirms were returned to the cache before the confirms were received. Some other process could check out the channel and perform some operation that causes the channel to close — such as publishing a message to a non-existent exchange. This could cause the confirm to be lost. Version 2.1 and later no longer return the channel to the cache while confirms are outstanding. The RabbitTemplate performs a logical close() on the channel after each operation. In general, this means that only one confirm is outstanding on a channel at a time.

Starting with version 2.2, the callbacks are invoked on one of the connection factory’s executor threads. This is to avoid a potential deadlock if you perform Rabbit operations from within the callback. With previous versions, the callbacks were invoked directly on the amqp-client connection I/O thread; this would deadlock if you perform some RPC operation (such as opening a new channel) since the I/O thread blocks waiting for the result, but the result needs to be processed by the I/O thread itself. With those versions, it was necessary to hand off work (such as sending a messasge) to another thread within the callback. This is no longer necessary since the framework now hands off the callback invocation to the executor.

The guarantee of receiving a returned message before the ack is still maintained as long as the return callback executes in 60 seconds or less. The confirm is scheduled to be delivered after the return callback exits or after 60 seconds, whichever comes first.

Starting with version 2.1, the CorrelationData object has a ListenableFuture that you can use to get the result, instead of using a ConfirmCallback on the template. The following example shows how to configure a CorrelationData instance:

CorrelationData cd1 = new CorrelationData();
this.templateWithConfirmsEnabled.convertAndSend("exchange", queue.getName(), "foo", cd1);
assertTrue(cd1.getFuture().get(10, TimeUnit.SECONDS).isAck());

Since it is a ListenableFuture<Confirm>, you can either get() the result when ready or add listeners for an asynchronous callback. The Confirm object is a simple bean with 2 properties: ack and reason (for nack instances). The reason is not populated for broker-generated nack instances. It is populated for nack instances generated by the framework (for example, closing the connection while ack instances are outstanding).

In addition, when both confirms and returns are enabled, the CorrelationData is populated with the returned message, as long as the CorrelationData has a unique id; this is always the case, by default, starting with version 2.3. It is guaranteed that the returned message is set before the future is set with the ack.

See also Scoped Operations for a simpler mechanism for waiting for publisher confirms.

Scoped Operations

Normally, when using the template, a Channel is checked out of the cache (or created), used for the operation, and returned to the cache for reuse. In a multi-threaded environment, there is no guarantee that the next operation uses the same channel. There may be times, however, where you want to have more control over the use of a channel and ensure that a number of operations are all performed on the same channel.

Starting with version 2.0, a new method called invoke is provided, with an OperationsCallback. Any operations performed within the scope of the callback and on the provided RabbitOperations argument use the same dedicated Channel, which will be closed at the end (not returned to a cache). If the channel is a PublisherCallbackChannel, it is returned to the cache after all confirms have been received (see Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns).

@FunctionalInterface
public interface OperationsCallback<T> {

    T doInRabbit(RabbitOperations operations);

}

One example of why you might need this is if you wish to use the waitForConfirms() method on the underlying Channel. This method was not previously exposed by the Spring API because the channel is, generally, cached and shared, as discussed earlier. The RabbitTemplate now provides waitForConfirms(long timeout) and waitForConfirmsOrDie(long timeout), which delegate to the dedicated channel used within the scope of the OperationsCallback. The methods cannot be used outside of that scope, for obvious reasons.

Note that a higher-level abstraction that lets you correlate confirms to requests is provided elsewhere (see Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns). If you want only to wait until the broker has confirmed delivery, you can use the technique shown in the following example:

Collection<?> messages = getMessagesToSend();
Boolean result = this.template.invoke(t -> {
    messages.forEach(m -> t.convertAndSend(ROUTE, m));
    t.waitForConfirmsOrDie(10_000);
    return true;
});

If you wish RabbitAdmin operations to be invoked on the same channel within the scope of the OperationsCallback, the admin must have been constructed by using the same RabbitTemplate that was used for the invoke operation.

The preceding discussion is moot if the template operations are already performed within the scope of an existing transaction — for example, when running on a transacted listener container thread and performing operations on a transacted template. In that case, the operations are performed on that channel and committed when the thread returns to the container. It is not necessary to use invoke in that scenario.

When using confirms in this way, much of the infrastructure set up for correlating confirms to requests is not really needed (unless returns are also enabled). Starting with version 2.2, the connection factory supports a new property called publisherConfirmType. When this is set to ConfirmType.SIMPLE, the infrastructure is avoided and the confirm processing can be more efficient.

Furthermore, the RabbitTemplate sets the publisherSequenceNumber property in the sent message MessageProperties. If you wish to check (or log or otherwise use) specific confirms, you can do so with an overloaded invoke method, as the following example shows:

public <T> T invoke(OperationsCallback<T> action, com.rabbitmq.client.ConfirmCallback acks,
        com.rabbitmq.client.ConfirmCallback nacks);

These ConfirmCallback objects (for ack and nack instances) are the Rabbit client callbacks, not the template callback.

The following example logs ack and nack instances:

Collection<?> messages = getMessagesToSend();
Boolean result = this.template.invoke(t -> {
    messages.forEach(m -> t.convertAndSend(ROUTE, m));
    t.waitForConfirmsOrDie(10_000);
    return true;
}, (tag, multiple) -> {
        log.info("Ack: " + tag + ":" + multiple);
}, (tag, multiple) -> {
        log.info("Nack: " + tag + ":" + multiple);
}));

Scoped operations are bound to a thread. See Strict Message Ordering in a Multi-Threaded Environment for a discussion about strict ordering in a multi-threaded environment.

Strict Message Ordering in a Multi-Threaded Environment

The discussion in Scoped Operations applies only when the operations are performed on the same thread.

Consider the following situation:

thread-1 sends a message to a queue and hands off work to thread-2
thread-2 sends a message to the same queue

Because of the async nature of RabbitMQ and the use of cached channels; it is not certain that the same channel will be used and therefore the order in which the messages arrive in the queue is not guaranteed. (In most cases they will arrive in order, but the probability of out-of-order delivery is not zero). To solve this use case, you can use a bounded channel cache with size 1 (together with a channelCheckoutTimeout) to ensure the messages are always published on the same channel, and order will be guaranteed. To do this, if you have other uses for the connection factory, such as consumers, you should either use a dedicated connection factory for the template, or configure the template to use the publisher connection factory embedded in the main connection factory (see Using a Separate Connection).

This is best illustrated with a simple Spring Boot Application:

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

	private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
	}

	@Bean
	TaskExecutor exec() {
		ThreadPoolTaskExecutor exec = new ThreadPoolTaskExecutor();
		exec.setCorePoolSize(10);
		return exec;
	}

	@Bean
	CachingConnectionFactory ccf() {
		CachingConnectionFactory ccf = new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
		CachingConnectionFactory publisherCF = (CachingConnectionFactory) ccf.getPublisherConnectionFactory();
		publisherCF.setChannelCacheSize(1);
		publisherCF.setChannelCheckoutTimeout(1000L);
		return ccf;
	}

	@RabbitListener(queues = "queue")
	void listen(String in) {
		log.info(in);
	}

	@Bean
	Queue queue() {
		return new Queue("queue");
	}


	@Bean
	public ApplicationRunner runner(Service service, TaskExecutor exec) {
		return args -> {
			exec.execute(() -> service.mainService("test"));
		};
	}

}

@Component
class Service {

	private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Service.class);

	private final RabbitTemplate template;

	private final TaskExecutor exec;

	Service(RabbitTemplate template, TaskExecutor exec) {
		template.setUsePublisherConnection(true);
		this.template = template;
		this.exec = exec;
	}

	void mainService(String toSend) {
		LOG.info("Publishing from main service");
		this.template.convertAndSend("queue", toSend);
		this.exec.execute(() -> secondaryService(toSend.toUpperCase()));
	}

	void secondaryService(String toSend) {
		LOG.info("Publishing from secondary service");
		this.template.convertAndSend("queue", toSend);
	}

}

Even though the publishing is performed on two different threads, they will both use the same channel because the cache is capped at a single channel.

Starting with version 2.3.7, the ThreadChannelConnectionFactory supports transferring a thread’s channel(s) to another thread, using the prepareContextSwitch and switchContext methods. The first method returns a context which is passed to the second thread which calls the second method. A thread can have either a non-transactional channel or a transactional channel (or one of each) bound to it; you cannot transfer them individually, unless you use two connection factories. An example follows:

@SpringBootApplication
public class Application {

	private static final Logger log = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Application.class);

	public static void main(String[] args) {
		SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
	}

	@Bean
	TaskExecutor exec() {
		ThreadPoolTaskExecutor exec = new ThreadPoolTaskExecutor();
		exec.setCorePoolSize(10);
		return exec;
	}

	@Bean
	ThreadChannelConnectionFactory tccf() {
		ConnectionFactory rabbitConnectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();
		rabbitConnectionFactory.setHost("localhost");
		return new ThreadChannelConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory);
	}

	@RabbitListener(queues = "queue")
	void listen(String in) {
		log.info(in);
	}

	@Bean
	Queue queue() {
		return new Queue("queue");
	}


	@Bean
	public ApplicationRunner runner(Service service, TaskExecutor exec) {
		return args -> {
			exec.execute(() -> service.mainService("test"));
		};
	}

}

@Component
class Service {

	private static final Logger LOG = LoggerFactory.getLogger(Service.class);

	private final RabbitTemplate template;

	private final TaskExecutor exec;

	private final ThreadChannelConnectionFactory connFactory;

	Service(RabbitTemplate template, TaskExecutor exec,
			ThreadChannelConnectionFactory tccf) {

		this.template = template;
		this.exec = exec;
		this.connFactory = tccf;
	}

	void mainService(String toSend) {
		LOG.info("Publishing from main service");
		this.template.convertAndSend("queue", toSend);
		Object context = this.connFactory.prepareSwitchContext();
		this.exec.execute(() -> secondaryService(toSend.toUpperCase(), context));
	}

	void secondaryService(String toSend, Object threadContext) {
		LOG.info("Publishing from secondary service");
		this.connFactory.switchContext(threadContext);
		this.template.convertAndSend("queue", toSend);
		this.connFactory.closeThreadChannel();
	}

}

Once the prepareSwitchContext is called, if the current thread performs any more operations, they will be performed on a new channel. It is important to close the thread-bound channel when it is no longer needed.

Messaging Integration

Starting with version 1.4, RabbitMessagingTemplate (built on top of RabbitTemplate) provides an integration with the Spring Framework messaging abstraction — that is, org.springframework.messaging.Message. This lets you send and receive messages by using the spring-messaging Message<?> abstraction. This abstraction is used by other Spring projects, such as Spring Integration and Spring’s STOMP support. There are two message converters involved: one to convert between a spring-messaging Message<?> and Spring AMQP’s Message abstraction and one to convert between Spring AMQP’s Message abstraction and the format required by the underlying RabbitMQ client library. By default, the message payload is converted by the provided RabbitTemplate instance’s message converter. Alternatively, you can inject a custom MessagingMessageConverter with some other payload converter, as the following example shows:

MessagingMessageConverter amqpMessageConverter = new MessagingMessageConverter();
amqpMessageConverter.setPayloadConverter(myPayloadConverter);
rabbitMessagingTemplate.setAmqpMessageConverter(amqpMessageConverter);

Validated User Id

Starting with version 1.6, the template now supports a user-id-expression (userIdExpression when using Java configuration). If a message is sent, the user id property is set (if not already set) after evaluating this expression. The root object for the evaluation is the message to be sent.

The following examples show how to use the user-id-expression attribute:

<rabbit:template ... user-id-expression="'guest'" />

<rabbit:template ... user-id-expression="@myConnectionFactory.username" />

The first example is a literal expression. The second obtains the username property from a connection factory bean in the application context.

Using a Separate Connection

Starting with version 2.0.2, you can set the usePublisherConnection property to true to use a different connection to that used by listener containers, when possible. This is to avoid consumers being blocked when a producer is blocked for any reason. The connection factories maintain a second internal connection factory for this purpose; by default it is the same type as the main factory, but can be set explicity if you wish to use a different factory type for publishing. If the rabbit template is running in a transaction started by the listener container, the container’s channel is used, regardless of this setting.

In general, you should not use a RabbitAdmin with a template that has this set to true. Use the RabbitAdmin constructor that takes a connection factory. If you use the other constructor that takes a template, ensure the template’s property is false. This is because, often, an admin is used to declare queues for listener containers. Using a template that has the property set to true would mean that exclusive queues (such as AnonymousQueue) would be declared on a different connection to that used by listener containers. In that case, the queues cannot be used by the containers.

4.1.5. Sending Messages

When sending a message, you can use any of the following methods:

void send(Message message) throws AmqpException;

void send(String routingKey, Message message) throws AmqpException;

void send(String exchange, String routingKey, Message message) throws AmqpException;

We can begin our discussion with the last method in the preceding listing, since it is actually the most explicit. It lets an AMQP exchange name (along with a routing key)be provided at runtime. The last parameter is the callback that is responsible for actual creating the message instance. An example of using this method to send a message might look like this: The following example shows how to use the send method to send a message:

amqpTemplate.send("marketData.topic", "quotes.nasdaq.THING1",
    new Message("12.34".getBytes(), someProperties));

You can set the exchange property on the template itself if you plan to use that template instance to send to the same exchange most or all of the time. In such cases, you can use the second method in the preceding listing. The following example is functionally equivalent to the previous example:

amqpTemplate.setExchange("marketData.topic");
amqpTemplate.send("quotes.nasdaq.FOO", new Message("12.34".getBytes(), someProperties));

If both the exchange and routingKey properties are set on the template, you can use the method that accepts only the Message. The following example shows how to do so:

amqpTemplate.setExchange("marketData.topic");
amqpTemplate.setRoutingKey("quotes.nasdaq.FOO");
amqpTemplate.send(new Message("12.34".getBytes(), someProperties));

A better way of thinking about the exchange and routing key properties is that the explicit method parameters always override the template’s default values. In fact, even if you do not explicitly set those properties on the template, there are always default values in place. In both cases, the default is an empty String, but that is actually a sensible default. As far as the routing key is concerned, it is not always necessary in the first place (for example, for a Fanout exchange). Furthermore, a queue may be bound to an exchange with an empty String. Those are both legitimate scenarios for reliance on the default empty String value for the routing key property of the template. As far as the exchange name is concerned, the empty String is commonly used because the AMQP specification defines the “default exchange” as having no name. Since all queues are automatically bound to that default exchange (which is a direct exchange), using their name as the binding value, the second method in the preceding listing can be used for simple point-to-point messaging to any queue through the default exchange. You can provide the queue name as the routingKey, either by providing the method parameter at runtime. The following example shows how to do so:

RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(); // using default no-name Exchange
template.send("queue.helloWorld", new Message("Hello World".getBytes(), someProperties));

Alternately, you can create a template that can be used for publishing primarily or exclusively to a single Queue. The following example shows how to do so:

RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(); // using default no-name Exchange
template.setRoutingKey("queue.helloWorld"); // but we'll always send to this Queue
template.send(new Message("Hello World".getBytes(), someProperties));

Message Builder API

Starting with version 1.3, a message builder API is provided by the MessageBuilder and MessagePropertiesBuilder. These methods provide a convenient “fluent” means of creating a message or message properties. The following examples show the fluent API in action:

Message message = MessageBuilder.withBody("foo".getBytes())
    .setContentType(MessageProperties.CONTENT_TYPE_TEXT_PLAIN)
    .setMessageId("123")
    .setHeader("bar", "baz")
    .build();

MessageProperties props = MessagePropertiesBuilder.newInstance()
    .setContentType(MessageProperties.CONTENT_TYPE_TEXT_PLAIN)
    .setMessageId("123")
    .setHeader("bar", "baz")
    .build();
Message message = MessageBuilder.withBody("foo".getBytes())
    .andProperties(props)
    .build();

Each of the properties defined on the MessageProperties can be set. Other methods include setHeader(String key, String value), removeHeader(String key), removeHeaders(), and copyProperties(MessageProperties properties). Each property setting method has a set*IfAbsent() variant. In the cases where a default initial value exists, the method is named set*IfAbsentOrDefault().

Five static methods are provided to create an initial message builder:

public static MessageBuilder withBody(byte[] body) (1)

public static MessageBuilder withClonedBody(byte[] body) (2)

public static MessageBuilder withBody(byte[] body, int from, int to) (3)

public static MessageBuilder fromMessage(Message message) (4)

public static MessageBuilder fromClonedMessage(Message message) (5)

1	The message created by the builder has a body that is a direct reference to the argument.
2	The message created by the builder has a body that is a new array containing a copy of bytes in the argument.
3	The message created by the builder has a body that is a new array containing the range of bytes from the argument. See `Arrays.copyOfRange()` for more details.
4	The message created by the builder has a body that is a direct reference to the body of the argument. The argument’s properties are copied to a new `MessageProperties` object.
5	The message created by the builder has a body that is a new array containing a copy of the argument’s body. The argument’s properties are copied to a new `MessageProperties` object.

Three static methods are provided to create a MessagePropertiesBuilder instance:

public static MessagePropertiesBuilder newInstance() (1)

public static MessagePropertiesBuilder fromProperties(MessageProperties properties) (2)

public static MessagePropertiesBuilder fromClonedProperties(MessageProperties properties) (3)

1	A new message properties object is initialized with default values.
2	The builder is initialized with, and `build()` will return, the provided properties object.,
3	The argument’s properties are copied to a new `MessageProperties` object.

With the RabbitTemplate implementation of AmqpTemplate, each of the send() methods has an overloaded version that takes an additional CorrelationData object. When publisher confirms are enabled, this object is returned in the callback described in AmqpTemplate. This lets the sender correlate a confirm (ack or nack) with the sent message.

Starting with version 1.6.7, the CorrelationAwareMessagePostProcessor interface was introduced, allowing the correlation data to be modified after the message has been converted. The following example shows how to use it:

Message postProcessMessage(Message message, Correlation correlation);

In version 2.0, this interface is deprecated. The method has been moved to MessagePostProcessor with a default implementation that delegates to postProcessMessage(Message message).

Also starting with version 1.6.7, a new callback interface called CorrelationDataPostProcessor is provided. This is invoked after all MessagePostProcessor instances (provided in the send() method as well as those provided in setBeforePublishPostProcessors()). Implementations can update or replace the correlation data supplied in the send() method (if any). The Message and original CorrelationData (if any) are provided as arguments. The following example shows how to use the postProcess method:

CorrelationData postProcess(Message message, CorrelationData correlationData);

Publisher Returns

When the template’s mandatory property is true, returned messages are provided by the callback described in AmqpTemplate.

Starting with version 1.4, the RabbitTemplate supports the SpEL mandatoryExpression property, which is evaluated against each request message as the root evaluation object, resolving to a boolean value. Bean references, such as @myBean.isMandatory(#root), can be used in the expression.

Publisher returns can also be used internally by the RabbitTemplate in send and receive operations. See Reply Timeout for more information.

Batching

Version 1.4.2 introduced the BatchingRabbitTemplate. This is a subclass of RabbitTemplate with an overridden send method that batches messages according to the BatchingStrategy. Only when a batch is complete is the message sent to RabbitMQ. The following listing shows the BatchingStrategy interface definition:

public interface BatchingStrategy {

    MessageBatch addToBatch(String exchange, String routingKey, Message message);

    Date nextRelease();

    Collection<MessageBatch> releaseBatches();

}

Batched data is held in memory. Unsent messages can be lost in the event of a system failure.

A SimpleBatchingStrategy is provided. It supports sending messages to a single exchange or routing key. It has the following properties:

batchSize: The number of messages in a batch before it is sent.
bufferLimit: The maximum size of the batched message. This preempts the batchSize, if exceeded, and causes a partial batch to be sent.
timeout: A time after which a partial batch is sent when there is no new activity adding messages to the batch.

The SimpleBatchingStrategy formats the batch by preceding each embedded message with a four-byte binary length. This is communicated to the receiving system by setting the springBatchFormat message property to lengthHeader4.

Batched messages are automatically de-batched by listener containers by default (by using the springBatchFormat message header). Rejecting any message from a batch causes the entire batch to be rejected.

However, see @RabbitListener with Batching for more information.

4.1.6. Receiving Messages

Message reception is always a little more complicated than sending. There are two ways to receive a Message. The simpler option is to poll for one Message at a time with a polling method call. The more complicated yet more common approach is to register a listener that receives Messages on-demand, asynchronously. We consider an example of each approach in the next two sub-sections.

Polling Consumer

The AmqpTemplate itself can be used for polled Message reception. By default, if no message is available, null is returned immediately. There is no blocking. Starting with version 1.5, you can set a receiveTimeout, in milliseconds, and the receive methods block for up to that long, waiting for a message. A value less than zero means block indefinitely (or at least until the connection to the broker is lost). Version 1.6 introduced variants of the receive methods that allows the timeout be passed in on each call.

Since the receive operation creates a new QueueingConsumer for each message, this technique is not really appropriate for high-volume environments. Consider using an asynchronous consumer or a receiveTimeout of zero for those use cases.

Starting with version 2.4.8, when using a non-zero timeout, you can specify arguments passed into the basicConsume method used to associate the consumer with the channel. For example: template.addConsumerArg("x-priority", 10).

There are four simple receive methods available. As with the Exchange on the sending side, there is a method that requires that a default queue property has been set directly on the template itself, and there is a method that accepts a queue parameter at runtime. Version 1.6 introduced variants to accept timeoutMillis to override receiveTimeout on a per-request basis. The following listing shows the definitions of the four methods:

Message receive() throws AmqpException;

Message receive(String queueName) throws AmqpException;

Message receive(long timeoutMillis) throws AmqpException;

Message receive(String queueName, long timeoutMillis) throws AmqpException;

As in the case of sending messages, the AmqpTemplate has some convenience methods for receiving POJOs instead of Message instances, and implementations provide a way to customize the MessageConverter used to create the Object returned: The following listing shows those methods:

Object receiveAndConvert() throws AmqpException;

Object receiveAndConvert(String queueName) throws AmqpException;

Object receiveAndConvert(long timeoutMillis) throws AmqpException;

Object receiveAndConvert(String queueName, long timeoutMillis) throws AmqpException;

Starting with version 2.0, there are variants of these methods that take an additional ParameterizedTypeReference argument to convert complex types. The template must be configured with a SmartMessageConverter. See Converting From a Message With RabbitTemplate for more information.

Similar to sendAndReceive methods, beginning with version 1.3, the AmqpTemplate has several convenience receiveAndReply methods for synchronously receiving, processing and replying to messages. The following listing shows those method definitions:

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback)
       throws AmqpException;

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(String queueName, ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback)
     throws AmqpException;

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback,
    String replyExchange, String replyRoutingKey) throws AmqpException;

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(String queueName, ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback,
    String replyExchange, String replyRoutingKey) throws AmqpException;

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback,
     ReplyToAddressCallback<S> replyToAddressCallback) throws AmqpException;

<R, S> boolean receiveAndReply(String queueName, ReceiveAndReplyCallback<R, S> callback,
            ReplyToAddressCallback<S> replyToAddressCallback) throws AmqpException;

The AmqpTemplate implementation takes care of the receive and reply phases. In most cases, you should provide only an implementation of ReceiveAndReplyCallback to perform some business logic for the received message and build a reply object or message, if needed. Note, a ReceiveAndReplyCallback may return null. In this case, no reply is sent and receiveAndReply works like the receive method. This lets the same queue be used for a mixture of messages, some of which may not need a reply.

Automatic message (request and reply) conversion is applied only if the provided callback is not an instance of ReceiveAndReplyMessageCallback, which provides a raw message exchange contract.

The ReplyToAddressCallback is useful for cases requiring custom logic to determine the replyTo address at runtime against the received message and reply from the ReceiveAndReplyCallback. By default, replyTo information in the request message is used to route the reply.

The following listing shows an example of POJO-based receive and reply:

boolean received =
        this.template.receiveAndReply(ROUTE, new ReceiveAndReplyCallback<Order, Invoice>() {

                public Invoice handle(Order order) {
                        return processOrder(order);
                }
        });
if (received) {
        log.info("We received an order!");
}

Asynchronous Consumer

Spring AMQP also supports annotated listener endpoints through the use of the @RabbitListener annotation and provides an open infrastructure to register endpoints programmatically. This is by far the most convenient way to setup an asynchronous consumer. See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more details.

The prefetch default value used to be 1, which could lead to under-utilization of efficient consumers. Starting with version 2.0, the default prefetch value is now 250, which should keep consumers busy in most common scenarios and thus improve throughput.

There are, nevertheless, scenarios where the prefetch value should be low:

For large messages, especially if the processing is slow (messages could add up to a large amount of memory in the client process)
When strict message ordering is necessary (the prefetch value should be set back to 1 in this case)
Other special cases

Also, with low-volume messaging and multiple consumers (including concurrency within a single listener container instance), you may wish to reduce the prefetch to get a more even distribution of messages across consumers.

See Message Listener Container Configuration.

For more background about prefetch, see this post about consumer utilization in RabbitMQ and this post about queuing theory.

Message Listener

For asynchronous Message reception, a dedicated component (not the AmqpTemplate) is involved. That component is a container for a Message-consuming callback. We consider the container and its properties later in this section. First, though, we should look at the callback, since that is where your application code is integrated with the messaging system. There are a few options for the callback, starting with an implementation of the MessageListener interface, which the following listing shows:

public interface MessageListener {
    void onMessage(Message message);
}

If your callback logic depends on the AMQP Channel instance for any reason, you may instead use the ChannelAwareMessageListener. It looks similar but has an extra parameter. The following listing shows the ChannelAwareMessageListener interface definition:

public interface ChannelAwareMessageListener {
    void onMessage(Message message, Channel channel) throws Exception;
}

In version 2.1, this interface moved from package o.s.amqp.rabbit.core to o.s.amqp.rabbit.listener.api.

`MessageListenerAdapter`

If you prefer to maintain a stricter separation between your application logic and the messaging API, you can rely upon an adapter implementation that is provided by the framework. This is often referred to as “Message-driven POJO” support.

Version 1.5 introduced a more flexible mechanism for POJO messaging, the @RabbitListener annotation. See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

When using the adapter, you need to provide only a reference to the instance that the adapter itself should invoke. The following example shows how to do so:

MessageListenerAdapter listener = new MessageListenerAdapter(somePojo);
listener.setDefaultListenerMethod("myMethod");

You can subclass the adapter and provide an implementation of getListenerMethodName() to dynamically select different methods based on the message. This method has two parameters, originalMessage and extractedMessage, the latter being the result of any conversion. By default, a SimpleMessageConverter is configured. See SimpleMessageConverter for more information and information about other converters available.

Starting with version 1.4.2, the original message has consumerQueue and consumerTag properties, which can be used to determine the queue from which a message was received.

Starting with version 1.5, you can configure a map of consumer queue or tag to method name, to dynamically select the method to call. If no entry is in the map, we fall back to the default listener method. The default listener method (if not set) is handleMessage.

Starting with version 2.0, a convenient FunctionalInterface has been provided. The following listing shows the definition of FunctionalInterface:

@FunctionalInterface
public interface ReplyingMessageListener<T, R> {

    R handleMessage(T t);

}

This interface facilitates convenient configuration of the adapter by using Java 8 lambdas, as the following example shows:

new MessageListenerAdapter((ReplyingMessageListener<String, String>) data -> {
    ...
    return result;
}));

Starting with version 2.2, the buildListenerArguments(Object) has been deprecated and new buildListenerArguments(Object, Channel, Message) one has been introduced instead. The new method helps listener to get Channel and Message arguments to do more, such as calling channel.basicReject(long, boolean) in manual acknowledge mode. The following listing shows the most basic example:

public class ExtendedListenerAdapter extends MessageListenerAdapter {

    @Override
    protected Object[] buildListenerArguments(Object extractedMessage, Channel channel, Message message) {
        return new Object[]{extractedMessage, channel, message};
    }

}

Now you could configure ExtendedListenerAdapter as same as MessageListenerAdapter if you need to receive “channel” and “message”. Parameters of listener should be set as buildListenerArguments(Object, Channel, Message) returned, as the following example of listener shows:

public void handleMessage(Object object, Channel channel, Message message) throws IOException {
    ...
}

Container

Now that you have seen the various options for the Message-listening callback, we can turn our attention to the container. Basically, the container handles the “active” responsibilities so that the listener callback can remain passive. The container is an example of a “lifecycle” component. It provides methods for starting and stopping. When configuring the container, you essentially bridge the gap between an AMQP Queue and the MessageListener instance. You must provide a reference to the ConnectionFactory and the queue names or Queue instances from which that listener should consume messages.

Prior to version 2.0, there was one listener container, the SimpleMessageListenerContainer. There is now a second container, the DirectMessageListenerContainer. The differences between the containers and criteria you might apply when choosing which to use are described in Choosing a Container.

The following listing shows the most basic example, which works by using the, SimpleMessageListenerContainer:

SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer();
container.setConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory);
container.setQueueNames("some.queue");
container.setMessageListener(new MessageListenerAdapter(somePojo));

As an “active” component, it is most common to create the listener container with a bean definition so that it can run in the background. The following example shows one way to do so with XML:

<rabbit:listener-container connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory">
    <rabbit:listener queues="some.queue" ref="somePojo" method="handle"/>
</rabbit:listener-container>

The following listing shows another way to do so with XML:

<rabbit:listener-container connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory" type="direct">
    <rabbit:listener queues="some.queue" ref="somePojo" method="handle"/>
</rabbit:listener-container>

Both of the preceding examples create a DirectMessageListenerContainer (notice the type attribute — it defaults to simple).

Alternately, you may prefer to use Java configuration, which looks similar to the preceding code snippet:

@Configuration
public class ExampleAmqpConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public SimpleMessageListenerContainer messageListenerContainer() {
        SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer();
        container.setConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory());
        container.setQueueName("some.queue");
        container.setMessageListener(exampleListener());
        return container;
    }

    @Bean
    public CachingConnectionFactory rabbitConnectionFactory() {
        CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory =
            new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
        connectionFactory.setUsername("guest");
        connectionFactory.setPassword("guest");
        return connectionFactory;
    }

    @Bean
    public MessageListener exampleListener() {
        return new MessageListener() {
            public void onMessage(Message message) {
                System.out.println("received: " + message);
            }
        };
    }
}

Consumer Priority

Starting with RabbitMQ Version 3.2, the broker now supports consumer priority (see Using Consumer Priorities with RabbitMQ). This is enabled by setting the x-priority argument on the consumer. The SimpleMessageListenerContainer now supports setting consumer arguments, as the following example shows:

container.setConsumerArguments(Collections.
<String, Object> singletonMap("x-priority", Integer.valueOf(10)));

For convenience, the namespace provides the priority attribute on the listener element, as the following example shows:

<rabbit:listener-container connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory">
    <rabbit:listener queues="some.queue" ref="somePojo" method="handle" priority="10" />
</rabbit:listener-container>

Starting with version 1.3, you can modify the queues on which the container listens at runtime. See Listener Container Queues.

`auto-delete` Queues

When a container is configured to listen to auto-delete queues, the queue has an x-expires option, or the Time-To-Live policy is configured on the Broker, the queue is removed by the broker when the container is stopped (that is, when the last consumer is cancelled). Before version 1.3, the container could not be restarted because the queue was missing. The RabbitAdmin only automatically redeclares queues and so on when the connection is closed or when it opens, which does not happen when the container is stopped and started.

Starting with version 1.3, the container uses a RabbitAdmin to redeclare any missing queues during startup.

You can also use conditional declaration (see Conditional Declaration) together with an auto-startup="false" admin to defer queue declaration until the container is started. The following example shows how to do so:

<rabbit:queue id="otherAnon" declared-by="containerAdmin" />

<rabbit:direct-exchange name="otherExchange" auto-delete="true" declared-by="containerAdmin">
    <rabbit:bindings>
        <rabbit:binding queue="otherAnon" key="otherAnon" />
    </rabbit:bindings>
</rabbit:direct-exchange>

<rabbit:listener-container id="container2" auto-startup="false">
    <rabbit:listener id="listener2" ref="foo" queues="otherAnon" admin="containerAdmin" />
</rabbit:listener-container>

<rabbit:admin id="containerAdmin" connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory"
    auto-startup="false" />

In this case, the queue and exchange are declared by containerAdmin, which has auto-startup="false" so that the elements are not declared during context initialization. Also, the container is not started for the same reason. When the container is later started, it uses its reference to containerAdmin to declare the elements.

Batched Messages

Batched messages (created by a producer) are automatically de-batched by listener containers (using the springBatchFormat message header). Rejecting any message from a batch causes the entire batch to be rejected. See Batching for more information about batching.

Starting with version 2.2, the SimpleMessageListenerContainer can be use to create batches on the consumer side (where the producer sent discrete messages).

Set the container property consumerBatchEnabled to enable this feature. deBatchingEnabled must also be true so that the container is responsible for processing batches of both types. Implement BatchMessageListener or ChannelAwareBatchMessageListener when consumerBatchEnabled is true. Starting with version 2.2.7 both the SimpleMessageListenerContainer and DirectMessageListenerContainer can debatch producer created batches as List<Message>. See @RabbitListener with Batching for information about using this feature with @RabbitListener.

Consumer Events

The containers publish application events whenever a listener (consumer) experiences a failure of some kind. The event ListenerContainerConsumerFailedEvent has the following properties:

container: The listener container where the consumer experienced the problem.
reason: A textual reason for the failure.
fatal: A boolean indicating whether the failure was fatal. With non-fatal exceptions, the container tries to restart the consumer, according to the recoveryInterval or recoveryBackoff (for the SimpleMessageListenerContainer) or the monitorInterval (for the DirectMessageListenerContainer).
throwable: The Throwable that was caught.

These events can be consumed by implementing ApplicationListener<ListenerContainerConsumerFailedEvent>.

System-wide events (such as connection failures) are published by all consumers when concurrentConsumers is greater than 1.

If a consumer fails because one if its queues is being used exclusively, by default, as well as publishing the event, a WARN log is issued. To change this logging behavior, provide a custom ConditionalExceptionLogger in the SimpleMessageListenerContainer instance’s exclusiveConsumerExceptionLogger property. See also Logging Channel Close Events.

Fatal errors are always logged at the ERROR level. This it not modifiable.

Several other events are published at various stages of the container lifecycle:

AsyncConsumerStartedEvent: When the consumer is started.
AsyncConsumerRestartedEvent: When the consumer is restarted after a failure - SimpleMessageListenerContainer only.
AsyncConsumerTerminatedEvent: When a consumer is stopped normally.
AsyncConsumerStoppedEvent: When the consumer is stopped - SimpleMessageListenerContainer only.
ConsumeOkEvent: When a consumeOk is received from the broker, contains the queue name and consumerTag
ListenerContainerIdleEvent: See Detecting Idle Asynchronous Consumers.
MissingQueueEvent: When a missing queue is detected.

