RabbitMQ Exchanges

When a producer creates a new message that is not directly sent to a queue, it is published to exchanges. Exchange accepts messages from the producer application and routes them to message queues with the help of header attributes, bindings, and routing keys.

A binding is a rule that distributes message copies to queues.

The routing key is a message attribute. The exchange looks at this key when deciding how to route the message to queues (depending on the exchange type).

See RabbitMQ documentation to learn more.

Fanout

A fanout exchange routes messages to all of the queues that are bound to it and the routing key is ignored.

Note

This type of exchange is used by the default configuration. If no queues and no exchanges were configured for RabbitMQ when the first message was sent by producer, a new queue with the name oro.default and a new exchange with the name oro.default and type fanout is created.

Example:

# declare `oro.default` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" type="fanout" durable=true

# declare `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.default` exchange to `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.default" destination="oro.default" destination_type="queue"

Direct

A direct exchange delivers messages to queues based on the message routing key.

Note

Configure alternate exchange to be able to route messages to the oro.default queue that does not fall under the binding rule.

Example:

# declare `oro.alternate` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.alternate" type="fanout" durable=true

# decalre `oro.default` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" type="direct" durable=true arguments='{"alternate-exchange": "oro.alternate"}'

# declare `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.alternate` exchange to `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.alternate" destination="oro.default" destination_type="queue"

# declare `oro.email` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.email" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.default` exchange to `oro.email` queue by routing key `oro.email.send_auto_response`
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.default" destination="oro.email" destination_type="queue" \
routing_key="oro.email.send_auto_response"

Topic

A topic exchange routes messages to one or many queues based on the matching between the routing key message and the pattern that was used to bind the queue to the exchange.

Note

Configure alternate exchange to be able to route messages to oro.default queue that does not fall under the binding rule.

Example:

# declare `oro.alternate` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.alternate" type="fanout" durable=true

# decalre `oro.default` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" type="topic" durable=true arguments='{"alternate-exchange": "oro.alternate"}'

# declare `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.alternate` exchange to `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.alternate" destination="oro.default" destination_type="queue"

# declare `oro.email` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.email" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.default` exchange to `oro.email` queue by mask `oro.email.#`
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.default" destination="oro.email" destination_type="queue" \
routing_key="oro.email.#"

Headers

A headers exchange is designed for routing on multiple attributes that are more easily expressed as message headers than a routing key. Headers exchanges ignore the routing key attribute. Instead, the attributes used for routing are taken from the headers attribute.

Example:

# declare `oro.alternate` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.alternate" type="fanout" durable=true

# decalre `oro.default` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" type="headers" durable=true \
arguments='{"alternate-exchange": "oro.alternate"}'

# declare `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.alternate` exchange to `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.alternate" destination="oro.default" destination_type="queue"

# declare `oro.search` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.search" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.default` exchange to `oro.search` queue with arguments
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.default" destination="oro.search" destination_type="queue" \
arguments='{"oro.message_queue.client.topic_name": "oro.website.search.indexer.reindex"}'

Delayed Message

A delayed message exchange route messages to the queue or to another exchange with delay described in the x-delay argument.

Exchange has type x-delayed-message and contains a special argument x-delayed-type which indicates how the exchange should behave.

Delayed Message Exchange is a RabbitMQ community plugin.

Example:

# declare `oro.default.delayed` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default.delayed" type="x-delayed-message" durable=true \
arguments='{"x-delayed-type": "fanout"}'

# declare `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.default.delayed` exachange with `oro.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.default.delayed" destination="oro.default" destination_type=queue

$message = new Message();
$message->setDelay(30);

$this->messageProducer->send(SampleTopicName::getName(), $message);

Dead Letter

If an error has occurred during message processing or no matching queue can be found for the message, it can be republished to the Dead Letter Exchange instead of getting silently dropped.

It can be used as an alternative to Delayed Message Exchange which comes out-of-the-box.

Example:

# declare `oro.dlx.default` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.dlx.default" type="fanout" durable=true

# declare `oro.dlx.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.dlx.default" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.dlx.default` exachange with type `fanout` to `oro.dlx.default` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.dlx.default" destination="oro.dlx.default" destination_type=queue

# declare `oro.dlx.delayed` exchange
rabbitmqadmin declare exchange --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.dlx.delayed" type="fanout" durable=true \
arguments='{"x-delayed-type": "fanout"}'

# declare `oro.dlx.delayed` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare queue --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
name="oro.dlx.delayed" durable=true arguments='{"x-max-priority": 4}'

# bind `oro.dlx.delayed` exachange with type `fanout` to `oro.dlx.delayed` queue
rabbitmqadmin declare binding --host=$HOST --user=$USER --password=$PASSWORD --vhost=$VHOST \
source="oro.dlx.delayed" destination="oro.dlx.delayed" destination_type=queue

# set policy for `oro.dlx.default` queue
rabbitmqctl set_policy -p $VHOST DLX "oro.dlx.default" '{"dead-letter-exchange": "oro.dlx.delayed"}' \
--apply-to queues

For more information, see the following external resources:

• RabbitMQ AMQP Model Explained