Can I have each consumer receive the same messages? Ie, both consumers get message 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6? What is this called in AMQP/RabbitMQ speak? How is it normally configured?
No, not if the consumers are on the same queue. From RabbitMQ's AMQP Concepts guide:
it is important to understand that, in AMQP 0-9-1, messages are load balanced between consumers.
This seems to imply that round-robin behavior within a queue is a given, and not configurable. Ie, separate queues are required in order to have the same message ID be handled by multiple consumers.
Is this commonly done? Should I just have the exchange route the message into two separate queues, with a single consumer, instead?
No it's not, single queue/multiple consumers with each each consumer handling the same message ID isn't possible. Having the exchange route the message onto into two separate queues is indeed better.
As I don't require too complex routing, a fanout exchange will handle this nicely. I didn't focus too much on Exchanges earlier as node-amqp has the concept of a 'default exchange' allowing you to publish messages to a connection directly, however most AMQP messages are published to a specific exchange.
Here's my fanout exchange, both sending and receiving:
var amqp = require('amqp');
var connection = amqp.createConnection({ host: "localhost", port: 5672 });
var count = 1;
connection.on('ready', function () {
connection.exchange("my_exchange", options={type:'fanout'}, function(exchange) {
var sendMessage = function(exchange, payload) {
console.log('about to publish')
var encoded_payload = JSON.stringify(payload);
exchange.publish('', encoded_payload, {})
}
// Recieve messages
connection.queue("my_queue_name", function(queue){
console.log('Created queue')
queue.bind(exchange, '');
queue.subscribe(function (message) {
console.log('subscribed to queue')
var encoded_payload = unescape(message.data)
var payload = JSON.parse(encoded_payload)
console.log('Recieved a message:')
console.log(payload)
})
})
setInterval( function() {
var test_message = 'TEST '+count
sendMessage(exchange, test_message)
count += 1;
}, 2000)
})
})
Your question is a bit messy but Let's see its bits one by one.
General concept:
The Java Message Service (JMS) API is a Java Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) API for sending messages between two or more clients. JMS is a part of the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition, and is defined by a specification developed under the Java Community Process as JSR 914. It is a messaging standard that allows application components based on the Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) to create, send, receive, and read messages. It allows the communication between different components of a distributed application to be loosely coupled, reliable, and asynchronous.
Now (from Wikipedia):
The Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) is an open standard application layer protocol for message-oriented middleware. The
defining features of AMQP are message orientation, queuing, routing
(including point-to-point and publish-and-subscribe), reliability and
security.
And the most important thing (again from Wikipedia):
Unlike JMS, which merely defines an API, AMQP is a wire-level
protocol. A wire-level protocol is a description of the format of the
data that is sent across the network as a stream of octets.
Consequently any tool that can create and interpret messages that
conform to this data format can interoperate with any other compliant
tool irrespective of implementation language
Some important things you should know:
- Keep in mind that AMQP is a messaging technology that do not implement the JMS API.
- JMS is API and AMQP is a protocol.So it doesn't make sense to say that what is default protocol of JMS, of course client
applications use HTTP/S as the connection protocol when invoking a
WebLogic Web Service.
- JMS is only a API spec. It doesn't use any protocol. A JMS provider (like ActiveMQ) could be using any underlying protocol to
realize the JMS API. For ex: Apache ActiveMQ can use any of the
following protocols: AMQP, MQTT, OpenWire, REST(HTTP), RSS and Atom,
Stomp, WSIF, WS Notification, XMPP. I suggest you read Using
JMS Transport as the Connection Protocol.
Good Luck :)
Best Answer
When rolling out the first version of your app, probably nothing: your needs are well defined and you will develop a messaging system that will fit your needs: small feature list, small source code etc.
Those tools are very useful after the first release, when you actually have to extend your application and add more features to it. Let me give you a few use cases:
at the beginning you had 3 machine inside a lan, no noticeable delays everything gets to every machine. your client/boss/pointy-haired-devil-boss shows up and tell you that you will install the app on WAN you do not manage - and then you start having connection failures, bad latency etc. you need to store message and retry sending them later on: go back to the code and plug this stuff in (and enjoy)
messages sent need to have replies, but not all of them: you send some parameters in and expect a spreadsheet as a result instead of just sending and acknowledges, go back to code and plug this stuff in (and enjoy.)
And many other use cases that I forgot ...
You can implement it yourself, but do not spend much time doing so: you will probably replace it later on anyway.