Consumer Tags

You can provide a strategy to generate consumer tags. By default, the consumer tag is generated by the broker. The following listing shows the ConsumerTagStrategy interface definition:

public interface ConsumerTagStrategy {

    String createConsumerTag(String queue);

}

The queue is made available so that it can (optionally) be used in the tag.

See Message Listener Container Configuration.

Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints

The easiest way to receive a message asynchronously is to use the annotated listener endpoint infrastructure. In a nutshell, it lets you expose a method of a managed bean as a Rabbit listener endpoint. The following example shows how to use the @RabbitListener annotation:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @RabbitListener(queues = "myQueue")
    public void processOrder(String data) {
        ...
    }

}

The idea of the preceding example is that, whenever a message is available on the queue named myQueue, the processOrder method is invoked accordingly (in this case, with the payload of the message).

The annotated endpoint infrastructure creates a message listener container behind the scenes for each annotated method, by using a RabbitListenerContainerFactory.

In the preceding example, myQueue must already exist and be bound to some exchange. The queue can be declared and bound automatically, as long as a RabbitAdmin exists in the application context.

Property placeholders (${some.property}) or SpEL expressions (#{someExpression}) can be specified for the annotation properties (queues etc). See Listening to Multiple Queues for an example of why you might use SpEL instead of a property placeholder. The following listing shows three examples of how to declare a Rabbit listener:

@Component
public class MyService {

  @RabbitListener(bindings = @QueueBinding(
        value = @Queue(value = "myQueue", durable = "true"),
        exchange = @Exchange(value = "auto.exch", ignoreDeclarationExceptions = "true"),
        key = "orderRoutingKey")
  )
  public void processOrder(Order order) {
    ...
  }

  @RabbitListener(bindings = @QueueBinding(
        value = @Queue,
        exchange = @Exchange(value = "auto.exch"),
        key = "invoiceRoutingKey")
  )
  public void processInvoice(Invoice invoice) {
    ...
  }

  @RabbitListener(queuesToDeclare = @Queue(name = "${my.queue}", durable = "true"))
  public String handleWithSimpleDeclare(String data) {
      ...
  }

}

In the first example, a queue myQueue is declared automatically (durable) together with the exchange, if needed, and bound to the exchange with the routing key. In the second example, an anonymous (exclusive, auto-delete) queue is declared and bound; the queue name is created by the framework using the Base64UrlNamingStrategy. You cannot declare broker-named queues using this technique; they need to be declared as bean definitions; see Containers and Broker-Named queues. Multiple QueueBinding entries can be provided, letting the listener listen to multiple queues. In the third example, a queue with the name retrieved from property my.queue is declared, if necessary, with the default binding to the default exchange using the queue name as the routing key.

Since version 2.0, the @Exchange annotation supports any exchange types, including custom. For more information, see AMQP Concepts.

You can use normal @Bean definitions when you need more advanced configuration.

Notice ignoreDeclarationExceptions on the exchange in the first example. This allows, for example, binding to an existing exchange that might have different settings (such as internal). By default, the properties of an existing exchange must match.

Starting with version 2.0, you can now bind a queue to an exchange with multiple routing keys, as the following example shows:

...
    key = { "red", "yellow" }
...

You can also specify arguments within @QueueBinding annotations for queues, exchanges, and bindings, as the following example shows:

@RabbitListener(bindings = @QueueBinding(
        value = @Queue(value = "auto.headers", autoDelete = "true",
                        arguments = @Argument(name = "x-message-ttl", value = "10000",
                                                type = "java.lang.Integer")),
        exchange = @Exchange(value = "auto.headers", type = ExchangeTypes.HEADERS, autoDelete = "true"),
        arguments = {
                @Argument(name = "x-match", value = "all"),
                @Argument(name = "thing1", value = "somevalue"),
                @Argument(name = "thing2")
        })
)
public String handleWithHeadersExchange(String foo) {
    ...
}

Notice that the x-message-ttl argument is set to 10 seconds for the queue. Since the argument type is not String, we have to specify its type — in this case, Integer. As with all such declarations, if the queue already exists, the arguments must match those on the queue. For the header exchange, we set the binding arguments to match messages that have the thing1 header set to somevalue, and the thing2 header must be present with any value. The x-match argument means both conditions must be satisfied.

The argument name, value, and type can be property placeholders (${…}) or SpEL expressions (#{…}). The name must resolve to a String. The expression for type must resolve to a Class or the fully-qualified name of a class. The value must resolve to something that can be converted by the DefaultConversionService to the type (such as the x-message-ttl in the preceding example).

If a name resolves to null or an empty String, that @Argument is ignored.

Meta-annotations

Sometimes you may want to use the same configuration for multiple listeners. To reduce the boilerplate configuration, you can use meta-annotations to create your own listener annotation. The following example shows how to do so:

@Target({ElementType.TYPE, ElementType.METHOD, ElementType.ANNOTATION_TYPE})
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@RabbitListener(bindings = @QueueBinding(
        value = @Queue,
        exchange = @Exchange(value = "metaFanout", type = ExchangeTypes.FANOUT)))
public @interface MyAnonFanoutListener {
}

public class MetaListener {

    @MyAnonFanoutListener
    public void handle1(String foo) {
        ...
    }

    @MyAnonFanoutListener
    public void handle2(String foo) {
        ...
    }

}

In the preceding example, each listener created by the @MyAnonFanoutListener annotation binds an anonymous, auto-delete queue to the fanout exchange, metaFanout. Starting with version 2.2.3, @AliasFor is supported to allow overriding properties on the meta-annotated annotation. Also, user annotations can now be @Repeatable, allowing multiple containers to be created for a method.

@Component
static class MetaAnnotationTestBean {

    @MyListener("queue1")
    @MyListener("queue2")
    public void handleIt(String body) {
    }

}


@RabbitListener
@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
@Repeatable(MyListeners.class)
static @interface MyListener {

    @AliasFor(annotation = RabbitListener.class, attribute = "queues")
    String[] value() default {};

}

@Target(ElementType.METHOD)
@Retention(RetentionPolicy.RUNTIME)
static @interface MyListeners {

    MyListener[] value();

}

Enable Listener Endpoint Annotations

To enable support for @RabbitListener annotations, you can add @EnableRabbit to one of your @Configuration classes. The following example shows how to do so:

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class AppConfig {

    @Bean
    public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory() {
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
        factory.setConcurrentConsumers(3);
        factory.setMaxConcurrentConsumers(10);
        factory.setContainerCustomizer(container -> /* customize the container */);
        return factory;
    }
}

Since version 2.0, a DirectMessageListenerContainerFactory is also available. It creates DirectMessageListenerContainer instances.

For information to help you choose between SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory and DirectRabbitListenerContainerFactory, see Choosing a Container.

Starting wih version 2.2.2, you can provide a ContainerCustomizer implementation (as shown above). This can be used to further configure the container after it has been created and configured; you can use this, for example, to set properties that are not exposed by the container factory.

Version 2.4.8 provides the CompositeContainerCustomizer for situations where you wish to apply multiple customizers.

By default, the infrastructure looks for a bean named rabbitListenerContainerFactory as the source for the factory to use to create message listener containers. In this case, and ignoring the RabbitMQ infrastructure setup, the processOrder method can be invoked with a core poll size of three threads and a maximum pool size of ten threads.

You can customize the listener container factory to use for each annotation, or you can configure an explicit default by implementing the RabbitListenerConfigurer interface. The default is required only if at least one endpoint is registered without a specific container factory. See the Javadoc for full details and examples.

The container factories provide methods for adding MessagePostProcessor instances that are applied after receiving messages (before invoking the listener) and before sending replies.

See Reply Management for information about replies.

Starting with version 2.0.6, you can add a RetryTemplate and RecoveryCallback to the listener container factory. It is used when sending replies. The RecoveryCallback is invoked when retries are exhausted. You can use a SendRetryContextAccessor to get information from the context. The following example shows how to do so:

factory.setRetryTemplate(retryTemplate);
factory.setReplyRecoveryCallback(ctx -> {
    Message failed = SendRetryContextAccessor.getMessage(ctx);
    Address replyTo = SendRetryContextAccessor.getAddress(ctx);
    Throwable t = ctx.getLastThrowable();
    ...
    return null;
});

If you prefer XML configuration, you can use the <rabbit:annotation-driven> element. Any beans annotated with @RabbitListener are detected.

For SimpleRabbitListenerContainer instances, you can use XML similar to the following:

<rabbit:annotation-driven/>

<bean id="rabbitListenerContainerFactory"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.config.SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="concurrentConsumers" value="3"/>
    <property name="maxConcurrentConsumers" value="10"/>
</bean>

For DirectMessageListenerContainer instances, you can use XML similar to the following:

<rabbit:annotation-driven/>

<bean id="rabbitListenerContainerFactory"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.config.DirectRabbitListenerContainerFactory">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
    <property name="consumersPerQueue" value="3"/>
</bean>

Starting with version 2.0, the @RabbitListener annotation has a concurrency property. It supports SpEL expressions (#{…}) and property placeholders (${…}). Its meaning and allowed values depend on the container type, as follows:

For the DirectMessageListenerContainer, the value must be a single integer value, which sets the consumersPerQueue property on the container.
For the SimpleRabbitListenerContainer, the value can be a single integer value, which sets the concurrentConsumers property on the container, or it can have the form, m-n, where m is the concurrentConsumers property and n is the maxConcurrentConsumers property.

In either case, this setting overrides the settings on the factory. Previously you had to define different container factories if you had listeners that required different concurrency.

The annotation also allows overriding the factory autoStartup and taskExecutor properties via the autoStartup and executor (since 2.2) annotation properties. Using a different executor for each might help with identifying threads associated with each listener in logs and thread dumps.

Version 2.2 also added the ackMode property, which allows you to override the container factory’s acknowledgeMode property.

@RabbitListener(id = "manual.acks.1", queues = "manual.acks.1", ackMode = "MANUAL")
public void manual1(String in, Channel channel,
    @Header(AmqpHeaders.DELIVERY_TAG) long tag) throws IOException {

    ...
    channel.basicAck(tag, false);
}

Message Conversion for Annotated Methods

There are two conversion steps in the pipeline before invoking the listener. The first step uses a MessageConverter to convert the incoming Spring AMQP Message to a Spring-messaging Message. When the target method is invoked, the message payload is converted, if necessary, to the method parameter type.

The default MessageConverter for the first step is a Spring AMQP SimpleMessageConverter that handles conversion to String and java.io.Serializable objects. All others remain as a byte[]. In the following discussion, we call this the “message converter”.

The default converter for the second step is a GenericMessageConverter, which delegates to a conversion service (an instance of DefaultFormattingConversionService). In the following discussion, we call this the “method argument converter”.

To change the message converter, you can add it as a property to the container factory bean. The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory() {
    SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
    ...
    factory.setMessageConverter(new Jackson2JsonMessageConverter());
    ...
    return factory;
}

This configures a Jackson2 converter that expects header information to be present to guide the conversion.

You can also use a ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter, which can handle conversion of different content types.

Starting with version 2.3, you can override the factory converter by specifying a bean name in the messageConverter property.

@Bean
public Jackson2JsonMessageConverter jsonConverter() {
    return new Jackson2JsonMessageConverter();
}

@RabbitListener(..., messageConverter = "jsonConverter")
public void listen(String in) {
    ...
}

This avoids having to declare a different container factory just to change the converter.

In most cases, it is not necessary to customize the method argument converter unless, for example, you want to use a custom ConversionService.

In versions prior to 1.6, the type information to convert the JSON had to be provided in message headers, or a custom ClassMapper was required. Starting with version 1.6, if there are no type information headers, the type can be inferred from the target method arguments.

This type inference works only for @RabbitListener at the method level.

See Jackson2JsonMessageConverter for more information.

If you wish to customize the method argument converter, you can do so as follows:

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class AppConfig implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {

    ...

    @Bean
    public DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory myHandlerMethodFactory() {
        DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory factory = new DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory();
        factory.setMessageConverter(new GenericMessageConverter(myConversionService()));
        return factory;
    }

    @Bean
    public DefaultConversionService myConversionService() {
        DefaultConversionService conv = new DefaultConversionService();
        conv.addConverter(mySpecialConverter());
        return conv;
    }

    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        registrar.setMessageHandlerMethodFactory(myHandlerMethodFactory());
    }

    ...

}

For multi-method listeners (see Multi-method Listeners), the method selection is based on the payload of the message after the message conversion. The method argument converter is called only after the method has been selected.

Adding a Custom `HandlerMethodArgumentResolver` to @RabbitListener

Starting with version 2.3.7 you are able to add your own HandlerMethodArgumentResolver and resolve custom method parameters. All you need is to implement RabbitListenerConfigurer and use method setCustomMethodArgumentResolvers() from class RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar.

@Configuration
class CustomRabbitConfig implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        registrar.setCustomMethodArgumentResolvers(
				new HandlerMethodArgumentResolver() {

					@Override
					public boolean supportsParameter(MethodParameter parameter) {
						return CustomMethodArgument.class.isAssignableFrom(parameter.getParameterType());
					}

					@Override
					public Object resolveArgument(MethodParameter parameter, org.springframework.messaging.Message<?> message) {
						return new CustomMethodArgument(
								(String) message.getPayload(),
								message.getHeaders().get("customHeader", String.class)
						);
					}

				}
			);
    }

}

Programmatic Endpoint Registration

RabbitListenerEndpoint provides a model of a Rabbit endpoint and is responsible for configuring the container for that model. The infrastructure lets you configure endpoints programmatically in addition to the ones that are detected by the RabbitListener annotation. The following example shows how to do so:

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class AppConfig implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint endpoint = new SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint();
        endpoint.setQueueNames("anotherQueue");
        endpoint.setMessageListener(message -> {
            // processing
        });
        registrar.registerEndpoint(endpoint);
    }
}

In the preceding example, we used SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint, which provides the actual MessageListener to invoke, but you could just as well build your own endpoint variant to describe a custom invocation mechanism.

It should be noted that you could just as well skip the use of @RabbitListener altogether and register your endpoints programmatically through RabbitListenerConfigurer.

Annotated Endpoint Method Signature

So far, we have been injecting a simple String in our endpoint, but it can actually have a very flexible method signature. The following example rewrites it to inject the Order with a custom header:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @RabbitListener(queues = "myQueue")
    public void processOrder(Order order, @Header("order_type") String orderType) {
        ...
    }
}

The following list shows the arguments that are available to be matched with parameters in listener endpoints:

The raw org.springframework.amqp.core.Message.
The MessageProperties from the raw Message.
The com.rabbitmq.client.Channel on which the message was received.
The org.springframework.messaging.Message converted from the incoming AMQP message.
@Header-annotated method arguments to extract a specific header value, including standard AMQP headers.
@Headers-annotated argument that must also be assignable to java.util.Map for getting access to all headers.
The converted payload

A non-annotated element that is not one of the supported types (that is, Message, MessageProperties, Message<?> and Channel) is matched with the payload. You can make that explicit by annotating the parameter with @Payload. You can also turn on validation by adding an extra @Valid.

The ability to inject Spring’s message abstraction is particularly useful to benefit from all the information stored in the transport-specific message without relying on the transport-specific API. The following example shows how to do so:

@RabbitListener(queues = "myQueue")
public void processOrder(Message<Order> order) { ...
}

Handling of method arguments is provided by DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory, which you can further customize to support additional method arguments. The conversion and validation support can be customized there as well.

For instance, if we want to make sure our Order is valid before processing it, we can annotate the payload with @Valid and configure the necessary validator, as follows:

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class AppConfig implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {

    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
        registrar.setMessageHandlerMethodFactory(myHandlerMethodFactory());
    }

    @Bean
    public DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory myHandlerMethodFactory() {
        DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory factory = new DefaultMessageHandlerMethodFactory();
        factory.setValidator(myValidator());
        return factory;
    }
}

@RabbitListener @Payload Validation

Starting with version 2.3.7, it is now easier to add a Validator to validate @RabbitListener and @RabbitHandler @Payload arguments. Now, you can simply add the validator to the registrar itself.

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class Config implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {
    ...
    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
      registrar.setValidator(new MyValidator());
    }
}

When using Spring Boot with the validation starter, a LocalValidatorFactoryBean is auto-configured:

@Configuration
@EnableRabbit
public class Config implements RabbitListenerConfigurer {
    @Autowired
    private LocalValidatorFactoryBean validator;
    ...
    @Override
    public void configureRabbitListeners(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistrar registrar) {
      registrar.setValidator(this.validator);
    }
}

To validate:

public static class ValidatedClass {
  @Max(10)
  private int bar;
  public int getBar() {
    return this.bar;
  }
  public void setBar(int bar) {
    this.bar = bar;
  }
}

and

@RabbitListener(id="validated", queues = "queue1", errorHandler = "validationErrorHandler",
      containerFactory = "jsonListenerContainerFactory")
public void validatedListener(@Payload @Valid ValidatedClass val) {
    ...
}
@Bean
public RabbitListenerErrorHandler validationErrorHandler() {
    return (m, e) -> {
        ...
    };
}

Listening to Multiple Queues

When you use the queues attribute, you can specify that the associated container can listen to multiple queues. You can use a @Header annotation to make the queue name from which a message was received available to the POJO method. The following example shows how to do so:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @RabbitListener(queues = { "queue1", "queue2" } )
    public void processOrder(String data, @Header(AmqpHeaders.CONSUMER_QUEUE) String queue) {
        ...
    }

}

Starting with version 1.5, you can externalize the queue names by using property placeholders and SpEL. The following example shows how to do so:

@Component
public class MyService {

    @RabbitListener(queues = "#{'${property.with.comma.delimited.queue.names}'.split(',')}" )
    public void processOrder(String data, @Header(AmqpHeaders.CONSUMER_QUEUE) String queue) {
        ...
    }

}

Prior to version 1.5, only a single queue could be specified this way. Each queue needed a separate property.

Reply Management

The existing support in MessageListenerAdapter already lets your method have a non-void return type. When that is the case, the result of the invocation is encapsulated in a message sent to the address specified in the ReplyToAddress header of the original message, or to the default address configured on the listener. You can set that default address by using the @SendTo annotation of the messaging abstraction.

Assuming our processOrder method should now return an OrderStatus, we can write it as follows to automatically send a reply:

@RabbitListener(destination = "myQueue")
@SendTo("status")
public OrderStatus processOrder(Order order) {
    // order processing
    return status;
}

If you need to set additional headers in a transport-independent manner, you could return a Message instead, something like the following:

@RabbitListener(destination = "myQueue")
@SendTo("status")
public Message<OrderStatus> processOrder(Order order) {
    // order processing
    return MessageBuilder
        .withPayload(status)
        .setHeader("code", 1234)
        .build();
}

Alternatively, you can use a MessagePostProcessor in the beforeSendReplyMessagePostProcessors container factory property to add more headers. Starting with version 2.2.3, the called bean/method is made avaiable in the reply message, which can be used in a message post processor to communicate the information back to the caller:

factory.setBeforeSendReplyPostProcessors(msg -> {
    msg.getMessageProperties().setHeader("calledBean",
            msg.getMessageProperties().getTargetBean().getClass().getSimpleName());
    msg.getMessageProperties().setHeader("calledMethod",
            msg.getMessageProperties().getTargetMethod().getName());
    return m;
});

Starting with version 2.2.5, you can configure a ReplyPostProcessor to modify the reply message before it is sent; it is called after the correlationId header has been set up to match the request.

@RabbitListener(queues = "test.header", group = "testGroup", replyPostProcessor = "echoCustomHeader")
public String capitalizeWithHeader(String in) {
    return in.toUpperCase();
}

@Bean
public ReplyPostProcessor echoCustomHeader() {
    return (req, resp) -> {
        resp.getMessageProperties().setHeader("myHeader", req.getMessageProperties().getHeader("myHeader"));
        return resp;
    };
}

The @SendTo value is assumed as a reply exchange and routingKey pair that follows the exchange/routingKey pattern, where one of those parts can be omitted. The valid values are as follows:

thing1/thing2: The replyTo exchange and the routingKey. thing1/: The replyTo exchange and the default (empty) routingKey. thing2 or /thing2: The replyTo routingKey and the default (empty) exchange. / or empty: The replyTo default exchange and the default routingKey.

Also, you can use @SendTo without a value attribute. This case is equal to an empty sendTo pattern. @SendTo is used only if the inbound message does not have a replyToAddress property.

Starting with version 1.5, the @SendTo value can be a bean initialization SpEL Expression, as shown in the following example:

@RabbitListener(queues = "test.sendTo.spel")
@SendTo("#{spelReplyTo}")
public String capitalizeWithSendToSpel(String foo) {
    return foo.toUpperCase();
}
...
@Bean
public String spelReplyTo() {
    return "test.sendTo.reply.spel";
}

The expression must evaluate to a String, which can be a simple queue name (sent to the default exchange) or with the form exchange/routingKey as discussed prior to the preceding example.

The #{…} expression is evaluated once, during initialization.

For dynamic reply routing, the message sender should include a reply_to message property or use the alternate runtime SpEL expression (described after the next example).

Starting with version 1.6, the @SendTo can be a SpEL expression that is evaluated at runtime against the request and reply, as the following example shows:

@RabbitListener(queues = "test.sendTo.spel")
@SendTo("!{'some.reply.queue.with.' + result.queueName}")
public Bar capitalizeWithSendToSpel(Foo foo) {
    return processTheFooAndReturnABar(foo);
}

The runtime nature of the SpEL expression is indicated with !{…} delimiters. The evaluation context #root object for the expression has three properties:

request: The o.s.amqp.core.Message request object.
source: The o.s.messaging.Message<?> after conversion.
result: The method result.

The context has a map property accessor, a standard type converter, and a bean resolver, which lets other beans in the context be referenced (for example, @someBeanName.determineReplyQ(request, result)).

In summary, #{…} is evaluated once during initialization, with the #root object being the application context. Beans are referenced by their names. !{…} is evaluated at runtime for each message, with the root object having the properties listed earlier. Beans are referenced with their names, prefixed by @.

Starting with version 2.1, simple property placeholders are also supported (for example, ${some.reply.to}). With earlier versions, the following can be used as a work around, as the following example shows:

@RabbitListener(queues = "foo")
@SendTo("#{environment['my.send.to']}")
public String listen(Message in) {
    ...
    return ...
}

Reply ContentType

If you are using a sophisticated message converter, such as the ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter, you can control the content type of the reply by setting the replyContentType property on the listener. This allows the converter to select the appropriate delegate converter for the reply.

@RabbitListener(queues = "q1", messageConverter = "delegating",
        replyContentType = "application/json")
public Thing2 listen(Thing1 in) {
    ...
}

By default, for backwards compatibility, any content type property set by the converter will be overwritten by this value after conversion. Converters such as the SimpleMessageConverter use the reply type rather than the content type to determine the conversion needed and sets the content type in the reply message appropriately. This may not be the desired action and can be overridden by setting the converterWinsContentType property to false. For example, if you return a String containing JSON, the SimpleMessageConverter will set the content type in the reply to text/plain. The following configuration will ensure the content type is set properly, even if the SimpleMessageConverter is used.

@RabbitListener(queues = "q1", replyContentType = "application/json",
        converterWinsContentType = "false")
public String listen(Thing in) {
    ...
    return someJsonString;
}

These properties (replyContentType and converterWinsContentType) do not apply when the return type is a Spring AMQP Message or a Spring Messaging Message<?>. In the first case, there is no conversion involved; simply set the contentType message property. In the second case, the behavior is controlled using message headers:

@RabbitListener(queues = "q1", messageConverter = "delegating")
@SendTo("q2")
public Message<String> listen(String in) {
    ...
    return MessageBuilder.withPayload(in.toUpperCase())
            .setHeader(MessageHeaders.CONTENT_TYPE, "application/xml")
            .build();
}

This content type will be passed in the MessageProperties to the converter. By default, for backwards compatibility, any content type property set by the converter will be overwritten by this value after conversion. If you wish to override that behavior, also set the AmqpHeaders.CONTENT_TYPE_CONVERTER_WINS to true and any value set by the converter will be retained.

Multi-method Listeners

Starting with version 1.5.0, you can specify the @RabbitListener annotation at the class level. Together with the new @RabbitHandler annotation, this lets a single listener invoke different methods, based on the payload type of the incoming message. This is best described using an example:

@RabbitListener(id="multi", queues = "someQueue")
@SendTo("my.reply.queue")
public class MultiListenerBean {

    @RabbitHandler
    public String thing2(Thing2 thing2) {
        ...
    }

    @RabbitHandler
    public String cat(Cat cat) {
        ...
    }

    @RabbitHandler
    public String hat(@Header("amqp_receivedRoutingKey") String rk, @Payload Hat hat) {
        ...
    }

    @RabbitHandler(isDefault = true)
    public String defaultMethod(Object object) {
        ...
    }

}

In this case, the individual @RabbitHandler methods are invoked if the converted payload is a Thing2, a Cat, or a Hat. You should understand that the system must be able to identify a unique method based on the payload type. The type is checked for assignability to a single parameter that has no annotations or that is annotated with the @Payload annotation. Notice that the same method signatures apply, as discussed in the method-level @RabbitListener (described earlier).

Starting with version 2.0.3, a @RabbitHandler method can be designated as the default method, which is invoked if there is no match on other methods. At most, one method can be so designated.

@RabbitHandler is intended only for processing message payloads after conversion, if you wish to receive the unconverted raw Message object, you must use @RabbitListener on the method, not the class.

`@Repeatable` `@RabbitListener`

Starting with version 1.6, the @RabbitListener annotation is marked with @Repeatable. This means that the annotation can appear on the same annotated element (method or class) multiple times. In this case, a separate listener container is created for each annotation, each of which invokes the same listener @Bean. Repeatable annotations can be used with Java 8 or above.

Proxy `@RabbitListener` and Generics

If your service is intended to be proxied (for example, in the case of @Transactional), you should keep in mind some considerations when the interface has generic parameters. Consider the following example:

interface TxService<P> {

   String handle(P payload, String header);

}

static class TxServiceImpl implements TxService<Foo> {

    @Override
    @RabbitListener(...)
    public String handle(Thing thing, String rk) {
         ...
    }

}

With a generic interface and a particular implementation, you are forced to switch to the CGLIB target class proxy because the actual implementation of the interface handle method is a bridge method. In the case of transaction management, the use of CGLIB is configured by using an annotation option: @EnableTransactionManagement(proxyTargetClass = true). And in this case, all annotations have to be declared on the target method in the implementation, as the following example shows:

static class TxServiceImpl implements TxService<Foo> {

    @Override
    @Transactional
    @RabbitListener(...)
    public String handle(@Payload Foo foo, @Header("amqp_receivedRoutingKey") String rk) {
        ...
    }

}

Handling Exceptions

By default, if an annotated listener method throws an exception, it is thrown to the container and the message are requeued and redelivered, discarded, or routed to a dead letter exchange, depending on the container and broker configuration. Nothing is returned to the sender.

Starting with version 2.0, the @RabbitListener annotation has two new attributes: errorHandler and returnExceptions.

These are not configured by default.

You can use the errorHandler to provide the bean name of a RabbitListenerErrorHandler implementation. This functional interface has one method, as follows:

@FunctionalInterface
public interface RabbitListenerErrorHandler {

    Object handleError(Message amqpMessage, org.springframework.messaging.Message<?> message,
              ListenerExecutionFailedException exception) throws Exception;

}

As you can see, you have access to the raw message received from the container, the spring-messaging Message<?> object produced by the message converter, and the exception that was thrown by the listener (wrapped in a ListenerExecutionFailedException). The error handler can either return some result (which is sent as the reply) or throw the original or a new exception (which is thrown to the container or returned to the sender, depending on the returnExceptions setting).

The returnExceptions attribute, when true, causes exceptions to be returned to the sender. The exception is wrapped in a RemoteInvocationResult object. On the sender side, there is an available RemoteInvocationAwareMessageConverterAdapter, which, if configured into the RabbitTemplate, re-throws the server-side exception, wrapped in an AmqpRemoteException. The stack trace of the server exception is synthesized by merging the server and client stack traces.

This mechanism generally works only with the default SimpleMessageConverter, which uses Java serialization. Exceptions are generally not “Jackson-friendly” and cannot be serialized to JSON. If you use JSON, consider using an errorHandler to return some other Jackson-friendly Error object when an exception is thrown.

In version 2.1, this interface moved from package o.s.amqp.rabbit.listener to o.s.amqp.rabbit.listener.api.

Starting with version 2.1.7, the Channel is available in a messaging message header; this allows you to ack or nack the failed messasge when using AcknowledgeMode.MANUAL:

public Object handleError(Message amqpMessage, org.springframework.messaging.Message<?> message,
          ListenerExecutionFailedException exception) {
              ...
              message.getHeaders().get(AmqpHeaders.CHANNEL, Channel.class)
                  .basicReject(message.getHeaders().get(AmqpHeaders.DELIVERY_TAG, Long.class),
                               true);
          }

Starting with version 2.2.18, if a message conversion exception is thrown, the error handler will be called, with null in the message argument. This allows the application to send some result to the caller, indicating that a badly-formed message was received. Previously, such errors were thrown and handled by the container.

Container Management

Containers created for annotations are not registered with the application context. You can obtain a collection of all containers by invoking getListenerContainers() on the RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry bean. You can then iterate over this collection, for example, to stop or start all containers or invoke the Lifecycle methods on the registry itself, which will invoke the operations on each container.

You can also get a reference to an individual container by using its id, using getListenerContainer(String id) — for example, registry.getListenerContainer("multi") for the container created by the snippet above.

Starting with version 1.5.2, you can obtain the id values of the registered containers with getListenerContainerIds().

Starting with version 1.5, you can now assign a group to the container on the RabbitListener endpoint. This provides a mechanism to get a reference to a subset of containers. Adding a group attribute causes a bean of type Collection<MessageListenerContainer> to be registered with the context with the group name.

By default, stopping a container will cancel the consumer and process all prefetched messages before stopping. Starting with versions 2.4.14, 3.0.6, you can set the [forceStop] container property to true to stop immediately after the current message is processed, causing any prefetched messages to be requeued. This is useful, for example, if exclusive or single-active consumers are being used.

@RabbitListener with Batching

When receiving a a batch of messages, the de-batching is normally performed by the container and the listener is invoked with one message at at time. Starting with version 2.2, you can configure the listener container factory and listener to receive the entire batch in one call, simply set the factory’s batchListener property, and make the method payload parameter a List:

@Bean
public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory() {
    SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
    factory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
    factory.setBatchListener(true);
    return factory;
}

@RabbitListener(queues = "batch.1")
public void listen1(List<Thing> in) {
    ...
}

// or

@RabbitListener(queues = "batch.2")
public void listen2(List<Message<Thing>> in) {
    ...
}

Setting the batchListener property to true automatically turns off the deBatchingEnabled container property in containers that the factory creates (unless consumerBatchEnabled is true - see below). Effectively, the debatching is moved from the container to the listener adapter and the adapter creates the list that is passed to the listener.

A batch-enabled factory cannot be used with a multi-method listener.

Also starting with version 2.2. when receiving batched messages one-at-a-time, the last message contains a boolean header set to true. This header can be obtained by adding the @Header(AmqpHeaders.LAST_IN_BATCH) boolean last` parameter to your listener method. The header is mapped from MessageProperties.isLastInBatch(). In addition, AmqpHeaders.BATCH_SIZE is populated with the size of the batch in every message fragment.

In addition, a new property consumerBatchEnabled has been added to the SimpleMessageListenerContainer. When this is true, the container will create a batch of messages, up to batchSize; a partial batch is delivered if receiveTimeout elapses with no new messages arriving. If a producer-created batch is received, it is debatched and added to the consumer-side batch; therefore the actual number of messages delivered may exceed batchSize, which represents the number of messages received from the broker. deBatchingEnabled must be true when consumerBatchEnabled is true; the container factory will enforce this requirement.

@Bean
public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory consumerBatchContainerFactory() {
    SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
    factory.setConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory());
    factory.setConsumerTagStrategy(consumerTagStrategy());
    factory.setBatchListener(true); // configures a BatchMessageListenerAdapter
    factory.setBatchSize(2);
    factory.setConsumerBatchEnabled(true);
    return factory;
}

When using consumerBatchEnabled with @RabbitListener:

@RabbitListener(queues = "batch.1", containerFactory = "consumerBatchContainerFactory")
public void consumerBatch1(List<Message> amqpMessages) {
    this.amqpMessagesReceived = amqpMessages;
    this.batch1Latch.countDown();
}

@RabbitListener(queues = "batch.2", containerFactory = "consumerBatchContainerFactory")
public void consumerBatch2(List<org.springframework.messaging.Message<Invoice>> messages) {
    this.messagingMessagesReceived = messages;
    this.batch2Latch.countDown();
}

@RabbitListener(queues = "batch.3", containerFactory = "consumerBatchContainerFactory")
public void consumerBatch3(List<Invoice> strings) {
    this.batch3Strings = strings;
    this.batch3Latch.countDown();
}

the first is called with the raw, unconverted org.springframework.amqp.core.Message s received.
the second is called with the org.springframework.messaging.Message<?> s with converted payloads and mapped headers/properties.
the third is called with the converted payloads, with no access to headers/properties.

You can also add a Channel parameter, often used when using MANUAL ack mode. This is not very useful with the third example because you don’t have access to the delivery_tag property.

Using Container Factories

Listener container factories were introduced to support the @RabbitListener and registering containers with the RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry, as discussed in Programmatic Endpoint Registration.

Starting with version 2.1, they can be used to create any listener container — even a container without a listener (such as for use in Spring Integration). Of course, a listener must be added before the container is started.

There are two ways to create such containers:

Use a SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint
Add the listener after creation

The following example shows how to use a SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint to create a listener container:

@Bean
public SimpleMessageListenerContainer factoryCreatedContainerSimpleListener(
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory) {
    SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint endpoint = new SimpleRabbitListenerEndpoint();
    endpoint.setQueueNames("queue.1");
    endpoint.setMessageListener(message -> {
        ...
    });
    return rabbitListenerContainerFactory.createListenerContainer(endpoint);
}

The following example shows how to add the listener after creation:

@Bean
public SimpleMessageListenerContainer factoryCreatedContainerNoListener(
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory) {
    SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = rabbitListenerContainerFactory.createListenerContainer();
    container.setMessageListener(message -> {
        ...
    });
    container.setQueueNames("test.no.listener.yet");
    return container;
}

In either case, the listener can also be a ChannelAwareMessageListener, since it is now a sub-interface of MessageListener.

These techniques are useful if you wish to create several containers with similar properties or use a pre-configured container factory such as the one provided by Spring Boot auto configuration or both.

Containers created this way are normal @Bean instances and are not registered in the RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry.

Asynchronous `@RabbitListener` Return Types

Starting with version 2.1, @RabbitListener (and @RabbitHandler) methods can be specified with asynchronous return types ListenableFuture<?> and Mono<?>, letting the reply be sent asynchronously. CompletableFuture<?> was added in 2.4.7 and ListenableFuture<?> will be removed in 3.0.

The listener container factory must be configured with AcknowledgeMode.MANUAL so that the consumer thread will not ack the message; instead, the asynchronous completion will ack or nack the message when the async operation completes. When the async result is completed with an error, whether the message is requeued or not depends on the exception type thrown, the container configuration, and the container error handler. By default, the message will be requeued, unless the container’s defaultRequeueRejected property is set to false (it is true by default). If the async result is completed with an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException, the message will not be requeued. If the container’s defaultRequeueRejected property is false, you can override that by setting the future’s exception to a ImmediateRequeueException and the message will be requeued. If some exception occurs within the listener method that prevents creation of the async result object, you MUST catch that exception and return an appropriate return object that will cause the message to be acknowledged or requeued.

Starting with versions 2.2.21, 2.3.13, 2.4.1, the AcknowledgeMode will be automatically set the MANUAL when async return types are detected. In addition, incoming messages with fatal exceptions will be negatively acknowledged individually, previously any prior unacknowledged message were also negatively acknowledged.

Starting with version 2.4.16, the @RabbitListener (and @RabbitHandler) methods can be marked with Kotlin suspend and the whole handling process and reply producing (optional) happens on respective Kotlin coroutine. The above mentioned rules about AcknowledgeMode.MANUAL still apply. The org.jetbrains.kotlinx:kotlinx-coroutines-reactor dependency must be present in classpath to allow suspend function invocations.

Threading and Asynchronous Consumers

A number of different threads are involved with asynchronous consumers.

Threads from the TaskExecutor configured in the SimpleMessageListenerContainer are used to invoke the MessageListener when a new message is delivered by RabbitMQ Client. If not configured, a SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor is used. If you use a pooled executor, you need to ensure the pool size is sufficient to handle the configured concurrency. With the DirectMessageListenerContainer, the MessageListener is invoked directly on a RabbitMQ Client thread. In this case, the taskExecutor is used for the task that monitors the consumers.

When using the default SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor, for the threads the listener is invoked on, the listener container beanName is used in the threadNamePrefix. This is useful for log analysis. We generally recommend always including the thread name in the logging appender configuration. When a TaskExecutor is specifically provided through the taskExecutor property on the container, it is used as is, without modification. It is recommended that you use a similar technique to name the threads created by a custom TaskExecutor bean definition, to aid with thread identification in log messages.

The Executor configured in the CachingConnectionFactory is passed into the RabbitMQ Client when creating the connection, and its threads are used to deliver new messages to the listener container. If this is not configured, the client uses an internal thread pool executor with (at the time of writing) a pool size of Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() * 2 for each connection.

If you have a large number of factories or are using CacheMode.CONNECTION, you may wish to consider using a shared ThreadPoolTaskExecutor with enough threads to satisfy your workload.

With the DirectMessageListenerContainer, you need to ensure that the connection factory is configured with a task executor that has sufficient threads to support your desired concurrency across all listener containers that use that factory. The default pool size (at the time of writing) is Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() * 2.

The RabbitMQ client uses a ThreadFactory to create threads for low-level I/O (socket) operations. To modify this factory, you need to configure the underlying RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory, as discussed in Configuring the Underlying Client Connection Factory.

Choosing a Container

Version 2.0 introduced the DirectMessageListenerContainer (DMLC). Previously, only the SimpleMessageListenerContainer (SMLC) was available. The SMLC uses an internal queue and a dedicated thread for each consumer. If a container is configured to listen to multiple queues, the same consumer thread is used to process all the queues. Concurrency is controlled by concurrentConsumers and other properties. As messages arrive from the RabbitMQ client, the client thread hands them off to the consumer thread through the queue. This architecture was required because, in early versions of the RabbitMQ client, multiple concurrent deliveries were not possible. Newer versions of the client have a revised threading model and can now support concurrency. This has allowed the introduction of the DMLC where the listener is now invoked directly on the RabbitMQ Client thread. Its architecture is, therefore, actually “simpler” than the SMLC. However, there are some limitations with this approach, and certain features of the SMLC are not available with the DMLC. Also, concurrency is controlled by consumersPerQueue (and the client library’s thread pool). The concurrentConsumers and associated properties are not available with this container.

The following features are available with the SMLC but not the DMLC:

batchSize: With the SMLC, you can set this to control how many messages are delivered in a transaction or to reduce the number of acks, but it may cause the number of duplicate deliveries to increase after a failure. (The DMLC does have messagesPerAck, which you can use to reduce the acks, the same as with batchSize and the SMLC, but it cannot be used with transactions — each message is delivered and ack’d in a separate transaction).
consumerBatchEnabled: enables batching of discrete messages in the consumer; see Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.
maxConcurrentConsumers and consumer scaling intervals or triggers — there is no auto-scaling in the DMLC. It does, however, let you programmatically change the consumersPerQueue property and the consumers are adjusted accordingly.

However, the DMLC has the following benefits over the SMLC:

Adding and removing queues at runtime is more efficient. With the SMLC, the entire consumer thread is restarted (all consumers canceled and re-created). With the DMLC, unaffected consumers are not canceled.
The context switch between the RabbitMQ Client thread and the consumer thread is avoided.
Threads are shared across consumers rather than having a dedicated thread for each consumer in the SMLC. However, see the IMPORTANT note about the connection factory configuration in Threading and Asynchronous Consumers.

See Message Listener Container Configuration for information about which configuration properties apply to each container.

Detecting Idle Asynchronous Consumers

While efficient, one problem with asynchronous consumers is detecting when they are idle — users might want to take some action if no messages arrive for some period of time.

Starting with version 1.6, it is now possible to configure the listener container to publish a ListenerContainerIdleEvent when some time passes with no message delivery. While the container is idle, an event is published every idleEventInterval milliseconds.

To configure this feature, set idleEventInterval on the container. The following example shows how to do so in XML and in Java (for both a SimpleMessageListenerContainer and a SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory):

<rabbit:listener-container connection-factory="connectionFactory"
        ...
        idle-event-interval="60000"
        ...
        >
    <rabbit:listener id="container1" queue-names="foo" ref="myListener" method="handle" />
</rabbit:listener-container>

@Bean
public SimpleMessageListenerContainer(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory) {
    SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer(connectionFactory);
    ...
    container.setIdleEventInterval(60000L);
    ...
    return container;
}

@Bean
public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory() {
    SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
    factory.setConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory());
    factory.setIdleEventInterval(60000L);
    ...
    return factory;
}

In each of these cases, an event is published once per minute while the container is idle.

Event Consumption

You can capture idle events by implementing ApplicationListener — either a general listener, or one narrowed to only receive this specific event. You can also use @EventListener, introduced in Spring Framework 4.2.

The following example combines the @RabbitListener and @EventListener into a single class. You need to understand that the application listener gets events for all containers, so you may need to check the listener ID if you want to take specific action based on which container is idle. You can also use the @EventListener condition for this purpose.

The events have four properties:

source: The listener container instance
id: The listener ID (or container bean name)
idleTime: The time the container had been idle when the event was published
queueNames: The names of the queue(s) that the container listens to

The following example shows how to create listeners by using both the @RabbitListener and the @EventListener annotations:

public class Listener {

    @RabbitListener(id="someId", queues="#{queue.name}")
    public String listen(String foo) {
        return foo.toUpperCase();
    }

    @EventListener(condition = "event.listenerId == 'someId'")
    public void onApplicationEvent(ListenerContainerIdleEvent event) {
        ...
    }

}

Event listeners see events for all containers. Consequently, in the preceding example, we narrow the events received based on the listener ID.

If you wish to use the idle event to stop the lister container, you should not call container.stop() on the thread that calls the listener. Doing so always causes delays and unnecessary log messages. Instead, you should hand off the event to a different thread that can then stop the container.

Monitoring Listener Performance

Starting with version 2.2, the listener containers will automatically create and update Micrometer Timer s for the listener, if Micrometer is detected on the class path, and a single MeterRegistry is present in the application context (or exactly one is annotated @Primary, such as when using Spring Boot). The timers can be disabled by setting the container property micrometerEnabled to false.

Two timers are maintained - one for successful calls to the listener and one for failures. With a simple MessageListener, there is a pair of timers for each configured queue.

The timers are named spring.rabbitmq.listener and have the following tags:

listenerId : (listener id or container bean name)
queue : (the queue name for a simple listener or list of configured queue names when consumerBatchEnabled is true - because a batch may contain messages from multiple queues)
result : success or failure
exception : none or ListenerExecutionFailedException

You can add additional tags using the micrometerTags container property.

4.1.7. Containers and Broker-Named queues

While it is preferable to use AnonymousQueue instances as auto-delete queues, starting with version 2.1, you can use broker named queues with listener containers. The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public Queue queue() {
    return new Queue("", false, true, true);
}

@Bean
public SimpleMessageListenerContainer container() {
    SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer(cf());
    container.setQueues(queue());
    container.setMessageListener(m -> {
        ...
    });
    container.setMissingQueuesFatal(false);
    return container;
}

Notice the empty String for the name. When the RabbitAdmin declares queues, it updates the Queue.actualName property with the name returned by the broker. You must use setQueues() when you configure the container for this to work, so that the container can access the declared name at runtime. Just setting the names is insufficient.

You cannot add broker-named queues to the containers while they are running.

When a connection is reset and a new one is established, the new queue gets a new name. Since there is a race condition between the container restarting and the queue being re-declared, it is important to set the container’s missingQueuesFatal property to false, since the container is likely to initially try to reconnect to the old queue.

4.1.8. Message Converters

The AmqpTemplate also defines several methods for sending and receiving messages that delegate to a MessageConverter. The MessageConverter provides a single method for each direction: one for converting to a Message and another for converting from a Message. Notice that, when converting to a Message, you can also provide properties in addition to the object. The object parameter typically corresponds to the Message body. The following listing shows the MessageConverter interface definition:

public interface MessageConverter {

    Message toMessage(Object object, MessageProperties messageProperties)
            throws MessageConversionException;

    Object fromMessage(Message message) throws MessageConversionException;

}

The relevant Message-sending methods on the AmqpTemplate are simpler than the methods we discussed previously, because they do not require the Message instance. Instead, the MessageConverter is responsible for “creating” each Message by converting the provided object to the byte array for the Message body and then adding any provided MessageProperties. The following listing shows the definitions of the various methods:

void convertAndSend(Object message) throws AmqpException;

void convertAndSend(String routingKey, Object message) throws AmqpException;

void convertAndSend(String exchange, String routingKey, Object message)
    throws AmqpException;

void convertAndSend(Object message, MessagePostProcessor messagePostProcessor)
    throws AmqpException;

void convertAndSend(String routingKey, Object message,
    MessagePostProcessor messagePostProcessor) throws AmqpException;

void convertAndSend(String exchange, String routingKey, Object message,
    MessagePostProcessor messagePostProcessor) throws AmqpException;

On the receiving side, there are only two methods: one that accepts the queue name and one that relies on the template’s “queue” property having been set. The following listing shows the definitions of the two methods:

Object receiveAndConvert() throws AmqpException;

Object receiveAndConvert(String queueName) throws AmqpException;

The MessageListenerAdapter mentioned in Asynchronous Consumer also uses a MessageConverter.

`SimpleMessageConverter`

The default implementation of the MessageConverter strategy is called SimpleMessageConverter. This is the converter that is used by an instance of RabbitTemplate if you do not explicitly configure an alternative. It handles text-based content, serialized Java objects, and byte arrays.

Converting From a `Message`

If the content type of the input Message begins with "text" (for example, "text/plain"), it also checks for the content-encoding property to determine the charset to be used when converting the Message body byte array to a Java String. If no content-encoding property had been set on the input Message, it uses the UTF-8 charset by default. If you need to override that default setting, you can configure an instance of SimpleMessageConverter, set its defaultCharset property, and inject that into a RabbitTemplate instance.

If the content-type property value of the input Message is set to "application/x-java-serialized-object", the SimpleMessageConverter tries to deserialize (rehydrate) the byte array into a Java object. While that might be useful for simple prototyping, we do not recommend relying on Java serialization, since it leads to tight coupling between the producer and the consumer. Of course, it also rules out usage of non-Java systems on either side. With AMQP being a wire-level protocol, it would be unfortunate to lose much of that advantage with such restrictions. In the next two sections, we explore some alternatives for passing rich domain object content without relying on Java serialization.

For all other content-types, the SimpleMessageConverter returns the Message body content directly as a byte array.

See Java Deserialization for important information.

Converting To a `Message`

When converting to a Message from an arbitrary Java Object, the SimpleMessageConverter likewise deals with byte arrays, strings, and serializable instances. It converts each of these to bytes (in the case of byte arrays, there is nothing to convert), and it sets the content-type property accordingly. If the Object to be converted does not match one of those types, the Message body is null.

`SerializerMessageConverter`

This converter is similar to the SimpleMessageConverter except that it can be configured with other Spring Framework Serializer and Deserializer implementations for application/x-java-serialized-object conversions.

See Java Deserialization for important information.

Jackson2JsonMessageConverter

This section covers using the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter to convert to and from a Message. It has the following sections:

Converting to a Message
Converting from a Message

Converting to a `Message`

As mentioned in the previous section, relying on Java serialization is generally not recommended. One rather common alternative that is more flexible and portable across different languages and platforms is JSON (JavaScript Object Notation). The converter can be configured on any RabbitTemplate instance to override its usage of the SimpleMessageConverter default. The Jackson2JsonMessageConverter uses the com.fasterxml.jackson 2.x library. The following example configures a Jackson2JsonMessageConverter:

<bean class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.RabbitTemplate">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="rabbitConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="messageConverter">
        <bean class="org.springframework.amqp.support.converter.Jackson2JsonMessageConverter">
            <!-- if necessary, override the DefaultClassMapper -->
            <property name="classMapper" ref="customClassMapper"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

As shown above, Jackson2JsonMessageConverter uses a DefaultClassMapper by default. Type information is added to (and retrieved from) MessageProperties. If an inbound message does not contain type information in MessageProperties, but you know the expected type, you can configure a static type by using the defaultType property, as the following example shows:

<bean id="jsonConverterWithDefaultType"
      class="o.s.amqp.support.converter.Jackson2JsonMessageConverter">
    <property name="classMapper">
        <bean class="org.springframework.amqp.support.converter.DefaultClassMapper">
            <property name="defaultType" value="thing1.PurchaseOrder"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

In addition, you can provide custom mappings from the value in the TypeId header. The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public Jackson2JsonMessageConverter jsonMessageConverter() {
    Jackson2JsonMessageConverter jsonConverter = new Jackson2JsonMessageConverter();
    jsonConverter.setClassMapper(classMapper());
    return jsonConverter;
}

@Bean
public DefaultClassMapper classMapper() {
    DefaultClassMapper classMapper = new DefaultClassMapper();
    Map<String, Class<?>> idClassMapping = new HashMap<>();
    idClassMapping.put("thing1", Thing1.class);
    idClassMapping.put("thing2", Thing2.class);
    classMapper.setIdClassMapping(idClassMapping);
    return classMapper;
}

Now, if the sending system sets the header to thing1, the converter creates a Thing1 object, and so on. See the Receiving JSON from Non-Spring Applications sample application for a complete discussion about converting messages from non-Spring applications.

Starting with version 2.4.3, the converter will not add a contentEncoding message property if the supportedMediaType has a charset parameter; this is also used for the encoding. A new method setSupportedMediaType has been added:

String utf16 = "application/json; charset=utf-16";
converter.setSupportedContentType(MimeTypeUtils.parseMimeType(utf16));

Converting from a `Message`

Inbound messages are converted to objects according to the type information added to headers by the sending system.

Starting with version 2.4.3, if there is no contentEncoding message property, the converter will attempt to detect a charset parameter in the contentType message property and use that. If neither exist, if the supportedMediaType has a charset parameter, it will be used for decoding, with a final fallback to the defaultCharset property. A new method setSupportedMediaType has been added:

String utf16 = "application/json; charset=utf-16";
converter.setSupportedContentType(MimeTypeUtils.parseMimeType(utf16));

In versions prior to 1.6, if type information is not present, conversion would fail. Starting with version 1.6, if type information is missing, the converter converts the JSON by using Jackson defaults (usually a map).

Also, starting with version 1.6, when you use @RabbitListener annotations (on methods), the inferred type information is added to the MessageProperties. This lets the converter convert to the argument type of the target method. This only applies if there is one parameter with no annotations or a single parameter with the @Payload annotation. Parameters of type Message are ignored during the analysis.

By default, the inferred type information will override the inbound TypeId and related headers created by the sending system. This lets the receiving system automatically convert to a different domain object. This applies only if the parameter type is concrete (not abstract or an interface) or it is from the java.util package. In all other cases, the TypeId and related headers is used. There are cases where you might wish to override the default behavior and always use the TypeId information. For example, suppose you have a @RabbitListener that takes a Thing1 argument but the message contains a Thing2 that is a subclass of Thing1 (which is concrete). The inferred type would be incorrect. To handle this situation, set the TypePrecedence property on the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter to TYPE_ID instead of the default INFERRED. (The property is actually on the converter’s DefaultJackson2JavaTypeMapper, but a setter is provided on the converter for convenience.) If you inject a custom type mapper, you should set the property on the mapper instead.

When converting from the Message, an incoming MessageProperties.getContentType() must be JSON-compliant (contentType.contains("json") is used to check). Starting with version 2.2, application/json is assumed if there is no contentType property, or it has the default value application/octet-stream. To revert to the previous behavior (return an unconverted byte[]), set the converter’s assumeSupportedContentType property to false. If the content type is not supported, a WARN log message Could not convert incoming message with content-type […], is emitted and message.getBody() is returned as is — as a byte[]. So, to meet the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter requirements on the consumer side, the producer must add the contentType message property — for example, as application/json or text/x-json or by using the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter, which sets the header automatically. The following listing shows a number of converter calls:

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(Thing1 thing1) {...}

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(@Payload Thing1 thing1, @Header("amqp_consumerQueue") String queue) {...}

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(Thing1 thing1, o.s.amqp.core.Message message) {...}

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(Thing1 thing1, o.s.messaging.Message<Foo> message) {...}

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(Thing1 thing1, String bar) {...}

@RabbitListener
public void thing1(Thing1 thing1, o.s.messaging.Message<?> message) {...}

In the first four cases in the preceding listing, the converter tries to convert to the Thing1 type. The fifth example is invalid because we cannot determine which argument should receive the message payload. With the sixth example, the Jackson defaults apply due to the generic type being a WildcardType.

You can, however, create a custom converter and use the targetMethod message property to decide which type to convert the JSON to.

This type inference can only be achieved when the @RabbitListener annotation is declared at the method level. With class-level @RabbitListener, the converted type is used to select which @RabbitHandler method to invoke. For this reason, the infrastructure provides the targetObject message property, which you can use in a custom converter to determine the type.

Starting with version 1.6.11, Jackson2JsonMessageConverter and, therefore, DefaultJackson2JavaTypeMapper (DefaultClassMapper) provide the trustedPackages option to overcome Serialization Gadgets vulnerability. By default and for backward compatibility, the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter trusts all packages — that is, it uses * for the option.

Starting with version 2.4.7, the converter can be configured to return Optional.empty() if Jackson returns null after deserializing the message body. This facilitates @RabbitListener s to receive null payloads, in two ways:

@RabbitListener(queues = "op.1")
void listen(@Payload(required = false) Thing payload) {
    handleOptional(payload); // payload might be null
}

@RabbitListener(queues = "op.2")
void listen(Optional<Thing> optional) {
    handleOptional(optional.orElse(this.emptyThing));
}

To enable this feature, set setNullAsOptionalEmpty to true; when false (default), the converter falls back to the raw message body (byte[]).

@Bean
Jackson2JsonMessageConverter converter() {
    Jackson2JsonMessageConverter converter = new Jackson2JsonMessageConverter();
    converter.setNullAsOptionalEmpty(true);
    return converter;
}

Deserializing Abstract Classes

Prior to version 2.2.8, if the inferred type of a @RabbitListener was an abstract class (including interfaces), the converter would fall back to looking for type information in the headers and, if present, used that information; if that was not present, it would try to create the abstract class. This caused a problem when a custom ObjectMapper that is configured with a custom deserializer to handle the abstract class is used, but the incoming message has invalid type headers.

Starting with version 2.2.8, the previous behavior is retained by default. If you have such a custom ObjectMapper and you want to ignore type headers, and always use the inferred type for conversion, set the alwaysConvertToInferredType to true. This is needed for backwards compatibility and to avoid the overhead of an attempted conversion when it would fail (with a standard ObjectMapper).

Using Spring Data Projection Interfaces

Starting with version 2.2, you can convert JSON to a Spring Data Projection interface instead of a concrete type. This allows very selective, and low-coupled bindings to data, including the lookup of values from multiple places inside the JSON document. For example the following interface can be defined as message payload type:

interface SomeSample {

  @JsonPath({ "$.username", "$.user.name" })
  String getUsername();

}

@RabbitListener(queues = "projection")
public void projection(SomeSample in) {
    String username = in.getUsername();
    ...
}

Accessor methods will be used to lookup the property name as field in the received JSON document by default. The @JsonPath expression allows customization of the value lookup, and even to define multiple JSON path expressions, to lookup values from multiple places until an expression returns an actual value.

To enable this feature, set the useProjectionForInterfaces to true on the message converter. You must also add spring-data:spring-data-commons and com.jayway.jsonpath:json-path to the class path.

When used as the parameter to a @RabbitListener method, the interface type is automatically passed to the converter as normal.

Converting From a `Message` With `RabbitTemplate`

As mentioned earlier, type information is conveyed in message headers to assist the converter when converting from a message. This works fine in most cases. However, when using generic types, it can only convert simple objects and known “container” objects (lists, arrays, and maps). Starting with version 2.0, the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter implements SmartMessageConverter, which lets it be used with the new RabbitTemplate methods that take a ParameterizedTypeReference argument. This allows conversion of complex generic types, as shown in the following example:

Thing1<Thing2<Cat, Hat>> thing1 =
    rabbitTemplate.receiveAndConvert(new ParameterizedTypeReference<Thing1<Thing2<Cat, Hat>>>() { });

Starting with version 2.1, the AbstractJsonMessageConverter class has been removed. It is no longer the base class for Jackson2JsonMessageConverter. It has been replaced by AbstractJackson2MessageConverter.

`MarshallingMessageConverter`

Yet another option is the MarshallingMessageConverter. It delegates to the Spring OXM library’s implementations of the Marshaller and Unmarshaller strategy interfaces. You can read more about that library here. In terms of configuration, it is most common to provide only the constructor argument, since most implementations of Marshaller also implement Unmarshaller. The following example shows how to configure a MarshallingMessageConverter:

<bean class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.RabbitTemplate">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="rabbitConnectionFactory"/>
    <property name="messageConverter">
        <bean class="org.springframework.amqp.support.converter.MarshallingMessageConverter">
            <constructor-arg ref="someImplemenationOfMarshallerAndUnmarshaller"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

`Jackson2XmlMessageConverter`

This class was introduced in version 2.1 and can be used to convert messages from and to XML.

Both Jackson2XmlMessageConverter and Jackson2JsonMessageConverter have the same base class: AbstractJackson2MessageConverter.

The AbstractJackson2MessageConverter class is introduced to replace a removed class: AbstractJsonMessageConverter.

The Jackson2XmlMessageConverter uses the com.fasterxml.jackson 2.x library.

You can use it the same way as Jackson2JsonMessageConverter, except it supports XML instead of JSON. The following example configures a Jackson2JsonMessageConverter:

<bean id="xmlConverterWithDefaultType"
        class="org.springframework.amqp.support.converter.Jackson2XmlMessageConverter">
    <property name="classMapper">
        <bean class="org.springframework.amqp.support.converter.DefaultClassMapper">
            <property name="defaultType" value="foo.PurchaseOrder"/>
        </bean>
    </property>
</bean>

See Jackson2JsonMessageConverter for more information.

Starting with version 2.2, application/xml is assumed if there is no contentType property, or it has the default value application/octet-stream. To revert to the previous behavior (return an unconverted byte[]), set the converter’s assumeSupportedContentType property to false.

`ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter`

This class was introduced in version 1.4.2 and allows delegation to a specific MessageConverter based on the content type property in the MessageProperties. By default, it delegates to a SimpleMessageConverter if there is no contentType property or there is a value that matches none of the configured converters. The following example configures a ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter:

<bean id="contentTypeConverter" class="ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter">
    <property name="delegates">
        <map>
            <entry key="application/json" value-ref="jsonMessageConverter" />
            <entry key="application/xml" value-ref="xmlMessageConverter" />
        </map>
    </property>
</bean>

Java Deserialization

This section covers how to deserialize Java objects.

There is a possible vulnerability when deserializing java objects from untrusted sources.

If you accept messages from untrusted sources with a content-type of application/x-java-serialized-object, you should consider configuring which packages and classes are allowed to be deserialized. This applies to both the SimpleMessageConverter and SerializerMessageConverter when it is configured to use a DefaultDeserializer either implicitly or via configuration.

By default, the allowed list is empty, meaning no classes will be deserialized.

You can set a list of patterns, such as thing1., thing1.thing2.Cat or .MySafeClass.

The patterns are checked in order until a match is found. If there is no match, a SecurityException is thrown.

You can set the patterns using the allowedListPatterns property on these converters. Alternatively, if you trust all message originators, you can set the environment variable SPRING_AMQP_DESERIALIZATION_TRUST_ALL or system property spring.amqp.deserialization.trust.all to true.

Message Properties Converters

The MessagePropertiesConverter strategy interface is used to convert between the Rabbit Client BasicProperties and Spring AMQP MessageProperties. The default implementation (DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter) is usually sufficient for most purposes, but you can implement your own if needed. The default properties converter converts BasicProperties elements of type LongString to String instances when the size is not greater than 1024 bytes. Larger LongString instances are not converted (see the next paragraph). This limit can be overridden with a constructor argument.

Starting with version 1.6, headers longer than the long string limit (default: 1024) are now left as LongString instances by default by the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter. You can access the contents through the getBytes[], toString(), or getStream() methods.

Previously, the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter “converted” such headers to a DataInputStream (actually it just referenced the LongString instance’s DataInputStream). On output, this header was not converted (except to a String — for example, java.io.DataInputStream@1d057a39 by calling toString() on the stream).

Large incoming LongString headers are now correctly “converted” on output, too (by default).

A new constructor is provided to let you configure the converter to work as before. The following listing shows the Javadoc comment and declaration of the method:

/**
 * Construct an instance where LongStrings will be returned
 * unconverted or as a java.io.DataInputStream when longer than this limit.
 * Use this constructor with 'true' to restore pre-1.6 behavior.
 * @param longStringLimit the limit.
 * @param convertLongLongStrings LongString when false,
 * DataInputStream when true.
 * @since 1.6
 */
public DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter(int longStringLimit, boolean convertLongLongStrings) { ... }

Also starting with version 1.6, a new property called correlationIdString has been added to MessageProperties. Previously, when converting to and from BasicProperties used by the RabbitMQ client, an unnecessary byte[] <→ String conversion was performed because MessageProperties.correlationId is a byte[], but BasicProperties uses a String. (Ultimately, the RabbitMQ client uses UTF-8 to convert the String to bytes to put in the protocol message).

To provide maximum backwards compatibility, a new property called correlationIdPolicy has been added to the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter. This takes a DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter.CorrelationIdPolicy enum argument. By default it is set to BYTES, which replicates the previous behavior.

For inbound messages:

STRING: Only the correlationIdString property is mapped
BYTES: Only the correlationId property is mapped
BOTH: Both properties are mapped

For outbound messages:

STRING: Only the correlationIdString property is mapped
BYTES: Only the correlationId property is mapped
BOTH: Both properties are considered, with the String property taking precedence

Also starting with version 1.6, the inbound deliveryMode property is no longer mapped to MessageProperties.deliveryMode. It is mapped to MessageProperties.receivedDeliveryMode instead. Also, the inbound userId property is no longer mapped to MessageProperties.userId. It is mapped to MessageProperties.receivedUserId instead. These changes are to avoid unexpected propagation of these properties if the same MessageProperties object is used for an outbound message.

Starting with version 2.2, the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter converts any custom headers with values of type Class<?> using getName() instead of toString(); this avoids consuming application having to parse the class name out of the toString() representation. For rolling upgrades, you may need to change your consumers to understand both formats until all producers are upgraded.

4.1.9. Modifying Messages - Compression and More

A number of extension points exist. They let you perform some processing on a message, either before it is sent to RabbitMQ or immediately after it is received.

As can be seen in Message Converters, one such extension point is in the AmqpTemplate convertAndReceive operations, where you can provide a MessagePostProcessor. For example, after your POJO has been converted, the MessagePostProcessor lets you set custom headers or properties on the Message.

Starting with version 1.4.2, additional extension points have been added to the RabbitTemplate - setBeforePublishPostProcessors() and setAfterReceivePostProcessors(). The first enables a post processor to run immediately before sending to RabbitMQ. When using batching (see Batching), this is invoked after the batch is assembled and before the batch is sent. The second is invoked immediately after a message is received.

These extension points are used for such features as compression and, for this purpose, several MessagePostProcessor implementations are provided. GZipPostProcessor, ZipPostProcessor and DeflaterPostProcessor compress messages before sending, and GUnzipPostProcessor, UnzipPostProcessor and InflaterPostProcessor decompress received messages.

Starting with version 2.1.5, the GZipPostProcessor can be configured with the copyProperties = true option to make a copy of the original message properties. By default, these properties are reused for performance reasons, and modified with compression content encoding and the optional MessageProperties.SPRING_AUTO_DECOMPRESS header. If you retain a reference to the original outbound message, its properties will change as well. So, if your application retains a copy of an outbound message with these message post processors, consider turning the copyProperties option on.

Starting with version 2.2.12, you can configure the delimiter that the compressing post processors use between content encoding elements. With versions 2.2.11 and before, this was hard-coded as :, it is now set to , ` by default. The decompressors will work with both delimiters. However, if you publish messages with 2.3 or later and consume with 2.2.11 or earlier, you MUST set the `encodingDelimiter property on the compressor(s) to :. When your consumers are upgraded to 2.2.11 or later, you can revert to the default of `, `.

Similarly, the SimpleMessageListenerContainer also has a setAfterReceivePostProcessors() method, letting the decompression be performed after messages are received by the container.

Starting with version 2.1.4, addBeforePublishPostProcessors() and addAfterReceivePostProcessors() have been added to the RabbitTemplate to allow appending new post processors to the list of before publish and after receive post processors respectively. Also there are methods provided to remove the post processors. Similarly, AbstractMessageListenerContainer also has addAfterReceivePostProcessors() and removeAfterReceivePostProcessor() methods added. See the Javadoc of RabbitTemplate and AbstractMessageListenerContainer for more detail.

4.1.10. Request/Reply Messaging

The AmqpTemplate also provides a variety of sendAndReceive methods that accept the same argument options that were described earlier for the one-way send operations (exchange, routingKey, and Message). Those methods are quite useful for request-reply scenarios, since they handle the configuration of the necessary reply-to property before sending and can listen for the reply message on an exclusive queue that is created internally for that purpose.

Similar request-reply methods are also available where the MessageConverter is applied to both the request and reply. Those methods are named convertSendAndReceive. See the Javadoc of AmqpTemplate for more detail.

Starting with version 1.5.0, each of the sendAndReceive method variants has an overloaded version that takes CorrelationData. Together with a properly configured connection factory, this enables the receipt of publisher confirms for the send side of the operation. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns and the Javadoc for RabbitOperations for more information.

Starting with version 2.0, there are variants of these methods (convertSendAndReceiveAsType) that take an additional ParameterizedTypeReference argument to convert complex returned types. The template must be configured with a SmartMessageConverter. See Converting From a Message With RabbitTemplate for more information.

Starting with version 2.1, you can configure the RabbitTemplate with the noLocalReplyConsumer option to control a noLocal flag for reply consumers. This is false by default.

Reply Timeout

By default, the send and receive methods timeout after five seconds and return null. You can modify this behavior by setting the replyTimeout property. Starting with version 1.5, if you set the mandatory property to true (or the mandatory-expression evaluates to true for a particular message), if the message cannot be delivered to a queue, an AmqpMessageReturnedException is thrown. This exception has returnedMessage, replyCode, and replyText properties, as well as the exchange and routingKey used for the send.

This feature uses publisher returns. You can enable it by setting publisherReturns to true on the CachingConnectionFactory (see Publisher Confirms and Returns). Also, you must not have registered your own ReturnCallback with the RabbitTemplate.

Starting with version 2.1.2, a replyTimedOut method has been added, letting subclasses be informed of the timeout so that they can clean up any retained state.

Starting with versions 2.0.11 and 2.1.3, when you use the default DirectReplyToMessageListenerContainer, you can add an error handler by setting the template’s replyErrorHandler property. This error handler is invoked for any failed deliveries, such as late replies and messages received without a correlation header. The exception passed in is a ListenerExecutionFailedException, which has a failedMessage property.

RabbitMQ Direct reply-to

Starting with version 3.4.0, the RabbitMQ server supports direct reply-to. This eliminates the main reason for a fixed reply queue (to avoid the need to create a temporary queue for each request). Starting with Spring AMQP version 1.4.1 direct reply-to is used by default (if supported by the server) instead of creating temporary reply queues. When no replyQueue is provided (or it is set with a name of amq.rabbitmq.reply-to), the RabbitTemplate automatically detects whether direct reply-to is supported and either uses it or falls back to using a temporary reply queue. When using direct reply-to, a reply-listener is not required and should not be configured.

Reply listeners are still supported with named queues (other than amq.rabbitmq.reply-to), allowing control of reply concurrency and so on.

Starting with version 1.6, if you wish to use a temporary, exclusive, auto-delete queue for each reply, set the useTemporaryReplyQueues property to true. This property is ignored if you set a replyAddress.

You can change the criteria that dictate whether to use direct reply-to by subclassing RabbitTemplate and overriding useDirectReplyTo() to check different criteria. The method is called once only, when the first request is sent.

Prior to version 2.0, the RabbitTemplate created a new consumer for each request and canceled the consumer when the reply was received (or timed out). Now the template uses a DirectReplyToMessageListenerContainer instead, letting the consumers be reused. The template still takes care of correlating the replies, so there is no danger of a late reply going to a different sender. If you want to revert to the previous behavior, set the useDirectReplyToContainer (direct-reply-to-container when using XML configuration) property to false.

The AsyncRabbitTemplate has no such option. It always used a DirectReplyToContainer for replies when direct reply-to is used.

Starting with version 2.3.7, the template has a new property useChannelForCorrelation. When this is true, the server does not have to copy the correlation id from the request message headers to the reply message. Instead, the channel used to send the request is used to correlate the reply to the request.

Message Correlation With A Reply Queue

When using a fixed reply queue (other than amq.rabbitmq.reply-to), you must provide correlation data so that replies can be correlated to requests. See RabbitMQ Remote Procedure Call (RPC). By default, the standard correlationId property is used to hold the correlation data. However, if you wish to use a custom property to hold correlation data, you can set the correlation-key attribute on the <rabbit-template/>. Explicitly setting the attribute to correlationId is the same as omitting the attribute. The client and server must use the same header for correlation data.

Spring AMQP version 1.1 used a custom property called spring_reply_correlation for this data. If you wish to revert to this behavior with the current version (perhaps to maintain compatibility with another application using 1.1), you must set the attribute to spring_reply_correlation.

By default, the template generates its own correlation ID (ignoring any user-supplied value). If you wish to use your own correlation ID, set the RabbitTemplate instance’s userCorrelationId property to true.

The correlation ID must be unique to avoid the possibility of a wrong reply being returned for a request.

Reply Listener Container

When using RabbitMQ versions prior to 3.4.0, a new temporary queue is used for each reply. However, a single reply queue can be configured on the template, which can be more efficient and also lets you set arguments on that queue. In this case, however, you must also provide a <reply-listener/> sub element. This element provides a listener container for the reply queue, with the template being the listener. All of the Message Listener Container Configuration attributes allowed on a <listener-container/> are allowed on the element, except for connection-factory and message-converter, which are inherited from the template’s configuration.

If you run multiple instances of your application or use multiple RabbitTemplate instances, you MUST use a unique reply queue for each. RabbitMQ has no ability to select messages from a queue, so, if they all use the same queue, each instance would compete for replies and not necessarily receive their own.

The following example defines a rabbit template with a connection factory:

<rabbit:template id="amqpTemplate"
        connection-factory="connectionFactory"
        reply-queue="replies"
        reply-address="replyEx/routeReply">
    <rabbit:reply-listener/>
</rabbit:template>

While the container and template share a connection factory, they do not share a channel. Therefore, requests and replies are not performed within the same transaction (if transactional).

Prior to version 1.5.0, the reply-address attribute was not available. Replies were always routed by using the default exchange and the reply-queue name as the routing key. This is still the default, but you can now specify the new reply-address attribute. The reply-address can contain an address with the form <exchange>/<routingKey> and the reply is routed to the specified exchange and routed to a queue bound with the routing key. The reply-address has precedence over reply-queue. When only reply-address is in use, the <reply-listener> must be configured as a separate <listener-container> component. The reply-address and reply-queue (or queues attribute on the <listener-container>) must refer to the same queue logically.

With this configuration, a SimpleListenerContainer is used to receive the replies, with the RabbitTemplate being the MessageListener. When defining a template with the <rabbit:template/> namespace element, as shown in the preceding example, the parser defines the container and wires in the template as the listener.

When the template does not use a fixed replyQueue (or is using direct reply-to — see RabbitMQ Direct reply-to), a listener container is not needed. Direct reply-to is the preferred mechanism when using RabbitMQ 3.4.0 or later.

If you define your RabbitTemplate as a <bean/> or use an @Configuration class to define it as an @Bean or when you create the template programmatically, you need to define and wire up the reply listener container yourself. If you fail to do this, the template never receives the replies and eventually times out and returns null as the reply to a call to a sendAndReceive method.

Starting with version 1.5, the RabbitTemplate detects if it has been configured as a MessageListener to receive replies. If not, attempts to send and receive messages with a reply address fail with an IllegalStateException (because the replies are never received).

Further, if a simple replyAddress (queue name) is used, the reply listener container verifies that it is listening to a queue with the same name. This check cannot be performed if the reply address is an exchange and routing key and a debug log message is written.

When wiring the reply listener and template yourself, it is important to ensure that the template’s replyAddress and the container’s queues (or queueNames) properties refer to the same queue. The template inserts the reply address into the outbound message replyTo property.

The following listing shows examples of how to manually wire up the beans:

<bean id="amqpTemplate" class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.RabbitTemplate">
    <constructor-arg ref="connectionFactory" />
    <property name="exchange" value="foo.exchange" />
    <property name="routingKey" value="foo" />
    <property name="replyQueue" ref="replyQ" />
    <property name="replyTimeout" value="600000" />
    <property name="useDirectReplyToContainer" value="false" />
</bean>

<bean class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.SimpleMessageListenerContainer">
    <constructor-arg ref="connectionFactory" />
    <property name="queues" ref="replyQ" />
    <property name="messageListener" ref="amqpTemplate" />
</bean>

<rabbit:queue id="replyQ" name="my.reply.queue" />

    @Bean
    public RabbitTemplate amqpTemplate() {
        RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate = new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
        rabbitTemplate.setMessageConverter(msgConv());
        rabbitTemplate.setReplyAddress(replyQueue().getName());
        rabbitTemplate.setReplyTimeout(60000);
        rabbitTemplate.setUseDirectReplyToContainer(false);
        return rabbitTemplate;
    }

    @Bean
    public SimpleMessageListenerContainer replyListenerContainer() {
        SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer();
        container.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
        container.setQueues(replyQueue());
        container.setMessageListener(amqpTemplate());
        return container;
    }

    @Bean
    public Queue replyQueue() {
        return new Queue("my.reply.queue");
    }

A complete example of a RabbitTemplate wired with a fixed reply queue, together with a “remote” listener container that handles the request and returns the reply is shown in this test case.

When the reply times out (replyTimeout), the sendAndReceive() methods return null.

Prior to version 1.3.6, late replies for timed out messages were only logged. Now, if a late reply is received, it is rejected (the template throws an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException). If the reply queue is configured to send rejected messages to a dead letter exchange, the reply can be retrieved for later analysis. To do so, bind a queue to the configured dead letter exchange with a routing key equal to the reply queue’s name.

See the RabbitMQ Dead Letter Documentation for more information about configuring dead lettering. You can also take a look at the FixedReplyQueueDeadLetterTests test case for an example.

Async Rabbit Template

Version 1.6 introduced the AsyncRabbitTemplate. This has similar sendAndReceive (and convertSendAndReceive) methods to those on the AmqpTemplate. However, instead of blocking, they return a ListenableFuture.

The sendAndReceive methods return a RabbitMessageFuture. The convertSendAndReceive methods return a RabbitConverterFuture.

You can either synchronously retrieve the result later, by invoking get() on the future, or you can register a callback that is called asynchronously with the result. The following listing shows both approaches:

@Autowired
private AsyncRabbitTemplate template;

...

public void doSomeWorkAndGetResultLater() {

    ...

    ListenableFuture<String> future = this.template.convertSendAndReceive("foo");

    // do some more work

    String reply = null;
    try {
        reply = future.get();
    }
    catch (ExecutionException e) {
        ...
    }

    ...

}

public void doSomeWorkAndGetResultAsync() {

    ...

    RabbitConverterFuture<String> future = this.template.convertSendAndReceive("foo");
    future.addCallback(new ListenableFutureCallback<String>() {

        @Override
        public void onSuccess(String result) {
            ...
        }

        @Override
        public void onFailure(Throwable ex) {
            ...
        }

    });

    ...

}

If mandatory is set and the message cannot be delivered, the future throws an ExecutionException with a cause of AmqpMessageReturnedException, which encapsulates the returned message and information about the return.

If enableConfirms is set, the future has a property called confirm, which is itself a ListenableFuture<Boolean> with true indicating a successful publish. If the confirm future is false, the RabbitFuture has a further property called nackCause, which contains the reason for the failure, if available.

The publisher confirm is discarded if it is received after the reply, since the reply implies a successful publish.

You can set the receiveTimeout property on the template to time out replies (it defaults to 30000 - 30 seconds). If a timeout occurs, the future is completed with an AmqpReplyTimeoutException.

The template implements SmartLifecycle. Stopping the template while there are pending replies causes the pending Future instances to be canceled.

Starting with version 2.0, the asynchronous template now supports direct reply-to instead of a configured reply queue. To enable this feature, use one of the following constructors:

public AsyncRabbitTemplate(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory, String exchange, String routingKey)

public AsyncRabbitTemplate(RabbitTemplate template)

See RabbitMQ Direct reply-to to use direct reply-to with the synchronous RabbitTemplate.

Version 2.0 introduced variants of these methods (convertSendAndReceiveAsType) that take an additional ParameterizedTypeReference argument to convert complex returned types. You must configure the underlying RabbitTemplate with a SmartMessageConverter. See Converting From a Message With RabbitTemplate for more information.

In version 3.0, AsyncRabbitTemplate method return types will be CompletableFuture instead of ListenableFuture.

Spring Remoting with AMQP

This feature is deprecated and will be removed in 3.0. It has been superseded for a long time by Handling Exceptions with the returnExceptions being set to true, and configuring a RemoteInvocationAwareMessageConverterAdapter on the sending side. See Handling Exceptions for more information.

The Spring Framework has a general remoting capability, allowing Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) that use various transports. Spring-AMQP supports a similar mechanism with a AmqpProxyFactoryBean on the client and a AmqpInvokerServiceExporter on the server. This provides RPC over AMQP. On the client side, a RabbitTemplate is used as described earlier. On the server side, the invoker (configured as a MessageListener) receives the message, invokes the configured service, and returns the reply by using the inbound message’s replyTo information.

You can inject the client factory bean into any bean (by using its serviceInterface). The client can then invoke methods on the proxy, resulting in remote execution over AMQP.

With the default MessageConverter instances, the method parameters and returned value must be instances of Serializable.

On the server side, the AmqpInvokerServiceExporter has both AmqpTemplate and MessageConverter properties. Currently, the template’s MessageConverter is not used. If you need to supply a custom message converter, you should provide it by setting the messageConverter property. On the client side, you can add a custom message converter to the AmqpTemplate, which is provided to the AmqpProxyFactoryBean by using its amqpTemplate property.

The following listing shows sample client and server configurations:

<bean id="client"
    class="org.springframework.amqp.remoting.client.AmqpProxyFactoryBean">
    <property name="amqpTemplate" ref="template" />
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="foo.ServiceInterface" />
</bean>

<rabbit:connection-factory id="connectionFactory" />

<rabbit:template id="template" connection-factory="connectionFactory" reply-timeout="2000"
    routing-key="remoting.binding" exchange="remoting.exchange" />

<rabbit:admin connection-factory="connectionFactory" />

<rabbit:queue name="remoting.queue" />

<rabbit:direct-exchange name="remoting.exchange">
    <rabbit:bindings>
        <rabbit:binding queue="remoting.queue" key="remoting.binding" />
    </rabbit:bindings>
</rabbit:direct-exchange>

<bean id="listener"
    class="org.springframework.amqp.remoting.service.AmqpInvokerServiceExporter">
    <property name="serviceInterface" value="foo.ServiceInterface" />
    <property name="service" ref="service" />
    <property name="amqpTemplate" ref="template" />
</bean>

<bean id="service" class="foo.ServiceImpl" />

<rabbit:connection-factory id="connectionFactory" />

<rabbit:template id="template" connection-factory="connectionFactory" />

<rabbit:queue name="remoting.queue" />

<rabbit:listener-container connection-factory="connectionFactory">
    <rabbit:listener ref="listener" queue-names="remoting.queue" />
</rabbit:listener-container>

The AmqpInvokerServiceExporter can process only properly formed messages, such as those sent from the AmqpProxyFactoryBean. If it receives a message that it cannot interpret, a serialized RuntimeException is sent as a reply. If the message has no replyToAddress property, the message is rejected and permanently lost if no dead letter exchange has been configured.

By default, if the request message cannot be delivered, the calling thread eventually times out and a RemoteProxyFailureException is thrown. By default, the timeout is five seconds. You can modify that duration by setting the replyTimeout property on the RabbitTemplate. Starting with version 1.5, by setting the mandatory property to true and enabling returns on the connection factory (see Publisher Confirms and Returns), the calling thread throws an AmqpMessageReturnedException. See Reply Timeout for more information.

4.1.11. Configuring the Broker

The AMQP specification describes how the protocol can be used to configure queues, exchanges, and bindings on the broker. These operations (which are portable from the 0.8 specification and higher) are present in the AmqpAdmin interface in the org.springframework.amqp.core package. The RabbitMQ implementation of that class is RabbitAdmin located in the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core package.

The AmqpAdmin interface is based on using the Spring AMQP domain abstractions and is shown in the following listing:

public interface AmqpAdmin {

    // Exchange Operations

    void declareExchange(Exchange exchange);

    void deleteExchange(String exchangeName);

    // Queue Operations

    Queue declareQueue();

    String declareQueue(Queue queue);

    void deleteQueue(String queueName);

    void deleteQueue(String queueName, boolean unused, boolean empty);

    void purgeQueue(String queueName, boolean noWait);

    // Binding Operations

    void declareBinding(Binding binding);

    void removeBinding(Binding binding);

    Properties getQueueProperties(String queueName);

}

Headers Exchange

Starting with version 1.3, you can configure the HeadersExchange to match on multiple headers. You can also specify whether any or all headers must match. The following example shows how to do so:

<rabbit:headers-exchange name="headers-test">
    <rabbit:bindings>
        <rabbit:binding queue="bucket">
            <rabbit:binding-arguments>
                <entry key="foo" value="bar"/>
                <entry key="baz" value="qux"/>
                <entry key="x-match" value="all"/>
            </rabbit:binding-arguments>
        </rabbit:binding>
    </rabbit:bindings>
</rabbit:headers-exchange>

Starting with version 1.6, you can configure Exchanges with an internal flag (defaults to false) and such an Exchange is properly configured on the Broker through a RabbitAdmin (if one is present in the application context). If the internal flag is true for an exchange, RabbitMQ does not let clients use the exchange. This is useful for a dead letter exchange or exchange-to-exchange binding, where you do not wish the exchange to be used directly by publishers.

To see how to use Java to configure the AMQP infrastructure, look at the Stock sample application, where there is the @Configuration class AbstractStockRabbitConfiguration, which ,in turn has RabbitClientConfiguration and RabbitServerConfiguration subclasses. The following listing shows the code for AbstractStockRabbitConfiguration:

@Configuration
public abstract class AbstractStockAppRabbitConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory() {
        CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory =
            new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
        connectionFactory.setUsername("guest");
        connectionFactory.setPassword("guest");
        return connectionFactory;
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate() {
        RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
        template.setMessageConverter(jsonMessageConverter());
        configureRabbitTemplate(template);
        return template;
    }

    @Bean
    public Jackson2JsonMessageConverter jsonMessageConverter() {
        return new Jackson2JsonMessageConverter();
    }

    @Bean
    public TopicExchange marketDataExchange() {
        return new TopicExchange("app.stock.marketdata");
    }

    // additional code omitted for brevity

}

In the Stock application, the server is configured by using the following @Configuration class:

@Configuration
public class RabbitServerConfiguration extends AbstractStockAppRabbitConfiguration  {

    @Bean
    public Queue stockRequestQueue() {
        return new Queue("app.stock.request");
    }
}

This is the end of the whole inheritance chain of @Configuration classes. The end result is that TopicExchange and Queue are declared to the broker upon application startup. There is no binding of TopicExchange to a queue in the server configuration, as that is done in the client application. The stock request queue, however, is automatically bound to the AMQP default exchange. This behavior is defined by the specification.

The client @Configuration class is a little more interesting. Its declaration follows:

@Configuration
public class RabbitClientConfiguration extends AbstractStockAppRabbitConfiguration {

    @Value("${stocks.quote.pattern}")
    private String marketDataRoutingKey;

    @Bean
    public Queue marketDataQueue() {
        return amqpAdmin().declareQueue();
    }

    /**
     * Binds to the market data exchange.
     * Interested in any stock quotes
     * that match its routing key.
     */
    @Bean
    public Binding marketDataBinding() {
        return BindingBuilder.bind(
                marketDataQueue()).to(marketDataExchange()).with(marketDataRoutingKey);
    }

    // additional code omitted for brevity

}

The client declares another queue through the declareQueue() method on the AmqpAdmin. It binds that queue to the market data exchange with a routing pattern that is externalized in a properties file.

Builder API for Queues and Exchanges

Version 1.6 introduces a convenient fluent API for configuring Queue and Exchange objects when using Java configuration. The following example shows how to use it:

@Bean
public Queue queue() {
    return QueueBuilder.nonDurable("foo")
        .autoDelete()
        .exclusive()
        .withArgument("foo", "bar")
        .build();
}

@Bean
public Exchange exchange() {
  return ExchangeBuilder.directExchange("foo")
      .autoDelete()
      .internal()
      .withArgument("foo", "bar")
      .build();
}

See the Javadoc for org.springframework.amqp.core.QueueBuilder and org.springframework.amqp.core.ExchangeBuilder for more information.

Starting with version 2.0, the ExchangeBuilder now creates durable exchanges by default, to be consistent with the simple constructors on the individual AbstractExchange classes. To make a non-durable exchange with the builder, use .durable(false) before invoking .build(). The durable() method with no parameter is no longer provided.

Version 2.2 introduced fluent APIs to add "well known" exchange and queue arguments…

@Bean
public Queue allArgs1() {
    return QueueBuilder.nonDurable("all.args.1")
            .ttl(1000)
            .expires(200_000)
            .maxLength(42)
            .maxLengthBytes(10_000)
            .overflow(Overflow.rejectPublish)
            .deadLetterExchange("dlx")
            .deadLetterRoutingKey("dlrk")
            .maxPriority(4)
            .lazy()
            .leaderLocator(LeaderLocator.minLeaders)
            .singleActiveConsumer()
            .build();
}

@Bean
public DirectExchange ex() {
    return ExchangeBuilder.directExchange("ex.with.alternate")
            .durable(true)
            .alternate("alternate")
            .build();
}

Declaring Collections of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings

You can wrap collections of Declarable objects (Queue, Exchange, and Binding) in Declarables objects. The RabbitAdmin detects such beans (as well as discrete Declarable beans) in the application context, and declares the contained objects on the broker whenever a connection is established (initially and after a connection failure). The following example shows how to do so:

@Configuration
public static class Config {

    @Bean
    public CachingConnectionFactory cf() {
        return new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitAdmin admin(ConnectionFactory cf) {
        return new RabbitAdmin(cf);
    }

    @Bean
    public DirectExchange e1() {
        return new DirectExchange("e1", false, true);
    }

    @Bean
    public Queue q1() {
        return new Queue("q1", false, false, true);
    }

    @Bean
    public Binding b1() {
        return BindingBuilder.bind(q1()).to(e1()).with("k1");
    }

    @Bean
    public Declarables es() {
        return new Declarables(
                new DirectExchange("e2", false, true),
                new DirectExchange("e3", false, true));
    }

    @Bean
    public Declarables qs() {
        return new Declarables(
                new Queue("q2", false, false, true),
                new Queue("q3", false, false, true));
    }

    @Bean
    @Scope(ConfigurableBeanFactory.SCOPE_PROTOTYPE)
    public Declarables prototypes() {
        return new Declarables(new Queue(this.prototypeQueueName, false, false, true));
    }

    @Bean
    public Declarables bs() {
        return new Declarables(
                new Binding("q2", DestinationType.QUEUE, "e2", "k2", null),
                new Binding("q3", DestinationType.QUEUE, "e3", "k3", null));
    }

    @Bean
    public Declarables ds() {
        return new Declarables(
                new DirectExchange("e4", false, true),
                new Queue("q4", false, false, true),
                new Binding("q4", DestinationType.QUEUE, "e4", "k4", null));
    }

}

In versions prior to 2.1, you could declare multiple Declarable instances by defining beans of type Collection<Declarable>. This can cause undesirable side effects in some cases, because the admin has to iterate over all Collection<?> beans.

Version 2.2 added the getDeclarablesByType method to Declarables; this can be used as a convenience, for example, when declaring the listener container bean(s).

public SimpleMessageListenerContainer container(ConnectionFactory connectionFactory,
        Declarables mixedDeclarables, MessageListener listener) {

    SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer(connectionFactory);
    container.setQueues(mixedDeclarables.getDeclarablesByType(Queue.class).toArray(new Queue[0]));
    container.setMessageListener(listener);
    return container;
}

Conditional Declaration

By default, all queues, exchanges, and bindings are declared by all RabbitAdmin instances (assuming they have auto-startup="true") in the application context.

Starting with version 2.1.9, the RabbitAdmin has a new property explicitDeclarationsOnly (which is false by default); when this is set to true, the admin will only declare beans that are explicitly configured to be declared by that admin.

Starting with the 1.2 release, you can conditionally declare these elements. This is particularly useful when an application connects to multiple brokers and needs to specify with which brokers a particular element should be declared.

The classes representing these elements implement Declarable, which has two methods: shouldDeclare() and getDeclaringAdmins(). The RabbitAdmin uses these methods to determine whether a particular instance should actually process the declarations on its Connection.

The properties are available as attributes in the namespace, as shown in the following examples:

<rabbit:admin id="admin1" connection-factory="CF1" />

<rabbit:admin id="admin2" connection-factory="CF2" />

<rabbit:admin id="admin3" connection-factory="CF3" explicit-declarations-only="true" />

<rabbit:queue id="declaredByAdmin1AndAdmin2Implicitly" />

<rabbit:queue id="declaredByAdmin1AndAdmin2" declared-by="admin1, admin2" />

<rabbit:queue id="declaredByAdmin1Only" declared-by="admin1" />

<rabbit:queue id="notDeclaredByAllExceptAdmin3" auto-declare="false" />

<rabbit:direct-exchange name="direct" declared-by="admin1, admin2">
    <rabbit:bindings>
        <rabbit:binding key="foo" queue="bar"/>
    </rabbit:bindings>
</rabbit:direct-exchange>

By default, the auto-declare attribute is true and, if the declared-by is not supplied (or is empty), then all RabbitAdmin instances declare the object (as long as the admin’s auto-startup attribute is true, the default, and the admin’s explicit-declarations-only attribute is false).

Similarly, you can use Java-based @Configuration to achieve the same effect. In the following example, the components are declared by admin1 but not by`admin2`:

@Bean
public RabbitAdmin admin1() {
    return new RabbitAdmin(cf1());
}

@Bean
public RabbitAdmin admin2() {
    return new RabbitAdmin(cf2());
}

@Bean
public Queue queue() {
    Queue queue = new Queue("foo");
    queue.setAdminsThatShouldDeclare(admin1());
    return queue;
}

@Bean
public Exchange exchange() {
    DirectExchange exchange = new DirectExchange("bar");
    exchange.setAdminsThatShouldDeclare(admin1());
    return exchange;
}

@Bean
public Binding binding() {
    Binding binding = new Binding("foo", DestinationType.QUEUE, exchange().getName(), "foo", null);
    binding.setAdminsThatShouldDeclare(admin1());
    return binding;
}

A Note On the `id` and `name` Attributes

The name attribute on <rabbit:queue/> and <rabbit:exchange/> elements reflects the name of the entity in the broker. For queues, if the name is omitted, an anonymous queue is created (see AnonymousQueue).

In versions prior to 2.0, the name was also registered as a bean name alias (similar to name on <bean/> elements).

This caused two problems:

It prevented the declaration of a queue and exchange with the same name.
The alias was not resolved if it contained a SpEL expression (#{…}).

Starting with version 2.0, if you declare one of these elements with both an id and a name attribute, the name is no longer declared as a bean name alias. If you wish to declare a queue and exchange with the same name, you must provide an id.

There is no change if the element has only a name attribute. The bean can still be referenced by the name — for example, in binding declarations. However, you still cannot reference it if the name contains SpEL — you must provide an id for reference purposes.

`AnonymousQueue`

In general, when you need a uniquely-named, exclusive, auto-delete queue, we recommend that you use the AnonymousQueue instead of broker-defined queue names (using "" as a Queue name causes the broker to generate the queue name).

This is because:

The queues are actually declared when the connection to the broker is established. This is long after the beans are created and wired together. Beans that use the queue need to know its name. In fact, the broker might not even be running when the application is started.
If the connection to the broker is lost for some reason, the admin re-declares the AnonymousQueue with the same name. If we used broker-declared queues, the queue name would change.

You can control the format of the queue name used by AnonymousQueue instances.

By default, the queue name is prefixed by spring.gen- followed by a base64 representation of the UUID — for example: spring.gen-MRBv9sqISkuCiPfOYfpo4g.

You can provide an AnonymousQueue.NamingStrategy implementation in a constructor argument. The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public Queue anon1() {
    return new AnonymousQueue();
}

@Bean
public Queue anon2() {
    return new AnonymousQueue(new AnonymousQueue.Base64UrlNamingStrategy("something-"));
}

@Bean
public Queue anon3() {
    return new AnonymousQueue(AnonymousQueue.UUIDNamingStrategy.DEFAULT);
}

The first bean generates a queue name prefixed by spring.gen- followed by a base64 representation of the UUID — for example: spring.gen-MRBv9sqISkuCiPfOYfpo4g. The second bean generates a queue name prefixed by something- followed by a base64 representation of the UUID. The third bean generates a name by using only the UUID (no base64 conversion) — for example, f20c818a-006b-4416-bf91-643590fedb0e.

The base64 encoding uses the “URL and Filename Safe Alphabet” from RFC 4648. Trailing padding characters (=) are removed.

You can provide your own naming strategy, whereby you can include other information (such as the application name or client host) in the queue name.

You can specify the naming strategy when you use XML configuration. The naming-strategy attribute is present on the <rabbit:queue> element for a bean reference that implements AnonymousQueue.NamingStrategy. The following examples show how to specify the naming strategy in various ways:

<rabbit:queue id="uuidAnon" />

<rabbit:queue id="springAnon" naming-strategy="uuidNamer" />

<rabbit:queue id="customAnon" naming-strategy="customNamer" />

<bean id="uuidNamer" class="org.springframework.amqp.core.AnonymousQueue.UUIDNamingStrategy" />

<bean id="customNamer" class="org.springframework.amqp.core.AnonymousQueue.Base64UrlNamingStrategy">
    <constructor-arg value="custom.gen-" />
</bean>

The first example creates names such as spring.gen-MRBv9sqISkuCiPfOYfpo4g. The second example creates names with a String representation of a UUID. The third example creates names such as custom.gen-MRBv9sqISkuCiPfOYfpo4g.

You can also provide your own naming strategy bean.

Starting with version 2.1, anonymous queues are declared with argument Queue.X_QUEUE_LEADER_LOCATOR set to client-local by default. This ensures that the queue is declared on the node to which the application is connected. You can revert to the previous behavior by calling queue.setLeaderLocator(null) after constructing the instance.

Recovering Auto-Delete Declarations

Normally, the RabbitAdmin (s) only recover queues/exchanges/bindings that are declared as beans in the application context; if any such declarations are auto-delete, they will be removed by the broker if the connection is lost. When the connection is re-established, the admin will redeclare the entities. Normally, entities created by calling admin.declareQueue(…), admin.declareExchange(…) and admin.declareBinding(…) will not be recovered.

Starting with version 2.4, the admin has a new property redeclareManualDeclarations; when true, the admin will recover these entities in addition to the beans in the application context.

Recovery of individual declarations will not be performed if deleteQueue(…), deleteExchange(…) or removeBinding(…) is called. Associated bindings are removed from the recoverable entities when queues and exchanges are deleted.

Finally, calling resetAllManualDeclarations() will prevent the recovery of any previously declared entities.

4.1.12. Broker Event Listener

When the Event Exchange Plugin is enabled, if you add a bean of type BrokerEventListener to the application context, it publishes selected broker events as BrokerEvent instances, which can be consumed with a normal Spring ApplicationListener or @EventListener method. Events are published by the broker to a topic exchange amq.rabbitmq.event with a different routing key for each event type. The listener uses event keys, which are used to bind an AnonymousQueue to the exchange so the listener receives only selected events. Since it is a topic exchange, wildcards can be used (as well as explicitly requesting specific events), as the following example shows:

@Bean
public BrokerEventListener eventListener() {
    return new BrokerEventListener(connectionFactory(), "user.deleted", "channel.#", "queue.#");
}

You can further narrow the received events in individual event listeners, by using normal Spring techniques, as the following example shows:

@EventListener(condition = "event.eventType == 'queue.created'")
public void listener(BrokerEvent event) {
    ...
}

4.1.13. Delayed Message Exchange

Version 1.6 introduces support for the Delayed Message Exchange Plugin

The plugin is currently marked as experimental but has been available for over a year (at the time of writing). If changes to the plugin make it necessary, we plan to add support for such changes as soon as practical. For that reason, this support in Spring AMQP should be considered experimental, too. This functionality was tested with RabbitMQ 3.6.0 and version 0.0.1 of the plugin.

To use a RabbitAdmin to declare an exchange as delayed, you can set the delayed property on the exchange bean to true. The RabbitAdmin uses the exchange type (Direct, Fanout, and so on) to set the x-delayed-type argument and declare the exchange with type x-delayed-message.

The delayed property (default: false) is also available when configuring exchange beans using XML. The following example shows how to use it:

<rabbit:topic-exchange name="topic" delayed="true" />

To send a delayed message, you can set the x-delay header through MessageProperties, as the following examples show:

MessageProperties properties = new MessageProperties();
properties.setDelay(15000);
template.send(exchange, routingKey,
        MessageBuilder.withBody("foo".getBytes()).andProperties(properties).build());

rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(exchange, routingKey, "foo", new MessagePostProcessor() {

    @Override
    public Message postProcessMessage(Message message) throws AmqpException {
        message.getMessageProperties().setDelay(15000);
        return message;
    }

});

To check if a message was delayed, use the getReceivedDelay() method on the MessageProperties. It is a separate property to avoid unintended propagation to an output message generated from an input message.

4.1.14. RabbitMQ REST API

When the management plugin is enabled, the RabbitMQ server exposes a REST API to monitor and configure the broker. A Java Binding for the API is now provided. The com.rabbitmq.http.client.Client is a standard, immediate, and, therefore, blocking API. It is based on the Spring Web module and its RestTemplate implementation. On the other hand, the com.rabbitmq.http.client.ReactorNettyClient is a reactive, non-blocking implementation based on the Reactor Netty project.

The hop dependency (com.rabbitmq:http-client) is now also optional.

See their Javadoc for more information.

4.1.15. Exception Handling

Many operations with the RabbitMQ Java client can throw checked exceptions. For example, there are a lot of cases where IOException instances may be thrown. The RabbitTemplate, SimpleMessageListenerContainer, and other Spring AMQP components catch those exceptions and convert them into one of the exceptions within AmqpException hierarchy. Those are defined in the 'org.springframework.amqp' package, and AmqpException is the base of the hierarchy.

When a listener throws an exception, it is wrapped in a ListenerExecutionFailedException. Normally the message is rejected and requeued by the broker. Setting defaultRequeueRejected to false causes messages to be discarded (or routed to a dead letter exchange). As discussed in Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case, the listener can throw an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException (or ImmediateRequeueAmqpException) to conditionally control this behavior.

However, there is a class of errors where the listener cannot control the behavior. When a message that cannot be converted is encountered (for example, an invalid content_encoding header), some exceptions are thrown before the message reaches user code. With defaultRequeueRejected set to true (default) (or throwing an ImmediateRequeueAmqpException), such messages would be redelivered over and over. Before version 1.3.2, users needed to write a custom ErrorHandler, as discussed in Exception Handling, to avoid this situation.

Starting with version 1.3.2, the default ErrorHandler is now a ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler that rejects (and does not requeue) messages that fail with an irrecoverable error. Specifically, it rejects messages that fail with the following errors:

o.s.amqp…MessageConversionException: Can be thrown when converting the incoming message payload using a MessageConverter.
o.s.messaging…MessageConversionException: Can be thrown by the conversion service if additional conversion is required when mapping to a @RabbitListener method.
o.s.messaging…MethodArgumentNotValidException: Can be thrown if validation (for example, @Valid) is used in the listener and the validation fails.
o.s.messaging…MethodArgumentTypeMismatchException: Can be thrown if the inbound message was converted to a type that is not correct for the target method. For example, the parameter is declared as Message<Foo> but Message<Bar> is received.
java.lang.NoSuchMethodException: Added in version 1.6.3.
java.lang.ClassCastException: Added in version 1.6.3.

You can configure an instance of this error handler with a FatalExceptionStrategy so that users can provide their own rules for conditional message rejection — for example, a delegate implementation to the BinaryExceptionClassifier from Spring Retry (Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case). In addition, the ListenerExecutionFailedException now has a failedMessage property that you can use in the decision. If the FatalExceptionStrategy.isFatal() method returns true, the error handler throws an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException. The default FatalExceptionStrategy logs a warning message when an exception is determined to be fatal.

Since version 1.6.3, a convenient way to add user exceptions to the fatal list is to subclass ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler.DefaultExceptionStrategy and override the isUserCauseFatal(Throwable cause) method to return true for fatal exceptions.

A common pattern for handling DLQ messages is to set a time-to-live on those messages as well as additional DLQ configuration such that these messages expire and are routed back to the main queue for retry. The problem with this technique is that messages that cause fatal exceptions loop forever. Starting with version 2.1, the ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler detects an x-death header on a message that causes a fatal exception to be thrown. The message is logged and discarded. You can revert to the previous behavior by setting the discardFatalsWithXDeath property on the ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler to false.

Starting with version 2.1.9, messages with these fatal exceptions are rejected and NOT requeued by default, even if the container acknowledge mode is MANUAL. These exceptions generally occur before the listener is invoked so the listener does not have a chance to ack or nack the message so it remained in the queue in an un-acked state. To revert to the previous behavior, set the rejectManual property on the ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler to false.

4.1.16. Transactions

The Spring Rabbit framework has support for automatic transaction management in the synchronous and asynchronous use cases with a number of different semantics that can be selected declaratively, as is familiar to existing users of Spring transactions. This makes many if not most common messaging patterns easy to implement.

There are two ways to signal the desired transaction semantics to the framework. In both the RabbitTemplate and SimpleMessageListenerContainer, there is a flag channelTransacted which, if true, tells the framework to use a transactional channel and to end all operations (send or receive) with a commit or rollback (depending on the outcome), with an exception signaling a rollback. Another signal is to provide an external transaction with one of Spring’s PlatformTransactionManager implementations as a context for the ongoing operation. If there is already a transaction in progress when the framework is sending or receiving a message, and the channelTransacted flag is true, the commit or rollback of the messaging transaction is deferred until the end of the current transaction. If the channelTransacted flag is false, no transaction semantics apply to the messaging operation (it is auto-acked).

The channelTransacted flag is a configuration time setting. It is declared and processed once when the AMQP components are created, usually at application startup. The external transaction is more dynamic in principle because the system responds to the current thread state at runtime. However, in practice, it is often also a configuration setting, when the transactions are layered onto an application declaratively.

For synchronous use cases with RabbitTemplate, the external transaction is provided by the caller, either declaratively or imperatively according to taste (the usual Spring transaction model). The following example shows a declarative approach (usually preferred because it is non-invasive), where the template has been configured with channelTransacted=true:

@Transactional
public void doSomething() {
    String incoming = rabbitTemplate.receiveAndConvert();
    // do some more database processing...
    String outgoing = processInDatabaseAndExtractReply(incoming);
    rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(outgoing);
}

In the preceding example, a String payload is received, converted, and sent as a message body inside a method marked as @Transactional. If the database processing fails with an exception, the incoming message is returned to the broker, and the outgoing message is not sent. This applies to any operations with the RabbitTemplate inside a chain of transactional methods (unless, for instance, the Channel is directly manipulated to commit the transaction early).

For asynchronous use cases with SimpleMessageListenerContainer, if an external transaction is needed, it has to be requested by the container when it sets up the listener. To signal that an external transaction is required, the user provides an implementation of PlatformTransactionManager to the container when it is configured. The following example shows how to do so:

@Configuration
public class ExampleExternalTransactionAmqpConfiguration {

    @Bean
    public SimpleMessageListenerContainer messageListenerContainer() {
        SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer();
        container.setConnectionFactory(rabbitConnectionFactory());
        container.setTransactionManager(transactionManager());
        container.setChannelTransacted(true);
        container.setQueueName("some.queue");
        container.setMessageListener(exampleListener());
        return container;
    }

}

In the preceding example, the transaction manager is added as a dependency injected from another bean definition (not shown), and the channelTransacted flag is also set to true. The effect is that if the listener fails with an exception, the transaction is rolled back, and the message is also returned to the broker. Significantly, if the transaction fails to commit (for example, because of a database constraint error or connectivity problem), the AMQP transaction is also rolled back, and the message is returned to the broker. This is sometimes known as a “Best Efforts 1 Phase Commit”, and is a very powerful pattern for reliable messaging. If the channelTransacted flag was set to false (the default) in the preceding example, the external transaction would still be provided for the listener, but all messaging operations would be auto-acked, so the effect is to commit the messaging operations even on a rollback of the business operation.

Conditional Rollback

Prior to version 1.6.6, adding a rollback rule to a container’s transactionAttribute when using an external transaction manager (such as JDBC) had no effect. Exceptions always rolled back the transaction.

Also, when using a transaction advice in the container’s advice chain, conditional rollback was not very useful, because all listener exceptions are wrapped in a ListenerExecutionFailedException.

The first problem has been corrected, and the rules are now applied properly. Further, the ListenerFailedRuleBasedTransactionAttribute is now provided. It is a subclass of RuleBasedTransactionAttribute, with the only difference being that it is aware of the ListenerExecutionFailedException and uses the cause of such exceptions for the rule. This transaction attribute can be used directly in the container or through a transaction advice.

The following example uses this rule:

@Bean
public AbstractMessageListenerContainer container() {
    ...
    container.setTransactionManager(transactionManager);
    RuleBasedTransactionAttribute transactionAttribute =
        new ListenerFailedRuleBasedTransactionAttribute();
    transactionAttribute.setRollbackRules(Collections.singletonList(
        new NoRollbackRuleAttribute(DontRollBackException.class)));
    container.setTransactionAttribute(transactionAttribute);
    ...
}

A note on Rollback of Received Messages

AMQP transactions apply only to messages and acks sent to the broker. Consequently, when there is a rollback of a Spring transaction and a message has been received, Spring AMQP has to not only rollback the transaction but also manually reject the message (sort of a nack, but that is not what the specification calls it). The action taken on message rejection is independent of transactions and depends on the defaultRequeueRejected property (default: true). For more information about rejecting failed messages, see Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case.

For more information about RabbitMQ transactions and their limitations, see RabbitMQ Broker Semantics.

Prior to RabbitMQ 2.7.0, such messages (and any that are unacked when a channel is closed or aborts) went to the back of the queue on a Rabbit broker. Since 2.7.0, rejected messages go to the front of the queue, in a similar manner to JMS rolled back messages.

Previously, message requeue on transaction rollback was inconsistent between local transactions and when a TransactionManager was provided. In the former case, the normal requeue logic (AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException or defaultRequeueRejected=false) applied (see Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case). With a transaction manager, the message was unconditionally requeued on rollback. Starting with version 2.0, the behavior is consistent and the normal requeue logic is applied in both cases. To revert to the previous behavior, you can set the container’s alwaysRequeueWithTxManagerRollback property to true. See Message Listener Container Configuration.

Using `RabbitTransactionManager`

The RabbitTransactionManager is an alternative to executing Rabbit operations within, and synchronized with, external transactions. This transaction manager is an implementation of the PlatformTransactionManager interface and should be used with a single Rabbit ConnectionFactory.

This strategy is not able to provide XA transactions — for example, in order to share transactions between messaging and database access.

Application code is required to retrieve the transactional Rabbit resources through ConnectionFactoryUtils.getTransactionalResourceHolder(ConnectionFactory, boolean) instead of a standard Connection.createChannel() call with subsequent channel creation. When using Spring AMQP’s RabbitTemplate, it will autodetect a thread-bound Channel and automatically participate in its transaction.

With Java Configuration, you can setup a new RabbitTransactionManager by using the following bean:

@Bean
public RabbitTransactionManager rabbitTransactionManager() {
    return new RabbitTransactionManager(connectionFactory);
}

If you prefer XML configuration, you can declare the following bean in your XML Application Context file:

<bean id="rabbitTxManager"
      class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.transaction.RabbitTransactionManager">
    <property name="connectionFactory" ref="connectionFactory"/>
</bean>

Transaction Synchronization

Synchronizing a RabbitMQ transaction with some other (e.g. DBMS) transaction provides "Best Effort One Phase Commit" semantics. It is possible that the RabbitMQ transaction fails to commit during the after completion phase of transaction synchronization. This is logged by the spring-tx infrastructure as an error, but no exception is thrown to the calling code. Starting with version 2.3.10, you can call ConnectionUtils.checkAfterCompletion() after the transaction has committed on the same thread that processed the transaction. It will simply return if no exception occurred; otherwise it will throw an AfterCompletionFailedException which will have a property representing the synchronization status of the completion.

Enable this feature by calling ConnectionFactoryUtils.enableAfterCompletionFailureCapture(true); this is a global flag and applies to all threads.

4.1.17. Message Listener Container Configuration

There are quite a few options for configuring a SimpleMessageListenerContainer (SMLC) and a DirectMessageListenerContainer (DMLC) related to transactions and quality of service, and some of them interact with each other. Properties that apply to the SMLC, DMLC, or StreamListenerContainer (StLC) (see Using the RabbitMQ Stream Plugin are indicated by the check mark in the appropriate column. See Choosing a Container for information to help you decide which container is appropriate for your application.

The following table shows the container property names and their equivalent attribute names (in parentheses) when using the namespace to configure a <rabbit:listener-container/>. The type attribute on that element can be simple (default) or direct to specify an SMLC or DMLC respectively. Some properties are not exposed by the namespace. These are indicated by N/A for the attribute.

Property (Attribute) Description SMLC DMLC StLC

ackTimeout
(N/A)

When messagesPerAck is set, this timeout is used as an alternative to send an ack. When a new message arrives, the count of unacked messages is compared to messagesPerAck, and the time since the last ack is compared to this value. If either condition is true, the message is acknowledged. When no new messages arrive and there are unacked messages, this timeout is approximate since the condition is only checked each monitorInterval. See also messagesPerAck and monitorInterval in this table.

acknowledgeMode
(acknowledge)

NONE: No acks are sent (incompatible with channelTransacted=true). RabbitMQ calls this “autoack”, because the broker assumes all messages are acked without any action from the consumer.
MANUAL: The listener must acknowledge all messages by calling Channel.basicAck().
AUTO: The container acknowledges the message automatically, unless the MessageListener throws an exception. Note that acknowledgeMode is complementary to channelTransacted — if the channel is transacted, the broker requires a commit notification in addition to the ack. This is the default mode. See also batchSize.

adviceChain
(advice-chain)

An array of AOP Advice to apply to the listener execution. This can be used to apply additional cross-cutting concerns, such as automatic retry in the event of broker death. Note that simple re-connection after an AMQP error is handled by the CachingConnectionFactory, as long as the broker is still alive.

afterReceivePostProcessors
(N/A)

An array of MessagePostProcessor instances that are invoked before invoking the listener. Post processors can implement PriorityOrdered or Ordered. The array is sorted with un-ordered members invoked last. If a post processor returns null, the message is discarded (and acknowledged, if appropriate).

alwaysRequeueWithTxManagerRollback
(N/A)

Set to true to always requeue messages on rollback when a transaction manager is configured.

autoDeclare
(auto-declare)

When set to true (default), the container uses a RabbitAdmin to redeclare all AMQP objects (queues, exchanges, bindings), if it detects that at least one of its queues is missing during startup, perhaps because it is an auto-delete or an expired queue, but the redeclaration proceeds if the queue is missing for any reason. To disable this behavior, set this property to false. Note that the container fails to start if all of its queues are missing.

Prior to version 1.6, if there was more than one admin in the context, the container would randomly select one. If there were no admins, it would create one internally. In either case, this could cause unexpected results. Starting with version 1.6, for autoDeclare to work, there must be exactly one RabbitAdmin in the context, or a reference to a specific instance must be configured on the container using the rabbitAdmin property.

autoStartup
(auto-startup)

Flag to indicate that the container should start when the ApplicationContext does (as part of the SmartLifecycle callbacks, which happen after all beans are initialized). Defaults to true, but you can set it to false if your broker might not be available on startup and call start() later manually when you know the broker is ready.

batchSize
(transaction-size) (batch-size)

When used with acknowledgeMode set to AUTO, the container tries to process up to this number of messages before sending an ack (waiting for each one up to the receive timeout setting). This is also when a transactional channel is committed. If the prefetchCount is less than the batchSize, it is increased to match the batchSize.

batchingStrategy
(N/A)

The strategy used when debatchng messages. Default SimpleDebatchingStrategy. See Batching and @RabbitListener with Batching.

channelTransacted
(channel-transacted)

Boolean flag to signal that all messages should be acknowledged in a transaction (either manually or automatically).

concurrency
(N/A)

m-n The range of concurrent consumers for each listener (min, max). If only n is provided, n is a fixed number of consumers. See Listener Concurrency.

concurrentConsumers
(concurrency)

The number of concurrent consumers to initially start for each listener. See Listener Concurrency.

connectionFactory
(connection-factory)

A reference to the ConnectionFactory. When configuring byusing the XML namespace, the default referenced bean name is rabbitConnectionFactory.

consecutiveActiveTrigger
(min-consecutive-active)

The minimum number of consecutive messages received by a consumer, without a receive timeout occurring, when considering starting a new consumer. Also impacted by 'batchSize'. See Listener Concurrency. Default: 10.

consecutiveIdleTrigger
(min-consecutive-idle)

The minimum number of receive timeouts a consumer must experience before considering stopping a consumer. Also impacted by 'batchSize'. See Listener Concurrency. Default: 10.

consumerBatchEnabled
(batch-enabled)

If the MessageListener supports it, setting this to true enables batching of discrete messages, up to batchSize; a partial batch will be delivered if no new messages arrive in receiveTimeout. When this is false, batching is only supported for batches created by a producer; see Batching.

consumerCustomizer
(N/A)

A ConsumerCustomizer bean used to modify stream consumers created by the container.

consumerStartTimeout
(N/A)

The time in milliseconds to wait for a consumer thread to start. If this time elapses, an error log is written. An example of when this might happen is if a configured taskExecutor has insufficient threads to support the container concurrentConsumers.

See Threading and Asynchronous Consumers. Default: 60000 (one minute).

consumerTagStrategy
(consumer-tag-strategy)

Set an implementation of ConsumerTagStrategy, enabling the creation of a (unique) tag for each consumer.

consumersPerQueue
(consumers-per-queue)

The number of consumers to create for each configured queue. See Listener Concurrency.

consumeDelay
(N/A)

When using the RabbitMQ Sharding Plugin with concurrentConsumers > 1, there is a race condition that can prevent even distribution of the consumers across the shards. Use this property to add a small delay between consumer starts to avoid this race condition. You should experiment with values to determine the suitable delay for your environment.

debatchingEnabled
(N/A)

When true, the listener container will debatch batched messages and invoke the listener with each message from the batch. Starting with version 2.2.7, producer created batches will be debatched as a List<Message> if the listener is a BatchMessageListener or ChannelAwareBatchMessageListener. Otherwise messages from the batch are presented one-at-a-time. Default true. See Batching and @RabbitListener with Batching.

declarationRetries
(declaration-retries)

The number of retry attempts when passive queue declaration fails. Passive queue declaration occurs when the consumer starts or, when consuming from multiple queues, when not all queues were available during initialization. When none of the configured queues can be passively declared (for any reason) after the retries are exhausted, the container behavior is controlled by the 'missingQueuesFatal` property, described earlier. Default: Three retries (for a total of four attempts).

defaultRequeueRejected
(requeue-rejected)

Determines whether messages that are rejected because the listener threw an exception should be requeued or not. Default: true.

errorHandler
(error-handler)

A reference to an ErrorHandler strategy for handling any uncaught exceptions that may occur during the execution of the MessageListener. Default: ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler

exclusive
(exclusive)

Determines whether the single consumer in this container has exclusive access to the queues. The concurrency of the container must be 1 when this is true. If another consumer has exclusive access, the container tries to recover the consumer, according to the recovery-interval or recovery-back-off. When using the namespace, this attribute appears on the <rabbit:listener/> element along with the queue names. Default: false.

exclusiveConsumerExceptionLogger
(N/A)

An exception logger used when an exclusive consumer cannot gain access to a queue. By default, this is logged at the WARN level.

failedDeclarationRetryInterval
(failed-declaration -retry-interval)

The interval between passive queue declaration retry attempts. Passive queue declaration occurs when the consumer starts or, when consuming from multiple queues, when not all queues were available during initialization. Default: 5000 (five seconds).

forceCloseChannel
(N/A)

If the consumers do not respond to a shutdown within shutdownTimeout, if this is true, the channel will be closed, causing any unacked messages to be requeued. Defaults to true since 2.0. You can set it to false to revert to the previous behavior.

forceStop
(N/A)

Set to true to stop (when the container is stopped) after the current record is processed; causing all prefetched messages to be requeued. By default, the container will cancel the consumer and process all prefetched messages before stopping. Since versions 2.4.14, 3.0.6 Defaults to false.

globalQos
(global-qos)

When true, the prefetchCount is applied globally to the channel rather than to each consumer on the channel. See basicQos.global for more information.

(group)

This is available only when using the namespace. When specified, a bean of type Collection<MessageListenerContainer> is registered with this name, and the container for each <listener/> element is added to the collection. This allows, for example, starting and stopping the group of containers by iterating over the collection. If multiple <listener-container/> elements have the same group value, the containers in the collection form an aggregate of all containers so designated.

idleEventInterval
(idle-event-interval)

See Detecting Idle Asynchronous Consumers.

javaLangErrorHandler
(N/A)

An AbstractMessageListenerContainer.JavaLangErrorHandler implementation that is called when a container thread catches an Error. The default implementation calls System.exit(99); to revert to the previous behavior (do nothing), add a no-op handler.

maxConcurrentConsumers
(max-concurrency)

The maximum number of concurrent consumers to start, if needed, on demand. Must be greater than or equal to 'concurrentConsumers'. See Listener Concurrency.

messagesPerAck
(N/A)

The number of messages to receive between acks. Use this to reduce the number of acks sent to the broker (at the cost of increasing the possibility of redelivered messages). Generally, you should set this property only on high-volume listener containers. If this is set and a message is rejected (exception thrown), pending acks are acknowledged and the failed message is rejected. Not allowed with transacted channels. If the prefetchCount is less than the messagesPerAck, it is increased to match the messagesPerAck. Default: ack every message. See also ackTimeout in this table.

mismatchedQueuesFatal
(mismatched-queues-fatal)

When the container starts, if this property is true (default: false), the container checks that all queues declared in the context are compatible with queues already on the broker. If mismatched properties (such as auto-delete) or arguments (skuch as x-message-ttl) exist, the container (and application context) fails to start with a fatal exception.

If the problem is detected during recovery (for example, after a lost connection), the container is stopped.

There must be a single RabbitAdmin in the application context (or one specifically configured on the container by using the rabbitAdmin property). Otherwise, this property must be false.

If the broker is not available during initial startup, the container starts and the conditions are checked when the connection is established.

The check is done against all queues in the context, not just the queues that a particular listener is configured to use. If you wish to limit the checks to just those queues used by a container, you should configure a separate RabbitAdmin for the container, and provide a reference to it using the rabbitAdmin property. See Conditional Declaration for more information.

Mismatched queue argument detection is disabled while starting a container for a @RabbitListener in a bean that is marked @Lazy. This is to avoid a potential deadlock which can delay the start of such containers for up to 60 seconds. Applications using lazy listener beans should check the queue arguments before getting a reference to the lazy bean.

missingQueuesFatal
(missing-queues-fatal)

When set to true (default), if none of the configured queues are available on the broker, it is considered fatal. This causes the application context to fail to initialize during startup. Also, when the queues are deleted while the container is running, by default, the consumers make three retries to connect to the queues (at five second intervals) and stop the container if these attempts fail.

This was not configurable in previous versions.

When set to false, after making the three retries, the container goes into recovery mode, as with other problems, such as the broker being down. The container tries to recover according to the recoveryInterval property. During each recovery attempt, each consumer again tries four times to passively declare the queues at five second intervals. This process continues indefinitely.

You can also use a properties bean to set the property globally for all containers, as follows:

<util:properties
        id="spring.amqp.global.properties">
    <prop key="mlc.missing.queues.fatal">
        false
    </prop>
</util:properties>

This global property is not applied to any containers that have an explicit missingQueuesFatal property set.

The default retry properties (three retries at five-second intervals) can be overridden by setting the properties below.

Missing queue detection is disabled while starting a container for a @RabbitListener in a bean that is marked @Lazy. This is to avoid a potential deadlock which can delay the start of such containers for up to 60 seconds. Applications using lazy listener beans should check the queue(s) before getting a reference to the lazy bean.

monitorInterval
(monitor-interval)

With the DMLC, a task is scheduled to run at this interval to monitor the state of the consumers and recover any that have failed.

noLocal
(N/A)

Set to true to disable delivery from the server to consumers messages published on the same channel’s connection.

phase
(phase)

When autoStartup is true, the lifecycle phase within which this container should start and stop. The lower the value, the earlier this container starts and the later it stops. The default is Integer.MAX_VALUE, meaning the container starts as late as possible and stops as soon as possible.

possibleAuthenticationFailureFatal
(possible-authentication-failure-fatal)

When set to true (default for SMLC), if a PossibleAuthenticationFailureException is thrown during connection, it is considered fatal. This causes the application context to fail to initialize during startup (if the container is configured with auto startup).

Since version 2.0.

DirectMessageListenerContainer

When set to false (default), each consumer will attempt to reconnect according to the monitorInterval.

SimpleMessageListenerContainer

When set to false, after making the 3 retries, the container will go into recovery mode, as with other problems, such as the broker being down. The container will attempt to recover according to the recoveryInterval property. During each recovery attempt, each consumer will again try 4 times to start. This process will continue indefinitely.

You can also use a properties bean to set the property globally for all containers, as follows:

<util:properties
    id="spring.amqp.global.properties">
  <prop
    key="mlc.possible.authentication.failure.fatal">
     false
  </prop>
</util:properties>

This global property will not be applied to any containers that have an explicit missingQueuesFatal property set.

The default retry properties (3 retries at 5 second intervals) can be overridden using the properties after this one.

prefetchCount
(prefetch)

The number of unacknowledged messages that can be outstanding at each consumer. The higher this value is, the faster the messages can be delivered, but the higher the risk of non-sequential processing. Ignored if the acknowledgeMode is NONE. This is increased, if necessary, to match the batchSize or messagePerAck. Defaults to 250 since 2.0. You can set it to 1 to revert to the previous behavior.

There are scenarios where the prefetch value should be low — for example, with large messages, especially if the processing is slow (messages could add up to a large amount of memory in the client process), and if strict message ordering is necessary (the prefetch value should be set back to 1 in this case). Also, with low-volume messaging and multiple consumers (including concurrency within a single listener container instance), you may wish to reduce the prefetch to get a more even distribution of messages across consumers.

Also see globalQos.

rabbitAdmin
(admin)

When a listener container listens to at least one auto-delete queue and it is found to be missing during startup, the container uses a RabbitAdmin to declare the queue and any related bindings and exchanges. If such elements are configured to use conditional declaration (see Conditional Declaration), the container must use the admin that was configured to declare those elements. Specify that admin here. It is required only when using auto-delete queues with conditional declaration. If you do not wish the auto-delete queues to be declared until the container is started, set auto-startup to false on the admin. Defaults to a RabbitAdmin that declares all non-conditional elements.

receiveTimeout
(receive-timeout)

The maximum time to wait for each message. If acknowledgeMode=NONE, this has very little effect — the container spins round and asks for another message. It has the biggest effect for a transactional Channel with batchSize > 1, since it can cause messages already consumed not to be acknowledged until the timeout expires. When consumerBatchEnabled is true, a partial batch will be delivered if this timeout occurs before a batch is complete.

recoveryBackOff
(recovery-back-off)

Specifies the BackOff for intervals between attempts to start a consumer if it fails to start for non-fatal reasons. Default is FixedBackOff with unlimited retries every five seconds. Mutually exclusive with recoveryInterval.

recoveryInterval
(recovery-interval)

Determines the time in milliseconds between attempts to start a consumer if it fails to start for non-fatal reasons. Default: 5000. Mutually exclusive with recoveryBackOff.

retryDeclarationInterval
(missing-queue- retry-interval)

If a subset of the configured queues are available during consumer initialization, the consumer starts consuming from those queues. The consumer tries to passively declare the missing queues by using this interval. When this interval elapses, the 'declarationRetries' and 'failedDeclarationRetryInterval' is used again. If there are still missing queues, the consumer again waits for this interval before trying again. This process continues indefinitely until all queues are available. Default: 60000 (one minute).

shutdownTimeout
(N/A)

When a container shuts down (for example, if its enclosing ApplicationContext is closed), it waits for in-flight messages to be processed up to this limit. Defaults to five seconds.

startConsumerMinInterval
(min-start-interval)

The time in milliseconds that must elapse before each new consumer is started on demand. See Listener Concurrency. Default: 10000 (10 seconds).

statefulRetryFatal
WithNullMessageId (N/A)

When using a stateful retry advice, if a message with a missing messageId property is received, it is considered fatal for the consumer (it is stopped) by default. Set this to false to discard (or route to a dead-letter queue) such messages.

stopConsumerMinInterval
(min-stop-interval)

The time in milliseconds that must elapse before a consumer is stopped since the last consumer was stopped when an idle consumer is detected. See Listener Concurrency. Default: 60000 (one minute).

streamConverter
(N/A)

A StreamMessageConverter to convert a native Stream message to a Spring AMQP message.

taskExecutor
(task-executor)

A reference to a Spring TaskExecutor (or standard JDK 1.5+ Executor) for executing listener invokers. Default is a SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor, using internally managed threads.

taskScheduler
(task-scheduler)

With the DMLC, the scheduler used to run the monitor task at the 'monitorInterval'.

transactionManager
(transaction-manager)

External transaction manager for the operation of the listener. Also complementary to channelTransacted — if the Channel is transacted, its transaction is synchronized with the external transaction.

4.1.18. Listener Concurrency

SimpleMessageListenerContainer

By default, the listener container starts a single consumer that receives messages from the queues.

When examining the table in the previous section, you can see a number of properties and attributes that control concurrency. The simplest is concurrentConsumers, which creates that (fixed) number of consumers that concurrently process messages.

Prior to version 1.3.0, this was the only setting available and the container had to be stopped and started again to change the setting.

Since version 1.3.0, you can now dynamically adjust the concurrentConsumers property. If it is changed while the container is running, consumers are added or removed as necessary to adjust to the new setting.

In addition, a new property called maxConcurrentConsumers has been added and the container dynamically adjusts the concurrency based on workload. This works in conjunction with four additional properties: consecutiveActiveTrigger, startConsumerMinInterval, consecutiveIdleTrigger, and stopConsumerMinInterval. With the default settings, the algorithm to increase consumers works as follows:

If the maxConcurrentConsumers has not been reached and an existing consumer is active for ten consecutive cycles AND at least 10 seconds has elapsed since the last consumer was started, a new consumer is started. A consumer is considered active if it received at least one message in batchSize * receiveTimeout milliseconds.

With the default settings, the algorithm to decrease consumers works as follows:

If there are more than concurrentConsumers running and a consumer detects ten consecutive timeouts (idle) AND the last consumer was stopped at least 60 seconds ago, a consumer is stopped. The timeout depends on the receiveTimeout and the batchSize properties. A consumer is considered idle if it receives no messages in batchSize * receiveTimeout milliseconds. So, with the default timeout (one second) and a batchSize of four, stopping a consumer is considered after 40 seconds of idle time (four timeouts correspond to one idle detection).

Practically, consumers can be stopped only if the whole container is idle for some time. This is because the broker shares its work across all the active consumers.

Each consumer uses a single channel, regardless of the number of configured queues.

Starting with version 2.0, the concurrentConsumers and maxConcurrentConsumers properties can be set with the concurrency property — for example, 2-4.

Using `DirectMessageListenerContainer`

With this container, concurrency is based on the configured queues and consumersPerQueue. Each consumer for each queue uses a separate channel, and the concurrency is controlled by the rabbit client library. By default, at the time of writing, it uses a pool of DEFAULT_NUM_THREADS = Runtime.getRuntime().availableProcessors() * 2 threads.

You can configure a taskExecutor to provide the required maximum concurrency.

4.1.19. Exclusive Consumer

Starting with version 1.3, you can configure the listener container with a single exclusive consumer. This prevents other containers from consuming from the queues until the current consumer is cancelled. The concurrency of such a container must be 1.

When using exclusive consumers, other containers try to consume from the queues according to the recoveryInterval property and log a WARN message if the attempt fails.

4.1.20. Listener Container Queues

Version 1.3 introduced a number of improvements for handling multiple queues in a listener container.

Container can be initially configured to listen on zero queues. Queues can be added and removed at runtime. The SimpleMessageListenerContainer recycles (cancels and re-creates) all consumers when any pre-fetched messages have been processed. The DirectMessageListenerContainer creates/cancels individual consumer(s) for each queue without affecting consumers on other queues. See the Javadoc for the addQueues, addQueueNames, removeQueues and removeQueueNames methods.

If not all queues are available, the container tries to passively declare (and consume from) the missing queues every 60 seconds.

Also, if a consumer receives a cancel from the broker (for example, if a queue is deleted) the consumer tries to recover, and the recovered consumer continues to process messages from any other configured queues. Previously, a cancel on one queue cancelled the entire consumer and, eventually, the container would stop due to the missing queue.

If you wish to permanently remove a queue, you should update the container before or after deleting to queue, to avoid future attempts trying to consume from it.

4.1.21. Resilience: Recovering from Errors and Broker Failures

Some of the key (and most popular) high-level features that Spring AMQP provides are to do with recovery and automatic re-connection in the event of a protocol error or broker failure. We have seen all the relevant components already in this guide, but it should help to bring them all together here and call out the features and recovery scenarios individually.

The primary reconnection features are enabled by the CachingConnectionFactory itself. It is also often beneficial to use the RabbitAdmin auto-declaration features. In addition, if you care about guaranteed delivery, you probably also need to use the channelTransacted flag in RabbitTemplate and SimpleMessageListenerContainer and the AcknowledgeMode.AUTO (or manual if you do the acks yourself) in the SimpleMessageListenerContainer.

Automatic Declaration of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings

The RabbitAdmin component can declare exchanges, queues, and bindings on startup. It does this lazily, through a ConnectionListener. Consequently, if the broker is not present on startup, it does not matter. The first time a Connection is used (for example, by sending a message) the listener fires and the admin features is applied. A further benefit of doing the auto declarations in a listener is that, if the connection is dropped for any reason (for example, broker death, network glitch, and others), they are applied again when the connection is re-established.

Queues declared this way must have fixed names — either explicitly declared or generated by the framework for AnonymousQueue instances. Anonymous queues are non-durable, exclusive, and auto-deleting.

Automatic declaration is performed only when the CachingConnectionFactory cache mode is CHANNEL (the default). This limitation exists because exclusive and auto-delete queues are bound to the connection.

Starting with version 2.2.2, the RabbitAdmin will detect beans of type DeclarableCustomizer and apply the function before actually processing the declaration. This is useful, for example, to set a new argument (property) before it has first class support within the framework.

@Bean
public DeclarableCustomizer customizer() {
    return dec -> {
        if (dec instanceof Queue && ((Queue) dec).getName().equals("my.queue")) {
            dec.addArgument("some.new.queue.argument", true);
        }
        return dec;
    };
}

It is also useful in projects that don’t provide direct access to the Declarable bean definitions.

Failures in Synchronous Operations and Options for Retry

If you lose your connection to the broker in a synchronous sequence when using RabbitTemplate (for instance), Spring AMQP throws an AmqpException (usually, but not always, AmqpIOException). We do not try to hide the fact that there was a problem, so you have to be able to catch and respond to the exception. The easiest thing to do if you suspect that the connection was lost (and it was not your fault) is to try the operation again. You can do this manually, or you could look at using Spring Retry to handle the retry (imperatively or declaratively).

Spring Retry provides a couple of AOP interceptors and a great deal of flexibility to specify the parameters of the retry (number of attempts, exception types, backoff algorithm, and others). Spring AMQP also provides some convenience factory beans for creating Spring Retry interceptors in a convenient form for AMQP use cases, with strongly typed callback interfaces that you can use to implement custom recovery logic. See the Javadoc and properties of StatefulRetryOperationsInterceptor and StatelessRetryOperationsInterceptor for more detail. Stateless retry is appropriate if there is no transaction or if a transaction is started inside the retry callback. Note that stateless retry is simpler to configure and analyze than stateful retry, but it is not usually appropriate if there is an ongoing transaction that must be rolled back or definitely is going to roll back. A dropped connection in the middle of a transaction should have the same effect as a rollback. Consequently, for reconnections where the transaction is started higher up the stack, stateful retry is usually the best choice. Stateful retry needs a mechanism to uniquely identify a message. The simplest approach is to have the sender put a unique value in the MessageId message property. The provided message converters provide an option to do this: you can set createMessageIds to true. Otherwise, you can inject a MessageKeyGenerator implementation into the interceptor. The key generator must return a unique key for each message. In versions prior to version 2.0, a MissingMessageIdAdvice was provided. It enabled messages without a messageId property to be retried exactly once (ignoring the retry settings). This advice is no longer provided, since, along with spring-retry version 1.2, its functionality is built into the interceptor and message listener containers.

For backwards compatibility, a message with a null message ID is considered fatal for the consumer (consumer is stopped) by default (after one retry). To replicate the functionality provided by the MissingMessageIdAdvice, you can set the statefulRetryFatalWithNullMessageId property to false on the listener container. With that setting, the consumer continues to run and the message is rejected (after one retry). It is discarded or routed to the dead letter queue (if one is configured).

Starting with version 1.3, a builder API is provided to aid in assembling these interceptors by using Java (in @Configuration classes). The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public StatefulRetryOperationsInterceptor interceptor() {
    return RetryInterceptorBuilder.stateful()
            .maxAttempts(5)
            .backOffOptions(1000, 2.0, 10000) // initialInterval, multiplier, maxInterval
            .build();
}

Only a subset of retry capabilities can be configured this way. More advanced features would need the configuration of a RetryTemplate as a Spring bean. See the Spring Retry Javadoc for complete information about available policies and their configuration.

Retry with Batch Listeners

It is not recommended to configure retry with a batch listener, unless the batch was created by the producer, in a single record. See Batched Messages for information about consumer and producer-created batches. With a consumer-created batch, the framework has no knowledge about which message in the batch caused the failure so recovery after the retries are exhausted is not possible. With producer-created batches, since there is only one message that actually failed, the whole message can be recovered. Applications may want to inform a custom recoverer where in the batch the failure occurred, perhaps by setting an index property of the thrown exception.

A retry recoverer for a batch listener must implement MessageBatchRecoverer.

Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case

If a MessageListener fails because of a business exception, the exception is handled by the message listener container, which then goes back to listening for another message. If the failure is caused by a dropped connection (not a business exception), the consumer that is collecting messages for the listener has to be cancelled and restarted. The SimpleMessageListenerContainer handles this seamlessly, and it leaves a log to say that the listener is being restarted. In fact, it loops endlessly, trying to restart the consumer. Only if the consumer is very badly behaved indeed will it give up. One side effect is that if the broker is down when the container starts, it keeps trying until a connection can be established.

Business exception handling, as opposed to protocol errors and dropped connections, might need more thought and some custom configuration, especially if transactions or container acks are in use. Prior to 2.8.x, RabbitMQ had no definition of dead letter behavior. Consequently, by default, a message that is rejected or rolled back because of a business exception can be redelivered endlessly. To put a limit on the client on the number of re-deliveries, one choice is a StatefulRetryOperationsInterceptor in the advice chain of the listener. The interceptor can have a recovery callback that implements a custom dead letter action — whatever is appropriate for your particular environment.

Another alternative is to set the container’s defaultRequeueRejected property to false. This causes all failed messages to be discarded. When using RabbitMQ 2.8.x or higher, this also facilitates delivering the message to a dead letter exchange.

Alternatively, you can throw a AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException. Doing so prevents message requeuing, regardless of the setting of the defaultRequeueRejected property.

Starting with version 2.1, an ImmediateRequeueAmqpException is introduced to perform exactly the opposite logic: the message will be requeued, regardless of the setting of the defaultRequeueRejected property.

Often, a combination of both techniques is used. You can use a StatefulRetryOperationsInterceptor in the advice chain with a MessageRecoverer that throws an AmqpRejectAndDontRequeueException. The MessageRecover is called when all retries have been exhausted. The RejectAndDontRequeueRecoverer does exactly that. The default MessageRecoverer consumes the errant message and emits a WARN message.

Starting with version 1.3, a new RepublishMessageRecoverer is provided, to allow publishing of failed messages after retries are exhausted.

When a recoverer consumes the final exception, the message is ack’d and is not sent to the dead letter exchange by the broker, if configured.

When RepublishMessageRecoverer is used on the consumer side, the received message has deliveryMode in the receivedDeliveryMode message property. In this case the deliveryMode is null. That means a NON_PERSISTENT delivery mode on the broker. Starting with version 2.0, you can configure the RepublishMessageRecoverer for the deliveryMode to set into the message to republish if it is null. By default, it uses MessageProperties default value - MessageDeliveryMode.PERSISTENT.

The following example shows how to set a RepublishMessageRecoverer as the recoverer:

@Bean
RetryOperationsInterceptor interceptor() {
    return RetryInterceptorBuilder.stateless()
            .maxAttempts(5)
            .recoverer(new RepublishMessageRecoverer(amqpTemplate(), "something", "somethingelse"))
            .build();
}

The RepublishMessageRecoverer publishes the message with additional information in message headers, such as the exception message, stack trace, original exchange, and routing key. Additional headers can be added by creating a subclass and overriding additionalHeaders(). The deliveryMode (or any other properties) can also be changed in the additionalHeaders(), as the following example shows:

RepublishMessageRecoverer recoverer = new RepublishMessageRecoverer(amqpTemplate, "error") {

    protected Map<? extends String, ? extends Object> additionalHeaders(Message message, Throwable cause) {
        message.getMessageProperties()
            .setDeliveryMode(message.getMessageProperties().getReceivedDeliveryMode());
        return null;
    }

};

Starting with version 2.0.5, the stack trace may be truncated if it is too large; this is because all headers have to fit in a single frame. By default, if the stack trace would cause less than 20,000 bytes ('headroom') to be available for other headers, it will be truncated. This can be adjusted by setting the recoverer’s frameMaxHeadroom property, if you need more or less space for other headers. Starting with versions 2.1.13, 2.2.3, the exception message is included in this calculation, and the amount of stack trace will be maximized using the following algorithm:

if the stack trace alone would exceed the limit, the exception message header will be truncated to 97 bytes plus … and the stack trace is truncated too.
if the stack trace is small, the message will be truncated (plus …) to fit in the available bytes (but the message within the stack trace itself is truncated to 97 bytes plus …).

Whenever a truncation of any kind occurs, the original exception will be logged to retain the complete information. The evaluation is performed after the headers are enhanced so information such as the exception type can be used in the expressions.

Starting with version 2.4.8, the error exchange and routing key can be provided as SpEL expressions, with the Message being the root object for the evaluation.

Starting with version 2.3.3, a new subclass RepublishMessageRecovererWithConfirms is provided; this supports both styles of publisher confirms and will wait for the confirmation before returning (or throw an exception if not confirmed or the message is returned).

If the confirm type is CORRELATED, the subclass will also detect if a message is returned and throw an AmqpMessageReturnedException; if the publication is negatively acknowledged, it will throw an AmqpNackReceivedException.

If the confirm type is SIMPLE, the subclass will invoke the waitForConfirmsOrDie method on the channel.

See Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information about confirms and returns.

Starting with version 2.1, an ImmediateRequeueMessageRecoverer is added to throw an ImmediateRequeueAmqpException, which notifies a listener container to requeue the current failed message.

Exception Classification for Spring Retry

Spring Retry has a great deal of flexibility for determining which exceptions can invoke retry. The default configuration retries for all exceptions. Given that user exceptions are wrapped in a ListenerExecutionFailedException, we need to ensure that the classification examines the exception causes. The default classifier looks only at the top level exception.

Since Spring Retry 1.0.3, the BinaryExceptionClassifier has a property called traverseCauses (default: false). When true, it travers exception causes until it finds a match or there is no cause.

To use this classifier for retry, you can use a SimpleRetryPolicy created with the constructor that takes the max attempts, the Map of Exception instances, and the boolean (traverseCauses) and inject this policy into the RetryTemplate.

4.1.22. Multiple Broker (or Cluster) Support

Version 2.3 added more convenience when communicating between a single application and multiple brokers or broker clusters. The main benefit, on the consumer side, is that the infrastructure can automatically associate auto-declared queues with the appropriate broker.

This is best illustrated with an example:

@SpringBootApplication(exclude = RabbitAutoConfiguration.class)
public class Application {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        SpringApplication.run(Application.class, args);
    }

    @Bean
    CachingConnectionFactory cf1() {
        return new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
    }

    @Bean
    CachingConnectionFactory cf2() {
        return new CachingConnectionFactory("otherHost");
    }

    @Bean
    CachingConnectionFactory cf3() {
        return new CachingConnectionFactory("thirdHost");
    }

    @Bean
    SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory rcf(CachingConnectionFactory cf1,
            CachingConnectionFactory cf2, CachingConnectionFactory cf3) {

        SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory rcf = new SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory();
        rcf.setDefaultTargetConnectionFactory(cf1);
        rcf.setTargetConnectionFactories(Map.of("one", cf1, "two", cf2, "three", cf3));
        return rcf;
    }

    @Bean("factory1-admin")
    RabbitAdmin admin1(CachingConnectionFactory cf1) {
        return new RabbitAdmin(cf1);
    }

    @Bean("factory2-admin")
    RabbitAdmin admin2(CachingConnectionFactory cf2) {
        return new RabbitAdmin(cf2);
    }

    @Bean("factory3-admin")
    RabbitAdmin admin3(CachingConnectionFactory cf3) {
        return new RabbitAdmin(cf3);
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry rabbitListenerEndpointRegistry() {
        return new RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry();
    }

    @Bean
    public RabbitListenerAnnotationBeanPostProcessor postProcessor(RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry registry) {
        MultiRabbitListenerAnnotationBeanPostProcessor postProcessor
                = new MultiRabbitListenerAnnotationBeanPostProcessor();
        postProcessor.setEndpointRegistry(registry);
        postProcessor.setContainerFactoryBeanName("defaultContainerFactory");
        return postProcessor;
    }

    @Bean
    public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory1(CachingConnectionFactory cf1) {
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(cf1);
        return factory;
    }

    @Bean
    public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory2(CachingConnectionFactory cf2) {
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(cf2);
        return factory;
    }

    @Bean
    public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory3(CachingConnectionFactory cf3) {
        SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
        factory.setConnectionFactory(cf3);
        return factory;
    }

    @Bean
    RabbitTemplate template(SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory rcf) {
        return new RabbitTemplate(rcf);
    }

    @Bean
    ConnectionFactoryContextWrapper wrapper(SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory rcf) {
        return new ConnectionFactoryContextWrapper(rcf);
    }

}

@Component
class Listeners {

    @RabbitListener(queuesToDeclare = @Queue("q1"), containerFactory = "factory1")
    public void listen1(String in) {

    }

    @RabbitListener(queuesToDeclare = @Queue("q2"), containerFactory = "factory2")
    public void listen2(String in) {

    }

    @RabbitListener(queuesToDeclare = @Queue("q3"), containerFactory = "factory3")
    public void listen3(String in) {

    }

}

As you can see, we have declared 3 sets of infrastructure (connection factories, admins, container factories). As discussed earlier, @RabbitListener can define which container factory to use; in this case, they also use queuesToDeclare which causes the queue(s) to be declared on the broker, if it doesn’t exist. By naming the RabbitAdmin beans with the convention <container-factory-name>-admin, the infrastructure is able to determine which admin should declare the queue. This will also work with bindings = @QueueBinding(…) whereby the exchange and binding will also be declared. It will NOT work with queues, since that expects the queue(s) to already exist.

On the producer side, a convenient ConnectionFactoryContextWrapper class is provided, to make using the RoutingConnectionFactory (see Routing Connection Factory) simpler.

As you can see above, a SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory bean has been added with routing keys one, two and three. There is also a RabbitTemplate that uses that factory. Here is an example of using that template with the wrapper to route to one of the broker clusters.

@Bean
public ApplicationRunner runner(RabbitTemplate template, ConnectionFactoryContextWrapper wrapper) {
    return args -> {
        wrapper.run("one", () -> template.convertAndSend("q1", "toCluster1"));
        wrapper.run("two", () -> template.convertAndSend("q2", "toCluster2"));
        wrapper.run("three", () -> template.convertAndSend("q3", "toCluster3"));
    };
}

4.1.23. Debugging

Spring AMQP provides extensive logging, especially at the DEBUG level.

If you wish to monitor the AMQP protocol between the application and broker, you can use a tool such as WireShark, which has a plugin to decode the protocol. Alternatively, the RabbitMQ Java client comes with a very useful class called Tracer. When run as a main, by default, it listens on port 5673 and connects to port 5672 on localhost. You can run it and change your connection factory configuration to connect to port 5673 on localhost. It displays the decoded protocol on the console. Refer to the Tracer Javadoc for more information.

4.2. Using the RabbitMQ Stream Plugin

Version 2.4 introduces initial support for the RabbitMQ Stream Plugin Java Client for the RabbitMQ Stream Plugin.

RabbitStreamTemplate
StreamListenerContainer

Add the spring-rabbit-stream dependency to your project:

Example 3. maven

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.springframework.amqp</groupId>
  <artifactId>spring-rabbit-stream</artifactId>
  <version>2.4.17</version>
</dependency>

Example 4. gradle

compile 'org.springframework.amqp:spring-rabbit-stream:2.4.17'

You can provision the queues as normal, using a RabbitAdmin bean, using the QueueBuilder.stream() method to designate the queue type. For example:

@Bean
Queue stream() {
    return QueueBuilder.durable("stream.queue1")
            .stream()
            .build();
}

However, this will only work if you are also using non-stream components (such as the SimpleMessageListenerContainer or DirectMessageListenerContainer) because the admin is triggered to declare the defined beans when an AMQP connection is opened. If your application only uses stream components, or you wish to use advanced stream configuration features, you should configure a StreamAdmin instead:

@Bean
StreamAdmin streamAdmin(Environment env) {
    return new StreamAdmin(env, sc -> {
        sc.stream("stream.queue1").maxAge(Duration.ofHours(2)).create();
        sc.stream("stream.queue2").create();
    });
}

Refer to the RabbitMQ documentation for more information about the StreamCreator.

4.2.1. Sending Messages

The RabbitStreamTemplate provides a subset of the RabbitTemplate (AMQP) functionality.

Example 5. RabbitStreamOperations

public interface RabbitStreamOperations extends AutoCloseable {

	ListenableFuture<Boolean> send(Message message);

	ListenableFuture<Boolean> convertAndSend(Object message);

	ListenableFuture<Boolean> convertAndSend(Object message, @Nullable MessagePostProcessor mpp);

	ListenableFuture<Boolean> send(com.rabbitmq.stream.Message message);

	MessageBuilder messageBuilder();

	MessageConverter messageConverter();

	StreamMessageConverter streamMessageConverter();

	@Override
	void close() throws AmqpException;

}

The RabbitStreamTemplate implementation has the following constructor and properties:

Example 6. RabbitStreamTemplate

public RabbitStreamTemplate(Environment environment, String streamName) {
}

public void setMessageConverter(MessageConverter messageConverter) {
}

public void setStreamConverter(StreamMessageConverter streamConverter) {
}

public synchronized void setProducerCustomizer(ProducerCustomizer producerCustomizer) {
}

The MessageConverter is used in the convertAndSend methods to convert the object to a Spring AMQP Message.

The StreamMessageConverter is used to convert from a Spring AMQP Message to a native stream Message.

You can also send native stream Message s directly; with the messageBuilder() method provding access to the Producer 's message builder.

The ProducerCustomizer provides a mechanism to customize the producer before it is built.

Refer to the Java Client Documentation about customizing the Environment and Producer.

In version 3.0, the method return types will be CompletableFuture instead of ListenableFuture.

4.2.2. Receiving Messages

Asynchronous message reception is provided by the StreamListenerContainer (and the StreamRabbitListenerContainerFactory when using @RabbitListener).

The listener container requires an Environment as well as a single stream name.

You can either receive Spring AMQP Message s using the classic MessageListener, or you can receive native stream Message s using a new interface:

public interface StreamMessageListener extends MessageListener {

	void onStreamMessage(Message message, Context context);

}

See Message Listener Container Configuration for information about supported properties.

Similar the template, the container has a ConsumerCustomizer property.

Refer to the Java Client Documentation about customizing the Environment and Consumer.

When using @RabbitListener, configure a StreamRabbitListenerContainerFactory; at this time, most @RabbitListener properties (concurrency, etc) are ignored. Only id, queues, autoStartup and containerFactory are supported. In addition, queues can only contain one stream name.

4.2.3. Examples

@Bean
RabbitStreamTemplate streamTemplate(Environment env) {
    RabbitStreamTemplate template = new RabbitStreamTemplate(env, "test.stream.queue1");
    template.setProducerCustomizer((name, builder) -> builder.name("test"));
    return template;
}

@Bean
RabbitListenerContainerFactory<StreamListenerContainer> rabbitListenerContainerFactory(Environment env) {
    return new StreamRabbitListenerContainerFactory(env);
}

@RabbitListener(queues = "test.stream.queue1")
void listen(String in) {
    ...
}

@Bean
RabbitListenerContainerFactory<StreamListenerContainer> nativeFactory(Environment env) {
    StreamRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new StreamRabbitListenerContainerFactory(env);
    factory.setNativeListener(true);
    factory.setConsumerCustomizer((id, builder) -> {
        builder.name("myConsumer")
                .offset(OffsetSpecification.first())
                .manualTrackingStrategy();
    });
    return factory;
}

@RabbitListener(id = "test", queues = "test.stream.queue2", containerFactory = "nativeFactory")
void nativeMsg(Message in, Context context) {
    ...
    context.storeOffset();
}

Version 2.4.5 added the adviceChain property to the StreamListenerContainer (and its factory). A new factory bean is also provided to create a stateless retry interceptor with an optional StreamMessageRecoverer for use when consuming raw stream messages.

@Bean
public StreamRetryOperationsInterceptorFactoryBean sfb(RetryTemplate retryTemplate) {
    StreamRetryOperationsInterceptorFactoryBean rfb =
            new StreamRetryOperationsInterceptorFactoryBean();
    rfb.setRetryOperations(retryTemplate);
    rfb.setStreamMessageRecoverer((msg, context, throwable) -> {
        ...
    });
    return rfb;
}

Stateful retry is not supported with this container.

4.3. Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders

The framework provides logging appenders for some popular logging subsystems:

logback (since Spring AMQP version 1.4)
log4j2 (since Spring AMQP version 1.6)

The appenders are configured by using the normal mechanisms for the logging subsystem, available properties are specified in the following sections.

4.3.1. Common properties

The following properties are available with all appenders:

Table 4. Common Appender Properties
Property	Default	Description
exchangeName	logs	Name of the exchange to which to publish log events.
exchangeType	topic	Type of the exchange to which to publish log events — needed only if the appender declares the exchange. See `declareExchange`.
routingKeyPattern	%c.%p	Logging subsystem pattern format to use to generate a routing key.
applicationId		Application ID — added to the routing key if the pattern includes `%X{applicationId}`.
senderPoolSize	2	The number of threads to use to publish log events.
maxSenderRetries	30	How many times to retry sending a message if the broker is unavailable or there is some other error. Retries are delayed as follows: `N ^ log(N)`, where `N` is the retry number.
addresses		A comma-delimited list of broker addresses in the following form: `host:port[,host:port]*` - overrides `host` and `port`.
host	localhost	RabbitMQ host to which to connect .
port	5672	RabbitMQ port to which to connect.
virtualHost	/	RabbitMQ virtual host to which to connect.
username	guest	RabbitMQ user to use when connecting.
password	guest	RabbitMQ password for this user.
useSsl	false	Whether to use SSL for the RabbitMQ connection. See `RabbitConnectionFactoryBean` and Configuring SSL
verifyHostname	true	Enable server hostname verification for TLS connections. See `RabbitConnectionFactoryBean` and Configuring SSL
sslAlgorithm	null	The SSL algorithm to use.
sslPropertiesLocation	null	Location of the SSL properties file.
keyStore	null	Location of the keystore.
keyStorePassphrase	null	Passphrase for the keystore.
keyStoreType	JKS	The keystore type.
trustStore	null	Location of the truststore.
trustStorePassphrase	null	Passphrase for the truststore.
trustStoreType	JKS	The truststore type.
saslConfig	null (RabbitMQ client default applies)	The `saslConfig` - see the javadoc for `RabbitUtils.stringToSaslConfig` for valid values.
contentType	text/plain	`content-type` property of log messages.
contentEncoding		`content-encoding` property of log messages.
declareExchange	false	Whether or not to declare the configured exchange when this appender starts. See also `durable` and `autoDelete`.
durable	true	When `declareExchange` is `true`, the durable flag is set to this value.
autoDelete	false	When `declareExchange` is `true`, the auto-delete flag is set to this value.
charset	null	Character set to use when converting `String` to `byte[]`. Default: null (the system default charset is used). If the character set is unsupported on the current platform, we fall back to using the system character set.
deliveryMode	PERSISTENT	`PERSISTENT` or `NON_PERSISTENT` to determine whether or not RabbitMQ should persist the messages.
generateId	false	Used to determine whether the `messageId` property is set to a unique value.
clientConnectionProperties	null	A comma-delimited list of `key:value` pairs for custom client properties to the RabbitMQ connection.
addMdcAsHeaders	true	MDC properties were always added into RabbitMQ message headers until this property was introduced. It can lead to issues for big MDC as while RabbitMQ has limited buffer size for all headers and this buffer is pretty small. This property was introduced to avoid issues in cases of big MDC. By default this value set to `true` for backward compatibility. The `false` turns off serialization MDC into headers. Please note, the `JsonLayout` adds MDC into the message by default.

4.3.2. Log4j 2 Appender

The following example shows how to configure a Log4j 2 appender:

<Appenders>
    ...
    <RabbitMQ name="rabbitmq"
        addresses="foo:5672,bar:5672" user="guest" password="guest" virtualHost="/"
        exchange="log4j2" exchangeType="topic" declareExchange="true" durable="true" autoDelete="false"
        applicationId="myAppId" routingKeyPattern="%X{applicationId}.%c.%p"
        contentType="text/plain" contentEncoding="UTF-8" generateId="true" deliveryMode="NON_PERSISTENT"
        charset="UTF-8"
        senderPoolSize="3" maxSenderRetries="5"
        addMdcAsHeaders="false">
    </RabbitMQ>
</Appenders>

Starting with versions 1.6.10 and 1.7.3, by default, the log4j2 appender publishes the messages to RabbitMQ on the calling thread. This is because Log4j 2 does not, by default, create thread-safe events. If the broker is down, the maxSenderRetries is used to retry, with no delay between retries. If you wish to restore the previous behavior of publishing the messages on separate threads (senderPoolSize), you can set the async property to true. However, you also need to configure Log4j 2 to use the DefaultLogEventFactory instead of the ReusableLogEventFactory. One way to do that is to set the system property -Dlog4j2.enable.threadlocals=false. If you use asynchronous publishing with the ReusableLogEventFactory, events have a high likelihood of being corrupted due to cross-talk.

4.3.3. Logback Appender

The following example shows how to configure a logback appender:

<appender name="AMQP" class="org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.logback.AmqpAppender">
    <layout>
        <pattern><![CDATA[ %d %p %t [%c] - <%m>%n ]]></pattern>
    </layout>
    <addresses>foo:5672,bar:5672</addresses>
    <abbreviation>36</abbreviation>
    <includeCallerData>false</includeCallerData>
    <applicationId>myApplication</applicationId>
    <routingKeyPattern>%property{applicationId}.%c.%p</routingKeyPattern>
    <generateId>true</generateId>
    <charset>UTF-8</charset>
    <durable>false</durable>
    <deliveryMode>NON_PERSISTENT</deliveryMode>
    <declareExchange>true</declareExchange>
    <addMdcAsHeaders>false</addMdcAsHeaders>
</appender>

Starting with version 1.7.1, the Logback AmqpAppender provides an includeCallerData option, which is false by default. Extracting caller data can be rather expensive, because the log event has to create a throwable and inspect it to determine the calling location. Therefore, by default, caller data associated with an event is not extracted when the event is added to the event queue. You can configure the appender to include caller data by setting the includeCallerData property to true.

Starting with version 2.0.0, the Logback AmqpAppender supports Logback encoders with the encoder option. The encoder and layout options are mutually exclusive.

4.3.4. Customizing the Messages

By default, AMQP appenders populate the following message properties:

deliveryMode
contentType
contentEncoding, if configured
messageId, if generateId is configured
timestamp of the log event
appId, if applicationId is configured

In addition they populate headers with the following values:

categoryName of the log event
The level of the log event
thread: the name of the thread where log event happened
The location of the stack trace of the log event call
A copy of all the MDC properties (unless addMdcAsHeaders is set to false)

Each of the appenders can be subclassed, letting you modify the messages before publishing. The following example shows how to customize log messages:

public class MyEnhancedAppender extends AmqpAppender {

    @Override
    public Message postProcessMessageBeforeSend(Message message, Event event) {
        message.getMessageProperties().setHeader("foo", "bar");
        return message;
    }

}

Starting with 2.2.4, the log4j2 AmqpAppender can be extended using @PluginBuilderFactory and extending also AmqpAppender.Builder

@Plugin(name = "MyEnhancedAppender", category = "Core", elementType = "appender", printObject = true)
public class MyEnhancedAppender extends AmqpAppender {

	public MyEnhancedAppender(String name, Filter filter, Layout<? extends Serializable> layout,
			boolean ignoreExceptions, AmqpManager manager, BlockingQueue<Event> eventQueue, String foo, String bar) {
		super(name, filter, layout, ignoreExceptions, manager, eventQueue);

	@Override
	public Message postProcessMessageBeforeSend(Message message, Event event) {
			message.getMessageProperties().setHeader("foo", "bar");
		return message;
	}

	@PluginBuilderFactory
	public static Builder newBuilder() {
		return new Builder();
	}

	protected static class Builder extends AmqpAppender.Builder {

		@Override
		protected AmqpAppender buildInstance(String name, Filter filter, Layout<? extends Serializable> layout,
				boolean ignoreExceptions, AmqpManager manager, BlockingQueue<Event> eventQueue) {
			return new MyEnhancedAppender(name, filter, layout, ignoreExceptions, manager, eventQueue);
		}
	}

}

4.3.5. Customizing the Client Properties

You can add custom client properties by adding either string properties or more complex properties.

Simple String Properties

Each appender supports adding client properties to the RabbitMQ connection.

The following example shows how to add a custom client property for logback:

<appender name="AMQP" ...>
    ...
    <clientConnectionProperties>thing1:thing2,cat:hat</clientConnectionProperties>
    ...
</appender>

Example 7. log4j2

<Appenders>
    ...
    <RabbitMQ name="rabbitmq"
        ...
        clientConnectionProperties="thing1:thing2,cat:hat"
        ...
    </RabbitMQ>
</Appenders>

The properties are a comma-delimited list of key:value pairs. Keys and values cannot contain commas or colons.

These properties appear on the RabbitMQ Admin UI when the connection is viewed.

Advanced Technique for Logback

You can subclass the Logback appender. Doing so lets you modify the client connection properties before the connection is established. The following example shows how to do so:

public class MyEnhancedAppender extends AmqpAppender {

    private String thing1;

    @Override
    protected void updateConnectionClientProperties(Map<String, Object> clientProperties) {
        clientProperties.put("thing1", this.thing1);
    }

    public void setThing1(String thing1) {
        this.thing1 = thing1;
    }

}

Then you can add <thing1>thing2</thing1> to logback.xml.

For String properties such as those shown in the preceding example, the previous technique can be used. Subclasses allow for adding richer properties (such as adding a Map or numeric property).

4.3.6. Providing a Custom Queue Implementation

The AmqpAppenders use a BlockingQueue to asynchronously publish logging events to RabbitMQ. By default, a LinkedBlockingQueue is used. However, you can supply any kind of custom BlockingQueue implementation.

The following example shows how to do so for Logback:

public class MyEnhancedAppender extends AmqpAppender {

    @Override
    protected BlockingQueue<Event> createEventQueue() {
        return new ArrayBlockingQueue();
    }

}

The Log4j 2 appender supports using a BlockingQueueFactory, as the following example shows:

<Appenders>
    ...
    <RabbitMQ name="rabbitmq"
              bufferSize="10" ... >
        <ArrayBlockingQueue/>
    </RabbitMQ>
</Appenders>

4.4. Sample Applications

The Spring AMQP Samples project includes two sample applications. The first is a simple “Hello World” example that demonstrates both synchronous and asynchronous message reception. It provides an excellent starting point for acquiring an understanding of the essential components. The second sample is based on a stock-trading use case to demonstrate the types of interaction that would be common in real world applications. In this chapter, we provide a quick walk-through of each sample so that you can focus on the most important components. The samples are both Maven-based, so you should be able to import them directly into any Maven-aware IDE (such as SpringSource Tool Suite).

4.4.1. The “Hello World” Sample

The “Hello World” sample demonstrates both synchronous and asynchronous message reception. You can import the spring-rabbit-helloworld sample into the IDE and then follow the discussion below.

Synchronous Example

Within the src/main/java directory, navigate to the org.springframework.amqp.helloworld package. Open the HelloWorldConfiguration class and notice that it contains the @Configuration annotation at the class level and notice some @Bean annotations at method-level. This is an example of Spring’s Java-based configuration. You can read more about that here.

The following listing shows how the connection factory is created:

@Bean
public CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory() {
    CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory =
        new CachingConnectionFactory("localhost");
    connectionFactory.setUsername("guest");
    connectionFactory.setPassword("guest");
    return connectionFactory;
}

The configuration also contains an instance of RabbitAdmin, which, by default, looks for any beans of type exchange, queue, or binding and then declares them on the broker. In fact, the helloWorldQueue bean that is generated in HelloWorldConfiguration is an example because it is an instance of Queue.

The following listing shows the helloWorldQueue bean definition:

@Bean
public Queue helloWorldQueue() {
    return new Queue(this.helloWorldQueueName);
}

Looking back at the rabbitTemplate bean configuration, you can see that it has the name of helloWorldQueue set as its queue property (for receiving messages) and for its routingKey property (for sending messages).

Now that we have explored the configuration, we can look at the code that actually uses these components. First, open the Producer class from within the same package. It contains a main() method where the Spring ApplicationContext is created.

The following listing shows the main method:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ApplicationContext context =
        new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(RabbitConfiguration.class);
    AmqpTemplate amqpTemplate = context.getBean(AmqpTemplate.class);
    amqpTemplate.convertAndSend("Hello World");
    System.out.println("Sent: Hello World");
}

In the preceding example, the AmqpTemplate bean is retrieved and used for sending a Message. Since the client code should rely on interfaces whenever possible, the type is AmqpTemplate rather than RabbitTemplate. Even though the bean created in HelloWorldConfiguration is an instance of RabbitTemplate, relying on the interface means that this code is more portable (you can change the configuration independently of the code). Since the convertAndSend() method is invoked, the template delegates to its MessageConverter instance. In this case, it uses the default SimpleMessageConverter, but a different implementation could be provided to the rabbitTemplate bean, as defined in HelloWorldConfiguration.

Now open the Consumer class. It actually shares the same configuration base class, which means it shares the rabbitTemplate bean. That is why we configured that template with both a routingKey (for sending) and a queue (for receiving). As we describe in AmqpTemplate, you could instead pass the 'routingKey' argument to the send method and the 'queue' argument to the receive method. The Consumer code is basically a mirror image of the Producer, calling receiveAndConvert() rather than convertAndSend().

The following listing shows the main method for the Consumer:

public static void main(String[] args) {
    ApplicationContext context =
        new AnnotationConfigApplicationContext(RabbitConfiguration.class);
    AmqpTemplate amqpTemplate = context.getBean(AmqpTemplate.class);
    System.out.println("Received: " + amqpTemplate.receiveAndConvert());
}

If you run the Producer and then run the Consumer, you should see Received: Hello World in the console output.

Asynchronous Example

Synchronous Example walked through the synchronous Hello World sample. This section describes a slightly more advanced but significantly more powerful option. With a few modifications, the Hello World sample can provide an example of asynchronous reception, also known as message-driven POJOs. In fact, there is a sub-package that provides exactly that: org.springframework.amqp.samples.helloworld.async.

Again, we start with the sending side. Open the ProducerConfiguration class and notice that it creates a connectionFactory and a rabbitTemplate bean. This time, since the configuration is dedicated to the message sending side, we do not even need any queue definitions, and the RabbitTemplate has only the 'routingKey' property set. Recall that messages are sent to an exchange rather than being sent directly to a queue. The AMQP default exchange is a direct exchange with no name. All queues are bound to that default exchange with their name as the routing key. That is why we only need to provide the routing key here.

The following listing shows the rabbitTemplate definition:

public RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate() {
    RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
    template.setRoutingKey(this.helloWorldQueueName);
    return template;
}

Since this sample demonstrates asynchronous message reception, the producing side is designed to continuously send messages (if it were a message-per-execution model like the synchronous version, it would not be quite so obvious that it is, in fact, a message-driven consumer). The component responsible for continuously sending messages is defined as an inner class within the ProducerConfiguration. It is configured to run every three seconds.

The following listing shows the component:

static class ScheduledProducer {

    @Autowired
    private volatile RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate;

    private final AtomicInteger counter = new AtomicInteger();

    @Scheduled(fixedRate = 3000)
    public void sendMessage() {
        rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend("Hello World " + counter.incrementAndGet());
    }
}

You do not need to understand all of the details, since the real focus should be on the receiving side (which we cover next). However, if you are not yet familiar with Spring task scheduling support, you can learn more here. The short story is that the postProcessor bean in the ProducerConfiguration registers the task with a scheduler.

Now we can turn to the receiving side. To emphasize the message-driven POJO behavior, we start with the component that react to the messages. The class is called HelloWorldHandler and is shown in the following listing:

public class HelloWorldHandler {

    public void handleMessage(String text) {
        System.out.println("Received: " + text);
    }

}

That class is a POJO. It does not extend any base class, it does not implement any interfaces, and it does not even contain any imports. It is being “adapted” to the MessageListener interface by the Spring AMQP MessageListenerAdapter. You can then configure that adapter on a SimpleMessageListenerContainer. For this sample, the container is created in the ConsumerConfiguration class. You can see the POJO wrapped in the adapter there.

The following listing shows how the listenerContainer is defined:

@Bean
public SimpleMessageListenerContainer listenerContainer() {
    SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer();
    container.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
    container.setQueueName(this.helloWorldQueueName);
    container.setMessageListener(new MessageListenerAdapter(new HelloWorldHandler()));
    return container;
}

The SimpleMessageListenerContainer is a Spring lifecycle component and, by default, starts automatically. If you look in the Consumer class, you can see that its main() method consists of nothing more than a one-line bootstrap to create the ApplicationContext. The Producer’s main() method is also a one-line bootstrap, since the component whose method is annotated with @Scheduled also starts automatically. You can start the Producer and Consumer in any order, and you should see messages being sent and received every three seconds.

4.4.2. Stock Trading

The Stock Trading sample demonstrates more advanced messaging scenarios than the Hello World sample. However, the configuration is very similar, if a bit more involved. Since we walked through the Hello World configuration in detail, here, we focus on what makes this sample different. There is a server that pushes market data (stock quotations) to a topic exchange. Then, clients can subscribe to the market data feed by binding a queue with a routing pattern (for example, app.stock.quotes.nasdaq.*). The other main feature of this demo is a request-reply “stock trade” interaction that is initiated by the client and handled by the server. That involves a private replyTo queue that is sent by the client within the order request message itself.

The server’s core configuration is in the RabbitServerConfiguration class within the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks.config.server package. It extends the AbstractStockAppRabbitConfiguration. That is where the resources common to the server and client are defined, including the market data topic exchange (whose name is 'app.stock.marketdata') and the queue that the server exposes for stock trades (whose name is 'app.stock.request'). In that common configuration file, you also see that a Jackson2JsonMessageConverter is configured on the RabbitTemplate.

The server-specific configuration consists of two things. First, it configures the market data exchange on the RabbitTemplate so that it does not need to provide that exchange name with every call to send a Message. It does this within an abstract callback method defined in the base configuration class. The following listing shows that method:

public void configureRabbitTemplate(RabbitTemplate rabbitTemplate) {
    rabbitTemplate.setExchange(MARKET_DATA_EXCHANGE_NAME);
}

Second, the stock request queue is declared. It does not require any explicit bindings in this case, because it is bound to the default no-name exchange with its own name as the routing key. As mentioned earlier, the AMQP specification defines that behavior. The following listing shows the definition of the stockRequestQueue bean:

@Bean
public Queue stockRequestQueue() {
    return new Queue(STOCK_REQUEST_QUEUE_NAME);
}

Now that you have seen the configuration of the server’s AMQP resources, navigate to the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks package under the src/test/java directory. There, you can see the actual Server class that provides a main() method. It creates an ApplicationContext based on the server-bootstrap.xml config file. There, you can see the scheduled task that publishes dummy market data. That configuration relies upon Spring’s task namespace support. The bootstrap config file also imports a few other files. The most interesting one is server-messaging.xml, which is directly under src/main/resources. There, you can see the messageListenerContainer bean that is responsible for handling the stock trade requests. Finally, have a look at the serverHandler bean that is defined in server-handlers.xml (which is also in 'src/main/resources'). That bean is an instance of the ServerHandler class and is a good example of a message-driven POJO that can also send reply messages. Notice that it is not itself coupled to the framework or any of the AMQP concepts. It accepts a TradeRequest and returns a TradeResponse. The following listing shows the definition of the handleMessage method:

public TradeResponse handleMessage(TradeRequest tradeRequest) { ...
}

Now that we have seen the most important configuration and code for the server, we can turn to the client. The best starting point is probably RabbitClientConfiguration, in the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks.config.client package. Notice that it declares two queues without providing explicit names. The following listing shows the bean definitions for the two queues:

@Bean
public Queue marketDataQueue() {
    return amqpAdmin().declareQueue();
}

@Bean
public Queue traderJoeQueue() {
    return amqpAdmin().declareQueue();
}

Those are private queues, and unique names are generated automatically. The first generated queue is used by the client to bind to the market data exchange that has been exposed by the server. Recall that, in AMQP, consumers interact with queues while producers interact with exchanges. The “binding” of queues to exchanges is what tells the broker to deliver (or route) messages from a given exchange to a queue. Since the market data exchange is a topic exchange, the binding can be expressed with a routing pattern. The RabbitClientConfiguration does so with a Binding object, and that object is generated with the BindingBuilder fluent API. The following listing shows the Binding:

@Value("${stocks.quote.pattern}")
private String marketDataRoutingKey;

@Bean
public Binding marketDataBinding() {
    return BindingBuilder.bind(
        marketDataQueue()).to(marketDataExchange()).with(marketDataRoutingKey);
}

Notice that the actual value has been externalized in a properties file (client.properties under src/main/resources), and that we use Spring’s @Value annotation to inject that value. This is generally a good idea. Otherwise, the value would have been hardcoded in a class and unmodifiable without recompilation. In this case, it is much easier to run multiple versions of the client while making changes to the routing pattern used for binding. We can try that now.

Start by running org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks.Server and then org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks.Client. You should see dummy quotations for NASDAQ stocks, because the current value associated with the 'stocks.quote.pattern' key in client.properties is 'app.stock.quotes.nasdaq.'. Now, while keeping the existing Server and Client running, change that property value to 'app.stock.quotes.nyse.' and start a second Client instance. You should see that the first client still receives NASDAQ quotes while the second client receives NYSE quotes. You could instead change the pattern to get all stocks or even an individual ticker.

The final feature we explore is the request-reply interaction from the client’s perspective. Recall that we have already seen the ServerHandler that accepts TradeRequest objects and returns TradeResponse objects. The corresponding code on the Client side is RabbitStockServiceGateway in the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.stocks.gateway package. It delegates to the RabbitTemplate in order to send messages. The following listing shows the send method:

public void send(TradeRequest tradeRequest) {
    getRabbitTemplate().convertAndSend(tradeRequest, new MessagePostProcessor() {
        public Message postProcessMessage(Message message) throws AmqpException {
            message.getMessageProperties().setReplyTo(new Address(defaultReplyToQueue));
            try {
                message.getMessageProperties().setCorrelationId(
                    UUID.randomUUID().toString().getBytes("UTF-8"));
            }
            catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
                throw new AmqpException(e);
            }
            return message;
        }
    });
}

Notice that, prior to sending the message, it sets the replyTo address. It provides the queue that was generated by the traderJoeQueue bean definition (shown earlier). The following listing shows the @Bean definition for the StockServiceGateway class itself:

@Bean
public StockServiceGateway stockServiceGateway() {
    RabbitStockServiceGateway gateway = new RabbitStockServiceGateway();
    gateway.setRabbitTemplate(rabbitTemplate());
    gateway.setDefaultReplyToQueue(traderJoeQueue());
    return gateway;
}

If you are no longer running the server and client, start them now. Try sending a request with the format of '100 TCKR'. After a brief artificial delay that simulates “processing” of the request, you should see a confirmation message appear on the client.

4.4.3. Receiving JSON from Non-Spring Applications

Spring applications, when sending JSON, set the TypeId header to the fully qualified class name to assist the receiving application in converting the JSON back to a Java object.

The spring-rabbit-json sample explores several techniques to convert the JSON from a non-Spring application.

4.5. Testing Support

Writing integration for asynchronous applications is necessarily more complex than testing simpler applications. This is made more complex when abstractions such as the @RabbitListener annotations come into the picture. The question is how to verify that, after sending a message, the listener received the message as expected.

The framework itself has many unit and integration tests. Some using mocks while, others use integration testing with a live RabbitMQ broker. You can consult those tests for some ideas for testing scenarios.

Spring AMQP version 1.6 introduced the spring-rabbit-test jar, which provides support for testing some of these more complex scenarios. It is anticipated that this project will expand over time, but we need community feedback to make suggestions for the features needed to help with testing. Please use JIRA or GitHub Issues to provide such feedback.

4.5.1. @SpringRabbitTest

Use this annotation to add infrastructure beans to the Spring test ApplicationContext. This is not necessary when using, for example @SpringBootTest since Spring Boot’s auto configuration will add the beans.

Beans that are registered are:

CachingConnectionFactory (autoConnectionFactory). If @RabbitEnabled is present, its connectionn factory is used.
RabbitTemplate (autoRabbitTemplate)
RabbitAdmin (autoRabbitAdmin)
RabbitListenerContainerFactory (autoContainerFactory)

In addition, the beans associated with @EnableRabbit (to support @RabbitListener) are added.

Example 8. Junit5 example

@SpringJunitConfig
@SpringRabbitTest
public class MyRabbitTests {

	@Autowired
	private RabbitTemplate template;

	@Autowired
	private RabbitAdmin admin;

	@Autowired
	private RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry registry;

	@Test
	void test() {
        ...
	}

	@Configuration
	public static class Config {

        ...

	}

}

With JUnit4, replace @SpringJunitConfig with @RunWith(SpringRunnner.class).

4.5.2. Mockito `Answer<?>` Implementations

There are currently two Answer<?> implementations to help with testing.

The first, LatchCountDownAndCallRealMethodAnswer, provides an Answer<Void> that returns null and counts down a latch. The following example shows how to use LatchCountDownAndCallRealMethodAnswer:

LatchCountDownAndCallRealMethodAnswer answer = this.harness.getLatchAnswerFor("myListener", 2);
doAnswer(answer)
    .when(listener).foo(anyString(), anyString());

...

assertThat(answer.await(10)).isTrue();

The second, LambdaAnswer<T> provides a mechanism to optionally call the real method and provides an opportunity to return a custom result, based on the InvocationOnMock and the result (if any).

Consider the following POJO:

public class Thing {

    public String thing(String thing) {
        return thing.toUpperCase();
    }

}

The following class tests the Thing POJO:

Thing thing = spy(new Thing());

doAnswer(new LambdaAnswer<String>(true, (i, r) -> r + r))
    .when(thing).thing(anyString());
assertEquals("THINGTHING", thing.thing("thing"));

doAnswer(new LambdaAnswer<String>(true, (i, r) -> r + i.getArguments()[0]))
    .when(thing).thing(anyString());
assertEquals("THINGthing", thing.thing("thing"));

doAnswer(new LambdaAnswer<String>(false, (i, r) ->
    "" + i.getArguments()[0] + i.getArguments()[0])).when(thing).thing(anyString());
assertEquals("thingthing", thing.thing("thing"));

Starting with version 2.2.3, the answers capture any exceptions thrown by the method under test. Use answer.getExceptions() to get a reference to them.

When used in conjunction with the @RabbitListenerTest and RabbitListenerTestHarness use harness.getLambdaAnswerFor("listenerId", true, …) to get a properly constructed answer for the listener.

4.5.3. `@RabbitListenerTest` and `RabbitListenerTestHarness`

Annotating one of your @Configuration classes with @RabbitListenerTest causes the framework to replace the standard RabbitListenerAnnotationBeanPostProcessor with a subclass called RabbitListenerTestHarness (it also enables @RabbitListener detection through @EnableRabbit).

The RabbitListenerTestHarness enhances the listener in two ways. First, it wraps the listener in a Mockito Spy, enabling normal Mockito stubbing and verification operations. It can also add an Advice to the listener, enabling access to the arguments, result, and any exceptions that are thrown. You can control which (or both) of these are enabled with attributes on the @RabbitListenerTest. The latter is provided for access to lower-level data about the invocation. It also supports blocking the test thread until the async listener is called.

final @RabbitListener methods cannot be spied or advised. Also, only listeners with an id attribute can be spied or advised.

Consider some examples.

The following example uses spy:

@Configuration
@RabbitListenerTest
public class Config {

    @Bean
    public Listener listener() {
        return new Listener();
    }

    ...

}

public class Listener {

    @RabbitListener(id="foo", queues="#{queue1.name}")
    public String foo(String foo) {
        return foo.toUpperCase();
    }

    @RabbitListener(id="bar", queues="#{queue2.name}")
    public void foo(@Payload String foo, @Header("amqp_receivedRoutingKey") String rk) {
        ...
    }

}

public class MyTests {

    @Autowired
    private RabbitListenerTestHarness harness; (1)

    @Test
    public void testTwoWay() throws Exception {
        assertEquals("FOO", this.rabbitTemplate.convertSendAndReceive(this.queue1.getName(), "foo"));

        Listener listener = this.harness.getSpy("foo"); (2)
        assertNotNull(listener);
        verify(listener).foo("foo");
    }

    @Test
    public void testOneWay() throws Exception {
        Listener listener = this.harness.getSpy("bar");
        assertNotNull(listener);

        LatchCountDownAndCallRealMethodAnswer answer = this.harness.getLatchAnswerFor("bar", 2); (3)
        doAnswer(answer).when(listener).foo(anyString(), anyString()); (4)

        this.rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(this.queue2.getName(), "bar");
        this.rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(this.queue2.getName(), "baz");

        assertTrue(answer.await(10));
        verify(listener).foo("bar", this.queue2.getName());
        verify(listener).foo("baz", this.queue2.getName());
    }

}

1	Inject the harness into the test case so we can get access to the spy.
2	Get a reference to the spy so we can verify it was invoked as expected. Since this is a send and receive operation, there is no need to suspend the test thread because it was already suspended in the `RabbitTemplate` waiting for the reply.
3	In this case, we’re only using a send operation so we need a latch to wait for the asynchronous call to the listener on the container thread. We use one of the Answer<?> implementations to help with that. IMPORTANT: Due to the way the listener is spied, it is important to use `harness.getLatchAnswerFor()` to get a properly configured answer for the spy.
4	Configure the spy to invoke the `Answer`.

The following example uses the capture advice:

@Configuration
@ComponentScan
@RabbitListenerTest(spy = false, capture = true)
public class Config {

}

@Service
public class Listener {

    private boolean failed;

    @RabbitListener(id="foo", queues="#{queue1.name}")
    public String foo(String foo) {
        return foo.toUpperCase();
    }

    @RabbitListener(id="bar", queues="#{queue2.name}")
    public void foo(@Payload String foo, @Header("amqp_receivedRoutingKey") String rk) {
        if (!failed && foo.equals("ex")) {
            failed = true;
            throw new RuntimeException(foo);
        }
        failed = false;
    }

}

public class MyTests {

    @Autowired
    private RabbitListenerTestHarness harness; (1)

    @Test
    public void testTwoWay() throws Exception {
        assertEquals("FOO", this.rabbitTemplate.convertSendAndReceive(this.queue1.getName(), "foo"));

        InvocationData invocationData =
            this.harness.getNextInvocationDataFor("foo", 0, TimeUnit.SECONDS); (2)
        assertThat(invocationData.getArguments()[0], equalTo("foo"));     (3)
        assertThat((String) invocationData.getResult(), equalTo("FOO"));
    }

    @Test
    public void testOneWay() throws Exception {
        this.rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(this.queue2.getName(), "bar");
        this.rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(this.queue2.getName(), "baz");
        this.rabbitTemplate.convertAndSend(this.queue2.getName(), "ex");

        InvocationData invocationData =
            this.harness.getNextInvocationDataFor("bar", 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS); (4)
        Object[] args = invocationData.getArguments();
        assertThat((String) args[0], equalTo("bar"));
        assertThat((String) args[1], equalTo(queue2.getName()));

        invocationData = this.harness.getNextInvocationDataFor("bar", 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        args = invocationData.getArguments();
        assertThat((String) args[0], equalTo("baz"));

        invocationData = this.harness.getNextInvocationDataFor("bar", 10, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
        args = invocationData.getArguments();
        assertThat((String) args[0], equalTo("ex"));
        assertEquals("ex", invocationData.getThrowable().getMessage()); (5)
    }

}

1	Inject the harness into the test case so we can get access to the spy.
2	Use `harness.getNextInvocationDataFor()` to retrieve the invocation data - in this case since it was a request/reply scenario there is no need to wait for any time because the test thread was suspended in the `RabbitTemplate` waiting for the result.
3	We can then verify that the argument and result was as expected.
4	This time we need some time to wait for the data, since it’s an async operation on the container thread and we need to suspend the test thread.
5	When the listener throws an exception, it is available in the `throwable` property of the invocation data.

When using custom Answer<?> s with the harness, in order to operate properly, such answers should subclass ForwardsInvocation and get the actual listener (not the spy) from the harness (getDelegate("myListener")) and call super.answer(invocation). See the provided Mockito Answer<?> Implementations source code for examples.

4.5.4. Using `TestRabbitTemplate`

The TestRabbitTemplate is provided to perform some basic integration testing without the need for a broker. When you add it as a @Bean in your test case, it discovers all the listener containers in the context, whether declared as @Bean or <bean/> or using the @RabbitListener annotation. It currently only supports routing by queue name. The template extracts the message listener from the container and invokes it directly on the test thread. Request-reply messaging (sendAndReceive methods) is supported for listeners that return replies.

The following test case uses the template:

@RunWith(SpringRunner.class)
public class TestRabbitTemplateTests {

    @Autowired
    private TestRabbitTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    private Config config;

    @Test
    public void testSimpleSends() {
        this.template.convertAndSend("foo", "hello1");
        assertThat(this.config.fooIn, equalTo("foo:hello1"));
        this.template.convertAndSend("bar", "hello2");
        assertThat(this.config.barIn, equalTo("bar:hello2"));
        assertThat(this.config.smlc1In, equalTo("smlc1:"));
        this.template.convertAndSend("foo", "hello3");
        assertThat(this.config.fooIn, equalTo("foo:hello1"));
        this.template.convertAndSend("bar", "hello4");
        assertThat(this.config.barIn, equalTo("bar:hello2"));
        assertThat(this.config.smlc1In, equalTo("smlc1:hello3hello4"));

        this.template.setBroadcast(true);
        this.template.convertAndSend("foo", "hello5");
        assertThat(this.config.fooIn, equalTo("foo:hello1foo:hello5"));
        this.template.convertAndSend("bar", "hello6");
        assertThat(this.config.barIn, equalTo("bar:hello2bar:hello6"));
        assertThat(this.config.smlc1In, equalTo("smlc1:hello3hello4hello5hello6"));
    }

    @Test
    public void testSendAndReceive() {
        assertThat(this.template.convertSendAndReceive("baz", "hello"), equalTo("baz:hello"));
    }

    @Configuration
    @EnableRabbit
    public static class Config {

        public String fooIn = "";

        public String barIn = "";

        public String smlc1In = "smlc1:";

        @Bean
        public TestRabbitTemplate template() throws IOException {
            return new TestRabbitTemplate(connectionFactory());
        }

        @Bean
        public ConnectionFactory connectionFactory() throws IOException {
            ConnectionFactory factory = mock(ConnectionFactory.class);
            Connection connection = mock(Connection.class);
            Channel channel = mock(Channel.class);
            willReturn(connection).given(factory).createConnection();
            willReturn(channel).given(connection).createChannel(anyBoolean());
            given(channel.isOpen()).willReturn(true);
            return factory;
        }

        @Bean
        public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory rabbitListenerContainerFactory() throws IOException {
            SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory factory = new SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory();
            factory.setConnectionFactory(connectionFactory());
            return factory;
        }

        @RabbitListener(queues = "foo")
        public void foo(String in) {
            this.fooIn += "foo:" + in;
        }

        @RabbitListener(queues = "bar")
        public void bar(String in) {
            this.barIn += "bar:" + in;
        }

        @RabbitListener(queues = "baz")
        public String baz(String in) {
            return "baz:" + in;
        }

        @Bean
        public SimpleMessageListenerContainer smlc1() throws IOException {
            SimpleMessageListenerContainer container = new SimpleMessageListenerContainer(connectionFactory());
            container.setQueueNames("foo", "bar");
            container.setMessageListener(new MessageListenerAdapter(new Object() {

                @SuppressWarnings("unused")
                public void handleMessage(String in) {
                    smlc1In += in;
                }

            }));
            return container;
        }

    }

}

4.5.5. JUnit4 `@Rules`

Spring AMQP version 1.7 and later provide an additional jar called spring-rabbit-junit. This jar contains a couple of utility @Rule instances for use when running JUnit4 tests. See JUnit5 Conditions for JUnit5 testing.

Using `BrokerRunning`

BrokerRunning provides a mechanism to let tests succeed when a broker is not running (on localhost, by default).

It also has utility methods to initialize and empty queues and delete queues and exchanges.

The following example shows its usage:

@ClassRule
public static BrokerRunning brokerRunning = BrokerRunning.isRunningWithEmptyQueues("foo", "bar");

@AfterClass
public static void tearDown() {
    brokerRunning.removeTestQueues("some.other.queue.too") // removes foo, bar as well
}

There are several isRunning… static methods, such as isBrokerAndManagementRunning(), which verifies the broker has the management plugin enabled.

Configuring the Rule

There are times when you want tests to fail if there is no broker, such as a nightly CI build. To disable the rule at runtime, set an environment variable called RABBITMQ_SERVER_REQUIRED to true.

You can override the broker properties, such as hostname with either setters or environment variables:

The following example shows how to override properties with setters:

@ClassRule
public static BrokerRunning brokerRunning = BrokerRunning.isRunningWithEmptyQueues("foo", "bar");

static {
    brokerRunning.setHostName("10.0.0.1")
}

@AfterClass
public static void tearDown() {
    brokerRunning.removeTestQueues("some.other.queue.too") // removes foo, bar as well
}

You can also override properties by setting the following environment variables:

public static final String BROKER_ADMIN_URI = "RABBITMQ_TEST_ADMIN_URI";
public static final String BROKER_HOSTNAME = "RABBITMQ_TEST_HOSTNAME";
public static final String BROKER_PORT = "RABBITMQ_TEST_PORT";
public static final String BROKER_USER = "RABBITMQ_TEST_USER";
public static final String BROKER_PW = "RABBITMQ_TEST_PASSWORD";
public static final String BROKER_ADMIN_USER = "RABBITMQ_TEST_ADMIN_USER";
public static final String BROKER_ADMIN_PW = "RABBITMQ_TEST_ADMIN_PASSWORD";

These environment variables override the default settings (localhost:5672 for amqp and localhost:15672/api/ for the management REST API).

Changing the host name affects both the amqp and management REST API connection (unless the admin uri is explicitly set).

BrokerRunning also provides a static method called setEnvironmentVariableOverrides that lets you can pass in a map containing these variables. They override system environment variables. This might be useful if you wish to use different configuration for tests in multiple test suites. IMPORTANT: The method must be called before invoking any of the isRunning() static methods that create the rule instance. Variable values are applied to all instances created after this invocation. Invoke clearEnvironmentVariableOverrides() to reset the rule to use defaults (including any actual environment variables).

In your test cases, you can use the brokerRunning when creating the connection factory; getConnectionFactory() returns the rule’s RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory. The following example shows how to do so:

@Bean
public CachingConnectionFactory rabbitConnectionFactory() {
    return new CachingConnectionFactory(brokerRunning.getConnectionFactory());
}

Using `LongRunningIntegrationTest`

LongRunningIntegrationTest is a rule that disables long running tests. You might want to use this on a developer system but ensure that the rule is disabled on, for example, nightly CI builds.

The following example shows its usage:

@Rule
public LongRunningIntegrationTest longTests = new LongRunningIntegrationTest();

To disable the rule at runtime, set an environment variable called RUN_LONG_INTEGRATION_TESTS to true.

4.5.6. JUnit5 Conditions

Version 2.0.2 introduced support for JUnit5.

Using the `@RabbitAvailable` Annotation

This class-level annotation is similar to the BrokerRunning @Rule discussed in JUnit4 @Rules. It is processed by the RabbitAvailableCondition.

The annotation has three properties:

queues: An array of queues that are declared (and purged) before each test and deleted when all tests are complete.
management: Set this to true if your tests also require the management plugin installed on the broker.
purgeAfterEach: (Since version 2.2) when true (default), the queues will be purged between tests.

It is used to check whether the broker is available and skip the tests if not. As discussed in Configuring the Rule, the environment variable called RABBITMQ_SERVER_REQUIRED, if true, causes the tests to fail fast if there is no broker. You can configure the condition by using environment variables as discussed in Configuring the Rule.

In addition, the RabbitAvailableCondition supports argument resolution for parameterized test constructors and methods. Two argument types are supported:

BrokerRunningSupport: The instance (before 2.2, this was a JUnit 4 BrokerRunning instance)
ConnectionFactory: The BrokerRunningSupport instance’s RabbitMQ connection factory

The following example shows both:

@RabbitAvailable(queues = "rabbitAvailableTests.queue")
public class RabbitAvailableCTORInjectionTests {

    private final ConnectionFactory connectionFactory;

    public RabbitAvailableCTORInjectionTests(BrokerRunningSupport brokerRunning) {
        this.connectionFactory = brokerRunning.getConnectionFactory();
    }

    @Test
    public void test(ConnectionFactory cf) throws Exception {
        assertSame(cf, this.connectionFactory);
        Connection conn = this.connectionFactory.newConnection();
        Channel channel = conn.createChannel();
        DeclareOk declareOk = channel.queueDeclarePassive("rabbitAvailableTests.queue");
        assertEquals(0, declareOk.getConsumerCount());
        channel.close();
        conn.close();
    }

}

The preceding test is in the framework itself and verifies the argument injection and that the condition created the queue properly.

A practical user test might be as follows:

@RabbitAvailable(queues = "rabbitAvailableTests.queue")
public class RabbitAvailableCTORInjectionTests {

    private final CachingConnectionFactory connectionFactory;

    public RabbitAvailableCTORInjectionTests(BrokerRunningSupport brokerRunning) {
        this.connectionFactory =
            new CachingConnectionFactory(brokerRunning.getConnectionFactory());
    }

    @Test
    public void test() throws Exception {
        RabbitTemplate template = new RabbitTemplate(this.connectionFactory);
        ...
    }
}

When you use a Spring annotation application context within a test class, you can get a reference to the condition’s connection factory through a static method called RabbitAvailableCondition.getBrokerRunning().

Starting with version 2.2, getBrokerRunning() returns a BrokerRunningSupport object; previously, the JUnit 4 BrokerRunnning instance was returned. The new class has the same API as BrokerRunning.

The following test comes from the framework and demonstrates the usage:

@RabbitAvailable(queues = {
        RabbitTemplateMPPIntegrationTests.QUEUE,
        RabbitTemplateMPPIntegrationTests.REPLIES })
@SpringJUnitConfig
@DirtiesContext(classMode = ClassMode.AFTER_EACH_TEST_METHOD)
public class RabbitTemplateMPPIntegrationTests {

    public static final String QUEUE = "mpp.tests";

    public static final String REPLIES = "mpp.tests.replies";

    @Autowired
    private RabbitTemplate template;

    @Autowired
    private Config config;

    @Test
    public void test() {

        ...

    }

    @Configuration
    @EnableRabbit
    public static class Config {

        @Bean
        public CachingConnectionFactory cf() {
            return new CachingConnectionFactory(RabbitAvailableCondition
                    .getBrokerRunning()
                    .getConnectionFactory());
        }

        @Bean
        public RabbitTemplate template() {

            ...

        }

        @Bean
        public SimpleRabbitListenerContainerFactory
                            rabbitListenerContainerFactory() {

            ...

        }

        @RabbitListener(queues = QUEUE)
        public byte[] foo(byte[] in) {
            return in;
        }

    }

}

Using the `@LongRunning` Annotation

Similar to the LongRunningIntegrationTest JUnit4 @Rule, this annotation causes tests to be skipped unless an environment variable (or system property) is set to true. The following example shows how to use it:

@RabbitAvailable(queues = SimpleMessageListenerContainerLongTests.QUEUE)
@LongRunning
public class SimpleMessageListenerContainerLongTests {

    public static final String QUEUE = "SimpleMessageListenerContainerLongTests.queue";

...

}

By default, the variable is RUN_LONG_INTEGRATION_TESTS, but you can specify the variable name in the annotation’s value attribute.

5. Spring Integration - Reference

This part of the reference documentation provides a quick introduction to the AMQP support within the Spring Integration project.

5.1. Spring Integration AMQP Support

This brief chapter covers the relationship between the Spring Integration and the Spring AMQP projects.

5.1.1. Introduction

The Spring Integration project includes AMQP Channel Adapters and Gateways that build upon the Spring AMQP project. Those adapters are developed and released in the Spring Integration project. In Spring Integration, “Channel Adapters” are unidirectional (one-way), whereas “Gateways” are bidirectional (request-reply). We provide an inbound-channel-adapter, an outbound-channel-adapter, an inbound-gateway, and an outbound-gateway.

Since the AMQP adapters are part of the Spring Integration release, the documentation is available as part of the Spring Integration distribution. We provide a quick overview of the main features here. See the Spring Integration Reference Guide for much more detail.

5.1.2. Inbound Channel Adapter

To receive AMQP Messages from a queue, you can configure an <inbound-channel-adapter>. The following example shows how to configure an inbound channel adapter:

<amqp:inbound-channel-adapter channel="fromAMQP"
                              queue-names="some.queue"
                              connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory"/>

5.1.3. Outbound Channel Adapter

To send AMQP Messages to an exchange, you can configure an <outbound-channel-adapter>. You can optionally provide a 'routing-key' in addition to the exchange name. The following example shows how to define an outbound channel adapter:

<amqp:outbound-channel-adapter channel="toAMQP"
                               exchange-name="some.exchange"
                               routing-key="foo"
                               amqp-template="rabbitTemplate"/>

5.1.4. Inbound Gateway

To receive an AMQP Message from a queue and respond to its reply-to address, you can configure an <inbound-gateway>. The following example shows how to define an inbound gateway:

<amqp:inbound-gateway request-channel="fromAMQP"
                      reply-channel="toAMQP"
                      queue-names="some.queue"
                      connection-factory="rabbitConnectionFactory"/>

5.1.5. Outbound Gateway

To send AMQP Messages to an exchange and receive back a response from a remote client, you can configure an <outbound-gateway>. You can optionally provide a 'routing-key' in addition to the exchange name. The following example shows how to define an outbound gateway:

<amqp:outbound-gateway request-channel="toAMQP"
                       reply-channel="fromAMQP"
                       exchange-name="some.exchange"
                       routing-key="foo"
                       amqp-template="rabbitTemplate"/>

6. Other Resources

In addition to this reference documentation, there exist a number of other resources that may help you learn about AMQP.

6.1. Further Reading

For those who are not familiar with AMQP, the specification is actually quite readable. It is, of course, the authoritative source of information, and the Spring AMQP code should be easy to understand for anyone who is familiar with the spec. Our current implementation of the RabbitMQ support is based on their 2.8.x version, and it officially supports AMQP 0.8 and 0.9.1. We recommend reading the 0.9.1 document.

There are many great articles, presentations, and blogs available on the RabbitMQ Getting Started page. Since that is currently the only supported implementation for Spring AMQP, we also recommend that as a general starting point for all broker-related concerns.

Appendix A: Change History

This section describes what changes have been made as versions have changed.

A.1. Current Release

See What’s New.

A.2. Previous Releases

A.2.1. Changes in 2.3 Since 2.2

This section describes the changes between version 2.2 and version 2.3. See Change History for changes in previous versions.

Connection Factory Changes

Two additional connection factories are now provided. See Choosing a Connection Factory for more information.

`@RabbitListener` Changes

You can now specify a reply content type. See Reply ContentType for more information.

Message Converter Changes

The Jackson2JMessageConverter s can now deserialize abstract classes (including interfaces) if the ObjectMapper is configured with a custom deserializer. See Deserializing Abstract Classes for more information.

Testing Changes

A new annotation @SpringRabbitTest is provided to automatically configure some infrastructure beans for when you are not using SpringBootTest. See @SpringRabbitTest for more information.

RabbitTemplate Changes

The template’s ReturnCallback has been refactored as ReturnsCallback for simpler use in lambda expressions. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information.

When using returns and correlated confirms, the CorrelationData now requires a unique id property. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information.

When using direct reply-to, you can now configure the template such that the server does not need to return correlation data with the reply. See RabbitMQ Direct reply-to for more information.

Listener Container Changes

A new listener container property consumeDelay is now available; it is helpful when using the RabbitMQ Sharding Plugin.

The default JavaLangErrorHandler now calls System.exit(99). To revert to the previous behavior (do nothing), add a no-op handler.

The containers now support the globalQos property to apply the prefetchCount globally for the channel rather than for each consumer on the channel.

See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

MessagePostProcessor Changes

The compressing MessagePostProcessor s now use a comma to separate multiple content encodings instead of a colon. The decompressors can handle both formats but, if you produce messages with this version that are consumed by versions earlier than 2.2.12, you should configure the compressor to use the old delimiter. See the IMPORTANT note in Modifying Messages - Compression and More for more information.

Multiple Broker Support Improvements

See Multiple Broker (or Cluster) Support for more information.

RepublishMessageRecoverer Changes

A new subclass of this recoverer is not provided that supports publisher confirms. See Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case for more information.

A.2.2. Changes in 2.2 Since 2.1

This section describes the changes between version 2.1 and version 2.2.

Package Changes

The following classes/interfaces have been moved from org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.core.support to org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.batch:

BatchingStrategy
MessageBatch
SimpleBatchingStrategy

In addition, ListenerExecutionFailedException has been moved from org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.exception to org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.support.

Dependency Changes

JUnit (4) is now an optional dependency and will no longer appear as a transitive dependency.

The spring-rabbit-junit module is now a compile dependency in the spring-rabbit-test module for a better target application development experience when with only a single spring-rabbit-test we get the full stack of testing utilities for AMQP components.

"Breaking" API Changes

the JUnit (5) RabbitAvailableCondition.getBrokerRunning() now returns a BrokerRunningSupport instance instead of a BrokerRunning, which depends on JUnit 4. It has the same API so it’s just a matter of changing the class name of any references. See JUnit5 Conditions for more information.

ListenerContainer Changes

Messages with fatal exceptions are now rejected and NOT requeued, by default, even if the acknowledge mode is manual. See Exception Handling for more information.

Listener performance can now be monitored using Micrometer Timer s. See Monitoring Listener Performance for more information.

@RabbitListener Changes

You can now configure an executor on each listener, overriding the factory configuration, to more easily identify threads associated with the listener. You can now override the container factory’s acknowledgeMode property with the annotation’s ackMode property. See overriding container factory properties for more information.

When using batching, @RabbitListener methods can now receive a complete batch of messages in one call instead of getting them one-at-a-time.

When receiving batched messages one-at-a-time, the last message has the isLastInBatch message property set to true.

In addition, received batched messages now contain the amqp_batchSize header.

Listeners can also consume batches created in the SimpleMessageListenerContainer, even if the batch is not created by the producer. See Choosing a Container for more information.

Spring Data Projection interfaces are now supported by the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter. See Using Spring Data Projection Interfaces for more information.

The Jackson2JsonMessageConverter now assumes the content is JSON if there is no contentType property, or it is the default (application/octet-string). See Converting from a Message for more information.

Similarly. the Jackson2XmlMessageConverter now assumes the content is XML if there is no contentType property, or it is the default (application/octet-string). See Jackson2XmlMessageConverter for more information.

When a @RabbitListener method returns a result, the bean and Method are now available in the reply message properties. This allows configuration of a beforeSendReplyMessagePostProcessor to, for example, set a header in the reply to indicate which method was invoked on the server. See Reply Management for more information.

You can now configure a ReplyPostProcessor to make modifications to a reply message before it is sent. See Reply Management for more information.

AMQP Logging Appenders Changes

The Log4J and Logback AmqpAppender s now support a verifyHostname SSL option.

Also these appenders now can be configured to not add MDC entries as headers. The addMdcAsHeaders boolean option has been introduces to configure such a behavior.

The appenders now support the SaslConfig property.

See Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders for more information.

MessageListenerAdapter Changes

The MessageListenerAdapter provides now a new buildListenerArguments(Object, Channel, Message) method to build an array of arguments to be passed into target listener and an old one is deprecated. See MessageListenerAdapter for more information.

Exchange/Queue Declaration Changes

The ExchangeBuilder and QueueBuilder fluent APIs used to create Exchange and Queue objects for declaration by RabbitAdmin now support "well known" arguments. See Builder API for Queues and Exchanges for more information.

The RabbitAdmin has a new property explicitDeclarationsOnly. See Conditional Declaration for more information.

Connection Factory Changes

The CachingConnectionFactory has a new property shuffleAddresses. When providing a list of broker node addresses, the list will be shuffled before creating a connection so that the order in which the connections are attempted is random. See Connecting to a Cluster for more information.

When using Publisher confirms and returns, the callbacks are now invoked on the connection factory’s executor. This avoids a possible deadlock in the amqp-clients library if you perform rabbit operations from within the callback. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information.

Also, the publisher confirm type is now specified with the ConfirmType enum instead of the two mutually exclusive setter methods.

The RabbitConnectionFactoryBean now uses TLS 1.2 by default when SSL is enabled. See RabbitConnectionFactoryBean and Configuring SSL for more information.

New MessagePostProcessor Classes

Classes DeflaterPostProcessor and InflaterPostProcessor were added to support compression and decompression, respectively, when the message content-encoding is set to deflate.

Other Changes

The Declarables object (for declaring multiple queues, exchanges, bindings) now has a filtered getter for each type. See Declaring Collections of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings for more information.

You can now customize each Declarable bean before the RabbitAdmin processes the declaration thereof. See Automatic Declaration of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings for more information.

singleActiveConsumer() has been added to the QueueBuilder to set the x-single-active-consumer queue argument. See Builder API for Queues and Exchanges for more information.

Outbound headers with values of type Class<?> are now mapped using getName() instead of toString(). See Message Properties Converters for more information.

Recovery of failed producer-created batches is now supported. See Retry with Batch Listeners for more information.

A.2.3. Changes in 2.1 Since 2.0

AMQP Client library

Spring AMQP now uses the 5.4.x version of the amqp-client library provided by the RabbitMQ team. This client has auto-recovery configured by default. See RabbitMQ Automatic Connection/Topology recovery.

As of version 4.0, the client enables automatic recovery by default. While compatible with this feature, Spring AMQP has its own recovery mechanisms and the client recovery feature generally is not needed. We recommend disabling amqp-client automatic recovery, to avoid getting AutoRecoverConnectionNotCurrentlyOpenException instances when the broker is available but the connection has not yet recovered. Starting with version 1.7.1, Spring AMQP disables it unless you explicitly create your own RabbitMQ connection factory and provide it to the CachingConnectionFactory. RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory instances created by the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean also have the option disabled by default.

Package Changes

Certain classes have moved to different packages. Most are internal classes and do not affect user applications. Two exceptions are ChannelAwareMessageListener and RabbitListenerErrorHandler. These interfaces are now in org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.listener.api.

Publisher Confirms Changes

Channels enabled for publisher confirmations are not returned to the cache while there are outstanding confirmations. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information.

Listener Container Factory Improvements

You can now use the listener container factories to create any listener container, not only those for use with @RabbitListener annotations or the @RabbitListenerEndpointRegistry. See Using Container Factories for more information.

ChannelAwareMessageListener now inherits from MessageListener.

Broker Event Listener

A BrokerEventListener is introduced to publish selected broker events as ApplicationEvent instances. See Broker Event Listener for more information.

RabbitAdmin Changes

The RabbitAdmin discovers beans of type Declarables (which is a container for Declarable - Queue, Exchange, and Binding objects) and declare the contained objects on the broker. Users are discouraged from using the old mechanism of declaring <Collection<Queue>> (and others) and should use Declarables beans instead. By default, the old mechanism is disabled. See Declaring Collections of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings for more information.

AnonymousQueue instances are now declared with x-queue-master-locator set to client-local by default, to ensure the queues are created on the node the application is connected to. See Configuring the Broker for more information.

RabbitTemplate Changes

You can now configure the RabbitTemplate with the noLocalReplyConsumer option to control a noLocal flag for reply consumers in the sendAndReceive() operations. See Request/Reply Messaging for more information.

CorrelationData for publisher confirmations now has a ListenableFuture, which you can use to get the acknowledgment instead of using a callback. When returns and confirmations are enabled, the correlation data, if provided, is populated with the returned message. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns for more information.

A method called replyTimedOut is now provided to notify subclasses that a reply has timed out, allowing for any state cleanup. See Reply Timeout for more information.

You can now specify an ErrorHandler to be invoked when using request/reply with a DirectReplyToMessageListenerContainer (the default) when exceptions occur when replies are delivered (for example, late replies). See setReplyErrorHandler on the RabbitTemplate. (Also since 2.0.11).

Message Conversion

We introduced a new Jackson2XmlMessageConverter to support converting messages from and to XML format. See Jackson2XmlMessageConverter for more information.

Management REST API

The RabbitManagementTemplate is now deprecated in favor of the direct com.rabbitmq.http.client.Client (or com.rabbitmq.http.client.ReactorNettyClient) usage. See RabbitMQ REST API for more information.

`@RabbitListener` Changes

The listener container factory can now be configured with a RetryTemplate and, optionally, a RecoveryCallback used when sending replies. See Enable Listener Endpoint Annotations for more information.

Async `@RabbitListener` Return

@RabbitListener methods can now return ListenableFuture<?> or Mono<?>. See Asynchronous @RabbitListener Return Types for more information.

Connection Factory Bean Changes

By default, the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean now calls enableHostnameVerification(). To revert to the previous behavior, set the enableHostnameVerification property to false.

Connection Factory Changes

The CachingConnectionFactory now unconditionally disables auto-recovery in the underlying RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory, even if a pre-configured instance is provided in a constructor. While steps have been taken to make Spring AMQP compatible with auto recovery, certain corner cases have arisen where issues remain. Spring AMQP has had its own recovery mechanism since 1.0.0 and does not need to use the recovery provided by the client. While it is still possible to enable the feature (using cachingConnectionFactory.getRabbitConnectionFactory() .setAutomaticRecoveryEnabled()) after the CachingConnectionFactory is constructed, we strongly recommend that you not do so. We recommend that you use a separate RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory if you need auto recovery connections when using the client factory directly (rather than using Spring AMQP components).

Listener Container Changes

The default ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler now completely discards messages that cause fatal errors if an x-death header is present. See Exception Handling for more information.

Immediate requeue

A new ImmediateRequeueAmqpException is introduced to notify a listener container that the message has to be re-queued. To use this feature, a new ImmediateRequeueMessageRecoverer implementation is added.

See Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case for more information.

A.2.4. Changes in 2.0 Since 1.7

Using `CachingConnectionFactory`

Starting with version 2.0.2, you can configure the RabbitTemplate to use a different connection to that used by listener containers. This change avoids deadlocked consumers when producers are blocked for any reason. See Using a Separate Connection for more information.

AMQP Client library

Spring AMQP now uses the new 5.0.x version of the amqp-client library provided by the RabbitMQ team. This client has auto recovery configured by default. See RabbitMQ Automatic Connection/Topology recovery.

As of version 4.0, the client enables automatic recovery by default. While compatible with this feature, Spring AMQP has its own recovery mechanisms, and the client recovery feature generally is not needed. We recommend that you disable amqp-client automatic recovery, to avoid getting AutoRecoverConnectionNotCurrentlyOpenException instances when the broker is available but the connection has not yet recovered. Starting with version 1.7.1, Spring AMQP disables it unless you explicitly create your own RabbitMQ connection factory and provide it to the CachingConnectionFactory. RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory instances created by the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean also have the option disabled by default.

General Changes

The ExchangeBuilder now builds durable exchanges by default. The @Exchange annotation used within a @QeueueBinding also declares durable exchanges by default. The @Queue annotation used within a @RabbitListener by default declares durable queues if named and non-durable if anonymous. See Builder API for Queues and Exchanges and Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

Deleted Classes

UniquelyNameQueue is no longer provided. It is unusual to create a durable non-auto-delete queue with a unique name. This class has been deleted. If you require its functionality, use new Queue(UUID.randomUUID().toString()).

New Listener Container

The DirectMessageListenerContainer has been added alongside the existing SimpleMessageListenerContainer. See Choosing a Container and Message Listener Container Configuration for information about choosing which container to use as well as how to configure them.

Log4j Appender

This appender is no longer available due to the end-of-life of log4j. See Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders for information about the available log appenders.

`RabbitTemplate` Changes

Previously, a non-transactional RabbitTemplate participated in an existing transaction if it ran on a transactional listener container thread. This was a serious bug. However, users might have relied on this behavior. Starting with version 1.6.2, you must set the channelTransacted boolean on the template for it to participate in the container transaction.

The RabbitTemplate now uses a DirectReplyToMessageListenerContainer (by default) instead of creating a new consumer for each request. See RabbitMQ Direct reply-to for more information.

The AsyncRabbitTemplate now supports direct reply-to. See Async Rabbit Template for more information.

The RabbitTemplate and AsyncRabbitTemplate now have receiveAndConvert and convertSendAndReceiveAsType methods that take a ParameterizedTypeReference<T> argument, letting the caller specify the type to which to convert the result. This is particularly useful for complex types or when type information is not conveyed in message headers. It requires a SmartMessageConverter such as the Jackson2JsonMessageConverter. See Receiving Messages, Request/Reply Messaging, Async Rabbit Template, and Converting From a Message With RabbitTemplate for more information.

You can now use a RabbitTemplate to perform multiple operations on a dedicated channel. See Scoped Operations for more information.

Listener Adapter

A convenient FunctionalInterface is available for using lambdas with the MessageListenerAdapter. See MessageListenerAdapter for more information.

Listener Container Changes

Prefetch Default Value

The prefetch default value used to be 1, which could lead to under-utilization of efficient consumers. The default prefetch value is now 250, which should keep consumers busy in most common scenarios and, thus, improve throughput.

For more background about prefetch, see this post about consumer utilization in RabbitMQ and this post about queuing theory.

Message Count

Previously, MessageProperties.getMessageCount() returned 0 for messages emitted by the container. This property applies only when you use basicGet (for example, from RabbitTemplate.receive() methods) and is now initialized to null for container messages.

Transaction Rollback Behavior

Message re-queue on transaction rollback is now consistent, regardless of whether or not a transaction manager is configured. See A note on Rollback of Received Messages for more information.

Shutdown Behavior

If the container threads do not respond to a shutdown within shutdownTimeout, the channels are forced closed by default. See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

After Receive Message Post Processors

If a MessagePostProcessor in the afterReceiveMessagePostProcessors property returns null, the message is discarded (and acknowledged if appropriate).

Connection Factory Changes

The connection and channel listener interfaces now provide a mechanism to obtain information about exceptions. See Connection and Channel Listeners and Publishing is Asynchronous — How to Detect Successes and Failures for more information.

A new ConnectionNameStrategy is now provided to populate the application-specific identification of the target RabbitMQ connection from the AbstractConnectionFactory. See Connection and Resource Management for more information.

Retry Changes

The MissingMessageIdAdvice is no longer provided. Its functionality is now built-in. See Failures in Synchronous Operations and Options for Retry for more information.

Anonymous Queue Naming

By default, AnonymousQueues are now named with the default Base64UrlNamingStrategy instead of a simple UUID string. See AnonymousQueue for more information.

`@RabbitListener` Changes

You can now provide simple queue declarations (bound only to the default exchange) in @RabbitListener annotations. See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

You can now configure @RabbitListener annotations so that any exceptions are returned to the sender. You can also configure a RabbitListenerErrorHandler to handle exceptions. See Handling Exceptions for more information.

You can now bind a queue with multiple routing keys when you use the @QueueBinding annotation. Also @QueueBinding.exchange() now supports custom exchange types and declares durable exchanges by default.

You can now set the concurrency of the listener container at the annotation level rather than having to configure a different container factory for different concurrency settings.

You can now set the autoStartup property of the listener container at the annotation level, overriding the default setting in the container factory.

You can now set after receive and before send (reply) MessagePostProcessor instances in the RabbitListener container factories.

See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

Starting with version 2.0.3, one of the @RabbitHandler annotations on a class-level @RabbitListener can be designated as the default. See Multi-method Listeners for more information.

Container Conditional Rollback

When using an external transaction manager (such as JDBC), rule-based rollback is now supported when you provide the container with a transaction attribute. It is also now more flexible when you use a transaction advice. See Conditional Rollback for more information.

Remove Jackson 1.x support

Deprecated in previous versions, Jackson 1.x converters and related components have now been deleted. You can use similar components based on Jackson 2.x. See Jackson2JsonMessageConverter for more information.

JSON Message Converter

When the TypeId is set to Hashtable for an inbound JSON message, the default conversion type is now LinkedHashMap. Previously, it was Hashtable. To revert to a Hashtable, you can use setDefaultMapType on the DefaultClassMapper.

XML Parsers

When parsing Queue and Exchange XML components, the parsers no longer register the name attribute value as a bean alias if an id attribute is present. See A Note On the id and name Attributes for more information.

Blocked Connection

You can now inject the com.rabbitmq.client.BlockedListener into the org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.connection.Connection object. Also, the ConnectionBlockedEvent and ConnectionUnblockedEvent events are emitted by the ConnectionFactory when the connection is blocked or unblocked by the Broker.

See Connection and Resource Management for more information.

A.2.5. Changes in 1.7 Since 1.6

AMQP Client library

Spring AMQP now uses the new 4.0.x version of the amqp-client library provided by the RabbitMQ team. This client has auto-recovery configured by default. See RabbitMQ Automatic Connection/Topology recovery.

The 4.0.x client enables automatic recovery by default. While compatible with this feature, Spring AMQP has its own recovery mechanisms, and the client recovery feature generally is not needed. We recommend disabling amqp-client automatic recovery, to avoid getting AutoRecoverConnectionNotCurrentlyOpenException instances when the broker is available but the connection has not yet recovered. Starting with version 1.7.1, Spring AMQP disables it unless you explicitly create your own RabbitMQ connection factory and provide it to the CachingConnectionFactory. RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory instances created by the RabbitConnectionFactoryBean also have the option disabled by default.

Log4j 2 upgrade

The minimum Log4j 2 version (for the AmqpAppender) is now 2.7. The framework is no longer compatible with previous versions. See Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders for more information.

Logback Appender

This appender no longer captures caller data (method, line number) by default. You can re-enable it by setting the includeCallerData configuration option. See Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders for information about the available log appenders.

Spring Retry Upgrade

The minimum Spring Retry version is now 1.2. The framework is no longer compatible with previous versions.

Shutdown Behavior

You can now set forceCloseChannel to true so that, if the container threads do not respond to a shutdown within shutdownTimeout, the channels are forced closed, causing any unacked messages to be re-queued. See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

FasterXML Jackson upgrade

The minimum Jackson version is now 2.8. The framework is no longer compatible with previous versions.

JUnit `@Rules`

Rules that have previously been used internally by the framework have now been made available in a separate jar called spring-rabbit-junit. See JUnit4 @Rules for more information.

Container Conditional Rollback

When you use an external transaction manager (such as JDBC), rule-based rollback is now supported when you provide the container with a transaction attribute. It is also now more flexible when you use a transaction advice.

Connection Naming Strategy

Listener Container Changes

Transaction Rollback Behavior

You can now configure message re-queue on transaction rollback to be consistent, regardless of whether or not a transaction manager is configured. See A note on Rollback of Received Messages for more information.

A.2.6. Earlier Releases

See Previous Releases for changes in previous versions.

A.2.7. Changes in 1.6 Since 1.5

Testing Support

A new testing support library is now provided. See Testing Support for more information.

Builder

Builders that provide a fluent API for configuring Queue and Exchange objects are now available. See Builder API for Queues and Exchanges for more information.

Namespace Changes

Connection Factory

You can now add a thread-factory to a connection factory bean declaration — for example, to name the threads created by the amqp-client library. See Connection and Resource Management for more information.

When you use CacheMode.CONNECTION, you can now limit the total number of connections allowed. See Connection and Resource Management for more information.

Queue Definitions

You can now provide a naming strategy for anonymous queues. See AnonymousQueue for more information.

Listener Container Changes

Idle Message Listener Detection

You can now configure listener containers to publish ApplicationEvent instances when idle. See Detecting Idle Asynchronous Consumers for more information.

Mismatched Queue Detection

By default, when a listener container starts, if queues with mismatched properties or arguments are detected, the container logs the exception but continues to listen. The container now has a property called mismatchedQueuesFatal, which prevents the container (and context) from starting if the problem is detected during startup. It also stops the container if the problem is detected later, such as after recovering from a connection failure. See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

Listener Container Logging

Now, listener container provides its beanName to the internal SimpleAsyncTaskExecutor as a threadNamePrefix. It is useful for logs analysis.

Default Error Handler

The default error handler (ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler) now considers irrecoverable @RabbitListener exceptions as fatal. See Exception Handling for more information.

`AutoDeclare` and `RabbitAdmin` Instances

See Message Listener Container Configuration (autoDeclare) for some changes to the semantics of that option with respect to the use of RabbitAdmin instances in the application context.

`AmqpTemplate`: Receive with Timeout

A number of new receive() methods with timeout have been introduced for the AmqpTemplate and its RabbitTemplate implementation. See Polling Consumer for more information.

Using `AsyncRabbitTemplate`

A new AsyncRabbitTemplate has been introduced. This template provides a number of send and receive methods, where the return value is a ListenableFuture, which can be used later to obtain the result either synchronously or asynchronously. See Async Rabbit Template for more information.

`RabbitTemplate` Changes

1.4.1 introduced the ability to use direct reply-to when the broker supports it. It is more efficient than using a temporary queue for each reply. This version lets you override this default behavior and use a temporary queue by setting the useTemporaryReplyQueues property to true. See RabbitMQ Direct reply-to for more information.

The RabbitTemplate now supports a user-id-expression (userIdExpression when using Java configuration). See Validated User-ID RabbitMQ documentation and Validated User Id for more information.

Message Properties

Using `CorrelationId`

The correlationId message property can now be a String. See Message Properties Converters for more information.

Long String Headers

Previously, the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter “converted” headers longer than the long string limit (default 1024) to a DataInputStream (actually, it referenced the LongString instance’s DataInputStream). On output, this header was not converted (except to a String — for example, java.io.DataInputStream@1d057a39 by calling toString() on the stream).

With this release, long LongString instances are now left as LongString instances by default. You can access the contents by using the getBytes[], toString(), or getStream() methods. A large incoming LongString is now correctly “converted” on output too.

See Message Properties Converters for more information.

Inbound Delivery Mode

The deliveryMode property is no longer mapped to the MessageProperties.deliveryMode. This change avoids unintended propagation if the the same MessageProperties object is used to send an outbound message. Instead, the inbound deliveryMode header is mapped to MessageProperties.receivedDeliveryMode.

See Message Properties Converters for more information.

When using annotated endpoints, the header is provided in the header named AmqpHeaders.RECEIVED_DELIVERY_MODE.

See Annotated Endpoint Method Signature for more information.

Inbound User ID

The user_id property is no longer mapped to the MessageProperties.userId. This change avoids unintended propagation if the the same MessageProperties object is used to send an outbound message. Instead, the inbound userId header is mapped to MessageProperties.receivedUserId.

See Message Properties Converters for more information.

When you use annotated endpoints, the header is provided in the header named AmqpHeaders.RECEIVED_USER_ID.

See Annotated Endpoint Method Signature for more information.

`RabbitAdmin` Changes

Declaration Failures

Previously, the ignoreDeclarationFailures flag took effect only for IOException on the channel (such as mis-matched arguments). It now takes effect for any exception (such as TimeoutException). In addition, a DeclarationExceptionEvent is now published whenever a declaration fails. The RabbitAdmin last declaration event is also available as a property lastDeclarationExceptionEvent. See Configuring the Broker for more information.

`@RabbitListener` Changes

Multiple Containers for Each Bean

When you use Java 8 or later, you can now add multiple @RabbitListener annotations to @Bean classes or their methods. When using Java 7 or earlier, you can use the @RabbitListeners container annotation to provide the same functionality. See @Repeatable @RabbitListener for more information.

`@SendTo` SpEL Expressions

@SendTo for routing replies with no replyTo property can now be SpEL expressions evaluated against the request/reply. See Reply Management for more information.

`@QueueBinding` Improvements

You can now specify arguments for queues, exchanges, and bindings in @QueueBinding annotations. Header exchanges are now supported by @QueueBinding. See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

Delayed Message Exchange

Spring AMQP now has first class support for the RabbitMQ Delayed Message Exchange plugin. See Delayed Message Exchange for more information.

Exchange Internal Flag

Any Exchange definitions can now be marked as internal, and RabbitAdmin passes the value to the broker when declaring the exchange. See Configuring the Broker for more information.

`CachingConnectionFactory` Changes

`CachingConnectionFactory` Cache Statistics

The CachingConnectionFactory now provides cache properties at runtime and over JMX. See Runtime Cache Properties for more information.

Accessing the Underlying RabbitMQ Connection Factory

A new getter has been added to provide access to the underlying factory. You can use this getter, for example, to add custom connection properties. See Adding Custom Client Connection Properties for more information.

Channel Cache

The default channel cache size has been increased from 1 to 25. See Connection and Resource Management for more information.

In addition, the SimpleMessageListenerContainer no longer adjusts the cache size to be at least as large as the number of concurrentConsumers — this was superfluous, since the container consumer channels are never cached.

Using `RabbitConnectionFactoryBean`

The factory bean now exposes a property to add client connection properties to connections made by the resulting factory.

Java Deserialization

You can now configure a “allowed list” of allowable classes when you use Java deserialization. You should consider creating an allowed list if you accept messages with serialized java objects from untrusted sources. See Java Deserialization for more information.

JSON `MessageConverter`

Improvements to the JSON message converter now allow the consumption of messages that do not have type information in message headers. See Message Conversion for Annotated Methods and Jackson2JsonMessageConverter for more information.

Logging Appenders

Log4j 2

A log4j 2 appender has been added, and the appenders can now be configured with an addresses property to connect to a broker cluster.

Client Connection Properties

You can now add custom client connection properties to RabbitMQ connections.

See Logging Subsystem AMQP Appenders for more information.

A.2.8. Changes in 1.5 Since 1.4

`spring-erlang` Is No Longer Supported

The spring-erlang jar is no longer included in the distribution. Use the RabbitMQ REST API instead.

`CachingConnectionFactory` Changes

Empty Addresses Property in `CachingConnectionFactory`

Previously, if the connection factory was configured with a host and port but an empty String was also supplied for addresses, the host and port were ignored. Now, an empty addresses String is treated the same as a null, and the host and port are used.

URI Constructor

The CachingConnectionFactory has an additional constructor, with a URI parameter, to configure the broker connection.

Connection Reset

A new method called resetConnection() has been added to let users reset the connection (or connections). You might use this, for example, to reconnect to the primary broker after failing over to the secondary broker. This does impact in-process operations. The existing destroy() method does exactly the same, but the new method has a less daunting name.

Properties to Control Container Queue Declaration Behavior

When the listener container consumers start, they attempt to passively declare the queues to ensure they are available on the broker. Previously, if these declarations failed (for example, because the queues didn’t exist) or when an HA queue was being moved, the retry logic was fixed at three retry attempts at five-second intervals. If the queues still do not exist, the behavior is controlled by the missingQueuesFatal property (default: true). Also, for containers configured to listen from multiple queues, if only a subset of queues are available, the consumer retried the missing queues on a fixed interval of 60 seconds.

The declarationRetries, failedDeclarationRetryInterval, and retryDeclarationInterval properties are now configurable. See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

Class Package Change

The RabbitGatewaySupport class has been moved from o.s.amqp.rabbit.core.support to o.s.amqp.rabbit.core.

`DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter` Changes

You can now configure the DefaultMessagePropertiesConverter to determine the maximum length of a LongString that is converted to a String rather than to a DataInputStream. The converter has an alternative constructor that takes the value as a limit. Previously, this limit was hard-coded at 1024 bytes. (Also available in 1.4.4).

`@RabbitListener` Improvements

`@QueueBinding` for `@RabbitListener`

The bindings attribute has been added to the @RabbitListener annotation as mutually exclusive with the queues attribute to allow the specification of the queue, its exchange, and binding for declaration by a RabbitAdmin on the Broker.

SpEL in `@SendTo`

The default reply address (@SendTo) for a @RabbitListener can now be a SpEL expression.

Multiple Queue Names through Properties

You can now use a combination of SpEL and property placeholders to specify multiple queues for a listener.

See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

Automatic Exchange, Queue, and Binding Declaration

You can now declare beans that define a collection of these entities, and the RabbitAdmin adds the contents to the list of entities that it declares when a connection is established. See Declaring Collections of Exchanges, Queues, and Bindings for more information.

`RabbitTemplate` Changes

`reply-address` Added

The reply-address attribute has been added to the <rabbit-template> component as an alternative reply-queue. See Request/Reply Messaging for more information. (Also available in 1.4.4 as a setter on the RabbitTemplate).

Blocking `receive` Methods

The RabbitTemplate now supports blocking in receive and convertAndReceive methods. See Polling Consumer for more information.

Mandatory with `sendAndReceive` Methods

When the mandatory flag is set when using the sendAndReceive and convertSendAndReceive methods, the calling thread throws an AmqpMessageReturnedException if the request message cannot be deliverted. See Reply Timeout for more information.

Improper Reply Listener Configuration

The framework tries to verify proper configuration of a reply listener container when using a named reply queue.

See Reply Listener Container for more information.

`RabbitManagementTemplate` Added

The RabbitManagementTemplate has been introduced to monitor and configure the RabbitMQ Broker by using the REST API provided by its management plugin. See RabbitMQ REST API for more information.

Listener Container Bean Names (XML)

The id attribute on the <listener-container/> element has been removed. Starting with this release, the id on the <listener/> child element is used alone to name the listener container bean created for each listener element.

Normal Spring bean name overrides are applied. If a later <listener/> is parsed with the same id as an existing bean, the new definition overrides the existing one. Previously, bean names were composed from the id attributes of the <listener-container/> and <listener/> elements.

When migrating to this release, if you have id attributes on your <listener-container/> elements, remove them and set the id on the child <listener/> element instead.

However, to support starting and stopping containers as a group, a new group attribute has been added. When this attribute is defined, the containers created by this element are added to a bean with this name, of type Collection<SimpleMessageListenerContainer>. You can iterate over this group to start and stop containers.

Class-Level `@RabbitListener`

The @RabbitListener annotation can now be applied at the class level. Together with the new @RabbitHandler method annotation, this lets you select the handler method based on payload type. See Multi-method Listeners for more information.

`SimpleMessageListenerContainer`: BackOff Support

The SimpleMessageListenerContainer can now be supplied with a BackOff instance for consumer startup recovery. See Message Listener Container Configuration for more information.

Channel Close Logging

A mechanism to control the log levels of channel closure has been introduced. See Logging Channel Close Events.

Application Events

The SimpleMessageListenerContainer now emits application events when consumers fail. See Consumer Events for more information.

Consumer Tag Configuration

Previously, the consumer tags for asynchronous consumers were generated by the broker. With this release, it is now possible to supply a naming strategy to the listener container. See Consumer Tags.

Using `MessageListenerAdapter`

The MessageListenerAdapter now supports a map of queue names (or consumer tags) to method names, to determine which delegate method to call based on the queue from which the message was received.

`LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory` Added

LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory is a new connection factory that connects to the node in a cluster where a mirrored queue actually resides.

See Queue Affinity and the LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory.

Anonymous Queue Naming

Starting with version 1.5.3, you can now control how AnonymousQueue names are generated. See AnonymousQueue for more information.

A.2.9. Changes in 1.4 Since 1.3

`@RabbitListener` Annotation

POJO listeners can be annotated with @RabbitListener, enabled by @EnableRabbit or <rabbit:annotation-driven />. Spring Framework 4.1 is required for this feature. See Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints for more information.

`RabbitMessagingTemplate` Added

A new RabbitMessagingTemplate lets you interact with RabbitMQ by using spring-messaging Message instances. Internally, it uses the RabbitTemplate, which you can configure as normal. Spring Framework 4.1 is required for this feature. See Messaging Integration for more information.

Listener Container `missingQueuesFatal` Attribute

1.3.5 introduced the missingQueuesFatal property on the SimpleMessageListenerContainer. This is now available on the listener container namespace element. See Message Listener Container Configuration.

RabbitTemplate `ConfirmCallback` Interface

The confirm method on this interface has an additional parameter called cause. When available, this parameter contains the reason for a negative acknowledgement (nack). See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns.

`RabbitConnectionFactoryBean` Added

RabbitConnectionFactoryBean creates the underlying RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory used by the CachingConnectionFactory. This enables configuration of SSL options using Spring’s dependency injection. See Configuring the Underlying Client Connection Factory.

Using `CachingConnectionFactory`

The CachingConnectionFactory now lets the connectionTimeout be set as a property or as an attribute in the namespace. It sets the property on the underlying RabbitMQ ConnectionFactory. See Configuring the Underlying Client Connection Factory.

Log Appender

The Logback org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.logback.AmqpAppender has been introduced. It provides options similar to org.springframework.amqp.rabbit.log4j.AmqpAppender. For more information, see the JavaDoc of these classes.

The Log4j AmqpAppender now supports the deliveryMode property (PERSISTENT or NON_PERSISTENT, default: PERSISTENT). Previously, all log4j messages were PERSISTENT.

The appender also supports modification of the Message before sending — allowing, for example, the addition of custom headers. Subclasses should override the postProcessMessageBeforeSend().

Listener Queues

The listener container now, by default, redeclares any missing queues during startup. A new auto-declare attribute has been added to the <rabbit:listener-container> to prevent these re-declarations. See auto-delete Queues.

`RabbitTemplate`: `mandatory` and `connectionFactorySelector` Expressions

The mandatoryExpression, sendConnectionFactorySelectorExpression, and receiveConnectionFactorySelectorExpression SpEL Expression`s properties have been added to RabbitTemplate. The mandatoryExpression is used to evaluate a mandatory boolean value against each request message when a ReturnCallback is in use. See Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns. The sendConnectionFactorySelectorExpression and receiveConnectionFactorySelectorExpression are used when an AbstractRoutingConnectionFactory is provided, to determine the lookupKey for the target ConnectionFactory at runtime on each AMQP protocol interaction operation. See Routing Connection Factory.

Listeners and the Routing Connection Factory

You can configure a SimpleMessageListenerContainer with a routing connection factory to enable connection selection based on the queue names. See Routing Connection Factory.

`RabbitTemplate`: `RecoveryCallback` Option

The recoveryCallback property has been added for use in the retryTemplate.execute(). See Adding Retry Capabilities.

`MessageConversionException` Change

This exception is now a subclass of AmqpException. Consider the following code:

try {
    template.convertAndSend("thing1", "thing2", "cat");
}
catch (AmqpException e) {
	...
}
catch (MessageConversionException e) {
	...
}

The second catch block is no longer reachable and needs to be moved above the catch-all AmqpException catch block.

RabbitMQ 3.4 Compatibility

Spring AMQP is now compatible with the RabbitMQ 3.4, including direct reply-to. See Compatibility and RabbitMQ Direct reply-to for more information.

`ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter` Added

The ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter has been introduced to select the MessageConverter to use, based on the contentType property in the MessageProperties. See Message Converters for more information.

A.2.10. Changes in 1.3 Since 1.2

Listener Concurrency

The listener container now supports dynamic scaling of the number of consumers based on workload, or you can programmatically change the concurrency without stopping the container. See Listener Concurrency.

Listener Queues

The listener container now permits the queues on which it listens to be modified at runtime. Also, the container now starts if at least one of its configured queues is available for use. See Listener Container Queues

This listener container now redeclares any auto-delete queues during startup. See auto-delete Queues.

Consumer Priority

The listener container now supports consumer arguments, letting the x-priority argument be set. See Consumer Priority.

Exclusive Consumer

You can now configure SimpleMessageListenerContainer with a single exclusive consumer, preventing other consumers from listening to the queue. See Exclusive Consumer.

Rabbit Admin

You can now have the broker generate the queue name, regardless of durable, autoDelete, and exclusive settings. See Configuring the Broker.

Direct Exchange Binding

Previously, omitting the key attribute from a binding element of a direct-exchange configuration caused the queue or exchange to be bound with an empty string as the routing key. Now it is bound with the the name of the provided Queue or Exchange. If you wish to bind with an empty string routing key, you need to specify key="".

`AmqpTemplate` Changes

The AmqpTemplate now provides several synchronous receiveAndReply methods. These are implemented by the RabbitTemplate. For more information see Receiving Messages.

The RabbitTemplate now supports configuring a RetryTemplate to attempt retries (with optional back-off policy) for when the broker is not available. For more information see Adding Retry Capabilities.

Caching Connection Factory

You can now configure the caching connection factory to cache Connection instances and their Channel instances instead of using a single connection and caching only Channel instances. See Connection and Resource Management.

Binding Arguments

The <binding> of the <exchange> now supports parsing of the <binding-arguments> sub-element. You can now configure the <binding> of the <headers-exchange> with a key/value attribute pair (to match on a single header) or with a <binding-arguments> sub-element (allowing matching on multiple headers). These options are mutually exclusive. See Headers Exchange.

Routing Connection Factory

A new SimpleRoutingConnectionFactory has been introduced. It allows configuration of ConnectionFactories mapping, to determine the target ConnectionFactory to use at runtime. See Routing Connection Factory.

`MessageBuilder` and `MessagePropertiesBuilder`

“Fluent APIs” for building messages or message properties are now provided. See Message Builder API.

`RetryInterceptorBuilder` Change

A “Fluent API” for building listener container retry interceptors is now provided. See Failures in Synchronous Operations and Options for Retry.

`RepublishMessageRecoverer` Added

This new MessageRecoverer is provided to allow publishing a failed message to another queue (including stack trace information in the header) when retries are exhausted. See Message Listeners and the Asynchronous Case.

Default Error Handler (Since 1.3.2)

A default ConditionalRejectingErrorHandler has been added to the listener container. This error handler detects fatal message conversion problems and instructs the container to reject the message to prevent the broker from continually redelivering the unconvertible message. See Exception Handling.

Listener Container 'missingQueuesFatal` Property (Since 1.3.5)

The SimpleMessageListenerContainer now has a property called missingQueuesFatal (default: true). Previously, missing queues were always fatal. See Message Listener Container Configuration.

A.2.11. Changes to 1.2 Since 1.1

RabbitMQ Version

Spring AMQP now uses RabbitMQ 3.1.x by default (but retains compatibility with earlier versions). Certain deprecations have been added for features no longer supported by RabbitMQ 3.1.x — federated exchanges and the immediate property on the RabbitTemplate.

Rabbit Admin

RabbitAdmin now provides an option to let exchange, queue, and binding declarations continue when a declaration fails. Previously, all declarations stopped on a failure. By setting ignore-declaration-exceptions, such exceptions are logged (at the WARN level), but further declarations continue. An example where this might be useful is when a queue declaration fails because of a slightly different ttl setting that would normally stop other declarations from proceeding.

RabbitAdmin now provides an additional method called getQueueProperties(). You can use this determine if a queue exists on the broker (returns null for a non-existent queue). In addition, it returns the current number of messages in the queue as well as the current number of consumers.

Rabbit Template

Previously, when the …sendAndReceive() methods were used with a fixed reply queue, two custom headers were used for correlation data and to retain and restore reply queue information. With this release, the standard message property (correlationId) is used by default, although you can specify a custom property to use instead. In addition, nested replyTo information is now retained internally in the template, instead of using a custom header.

The immediate property is deprecated. You must not set this property when using RabbitMQ 3.0.x or greater.

JSON Message Converters

A Jackson 2.x MessageConverter is now provided, along with the existing converter that uses Jackson 1.x.

Automatic Declaration of Queues and Other Items

Previously, when declaring queues, exchanges and bindings, you could not define which connection factory was used for the declarations. Each RabbitAdmin declared all components by using its connection.

Starting with this release, you can now limit declarations to specific RabbitAdmin instances. See Conditional Declaration.

AMQP Remoting

Facilities are now provided for using Spring remoting techniques, using AMQP as the transport for the RPC calls. For more information see Spring Remoting with AMQP

Requested Heart Beats

Several users have asked for the underlying client connection factory’s requestedHeartBeats property to be exposed on the Spring AMQP CachingConnectionFactory. This is now available. Previously, it was necessary to configure the AMQP client factory as a separate bean and provide a reference to it in the CachingConnectionFactory.

A.2.12. Changes to 1.1 Since 1.0

General

Spring-AMQP is now built with Gradle.

Adds support for publisher confirms and returns.

Adds support for HA queues and broker failover.

Adds support for dead letter exchanges and dead letter queues.

AMQP Log4j Appender

Adds an option to support adding a message ID to logged messages.

Adds an option to allow the specification of a Charset name to be used when converting String to byte[].

Spring AMQP

1. Preface

2. What’s New

2.1. Changes in 2.4 Since 2.3

2.1.1. @RabbitListener Changes

2.1.2. RabbitAdmin Changes

2.1.3. Remoting Support

2.1.4. Message Converter Changes

3. Introduction

3.1. Quick Tour for the impatient

3.1.1. Introduction

Compatibility

Very, Very Quick

With XML Configuration

With Java Configuration

With Spring Boot Auto Configuration and an Async POJO Listener

4. Reference

4.1. Using Spring AMQP

4.1.1. AMQP Abstractions

Message

Exchange

Queue

Binding

4.1.2. Connection and Resource Management

Choosing a Connection Factory

PooledChannelConnectionFactory

ThreadChannelConnectionFactory

CachingConnectionFactory

AddressResolver

Naming Connections

Blocked Connections and Resource Constraints

Configuring the Underlying Client Connection Factory

RabbitConnectionFactoryBean and Configuring SSL

Connecting to a Cluster

Routing Connection Factory

Queue Affinity and the LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory

Publisher Confirms and Returns

Connection and Channel Listeners

Logging Channel Close Events

Runtime Cache Properties

RabbitMQ Automatic Connection/Topology recovery

4.1.3. Adding Custom Client Connection Properties

4.1.4. AmqpTemplate

Adding Retry Capabilities

Publishing is Asynchronous — How to Detect Successes and Failures

Correlated Publisher Confirms and Returns

Scoped Operations

Strict Message Ordering in a Multi-Threaded Environment

Messaging Integration

Validated User Id

Using a Separate Connection

4.1.5. Sending Messages

Message Builder API

Publisher Returns

Batching

4.1.6. Receiving Messages

Polling Consumer

Asynchronous Consumer

Message Listener

MessageListenerAdapter

Container

Consumer Priority

auto-delete Queues

Batched Messages

Consumer Events

Consumer Tags

Annotation-driven Listener Endpoints

Meta-annotations

Enable Listener Endpoint Annotations

Message Conversion for Annotated Methods

Adding a Custom HandlerMethodArgumentResolver to @RabbitListener

Programmatic Endpoint Registration

Annotated Endpoint Method Signature

@RabbitListener @Payload Validation

Listening to Multiple Queues

Reply Management

Reply ContentType

Multi-method Listeners

@Repeatable @RabbitListener

Proxy @RabbitListener and Generics

2.1.1. `@RabbitListener` Changes

2.1.2. `RabbitAdmin` Changes

`Message`

`PooledChannelConnectionFactory`

`ThreadChannelConnectionFactory`

`CachingConnectionFactory`

`RabbitConnectionFactoryBean` and Configuring SSL

Queue Affinity and the `LocalizedQueueConnectionFactory`

4.1.4. `AmqpTemplate`

`MessageListenerAdapter`

`auto-delete` Queues

Adding a Custom `HandlerMethodArgumentResolver` to @RabbitListener

`@Repeatable` `@RabbitListener`

Proxy `@RabbitListener` and Generics

Asynchronous `@RabbitListener` Return Types

`SimpleMessageConverter`

Converting From a `Message`

Converting To a `Message`

`SerializerMessageConverter`

Converting to a `Message`

Converting from a `Message`

Converting From a `Message` With `RabbitTemplate`

`MarshallingMessageConverter`

`Jackson2XmlMessageConverter`

`ContentTypeDelegatingMessageConverter`

A Note On the `id` and `name` Attributes

`AnonymousQueue`

Using `RabbitTransactionManager`

Using `DirectMessageListenerContainer`