Messaging with RabbitMQ and .NET review part 9: headers

Introduction

In the previous post we looked at two ways to filter messages from an exchange to one or more queues bound to it. Routing keys provide a simple mechanism where the routing key of the message, such as “asia” is forwarded to all queues that also have a routing key “asia”. In other words the filtering is based on a direct string comparison. The Topic message exchange pattern is a more sophisticated variant where the ‘*’ and ‘#’ placeholders let you fine-tune the binding rule between an exchange and a queue. We can also bind multiple queues to the same exchange with varying routing keys.

In this post we’ll look at one more message filtering technique called headers which is in fact very similar to the topic MEP. The headers MEP offers a very fine-grained way to set up the binding rules between the exchange and the queue(s).

Headers

The Headers exchange pattern is very similar to Topics we saw in the previous part of this series. The sender sends a message to RabbitMq. The message is routed based on the header values. All queues with a matching key will receive the message. We dedicate an exchange to deliver the messages but the routing key will be ignored as it is the headers that will be the basis for the match. We can specify more than one header and a rule that says if all headers or just one of them must match using the “x-match” property which can have 2 values: “any” or “all”. The default value of this property is “all” so all headers must match for a queue to receive a message.

We’ll be using the same demo console application as throughout this course to demonstrate the concept. Here’s the code that sets up the exchange, the queue and the bindings and also sends several messages:

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using RabbitMQ.Client;
using RabbitMQ.Client.MessagePatterns;
using RabbitMQ.Client.Events;
using System.Threading;

namespace RabbitMqNetTests
{
	class Program
	{
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			SetUpHeadersExchange();
		}
		private static void SetUpHeadersExchange()
		{
			ConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();

			connectionFactory.Port = 5672;
			connectionFactory.HostName = "localhost";
			connectionFactory.UserName = "accountant";
			connectionFactory.Password = "accountant";
			connectionFactory.VirtualHost = "accounting";

			IConnection connection = connectionFactory.CreateConnection();
			IModel channel = connection.CreateModel();

			channel.ExchangeDeclare("company.exchange.headers", ExchangeType.Headers, true, false, null);
			channel.QueueDeclare("company.queue.headers", true, false, false, null);
			Dictionary<string, object> headerOptionsWithAll = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			headerOptionsWithAll.Add("x-match", "all");
			headerOptionsWithAll.Add("category", "animal");
			headerOptionsWithAll.Add("type", "mammal");

			channel.QueueBind("company.queue.headers", "company.exchange.headers", "", headerOptionsWithAll);

			Dictionary<string, object> headerOptionsWithAny = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			headerOptionsWithAny.Add("x-match", "any");
			headerOptionsWithAny.Add("category", "plant");
			headerOptionsWithAny.Add("type", "tree");

			channel.QueueBind("company.queue.headers", "company.exchange.headers", "", headerOptionsWithAny);

			IBasicProperties properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			Dictionary<string, object> messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "animal");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "insect");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			PublicationAddress address = new PublicationAddress(ExchangeType.Headers, "company.exchange.headers", "");
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of insects"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "animal");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "mammal");
			messageHeaders.Add("mood", "awesome");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of awesome mammals"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "animal");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "mammal");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of mammals"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "animal");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of animals"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "fungi");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "champignon");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of fungi"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "plant");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of plants"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("category", "plant");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "tree");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of trees"));

			properties = channel.CreateBasicProperties();
			messageHeaders = new Dictionary<string, object>();
			messageHeaders.Add("mood", "sad");
			messageHeaders.Add("type", "tree");
			properties.Headers = messageHeaders;
			channel.BasicPublish(address, properties, Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes("Hello from the world of sad trees"));

			channel.Close();
			connection.Close();
		}
	}
}

We set up the exchange called “company.exchange.headers” and declare it as type Headers. We then create a queue called “company.queue.headers”. We supply the QueueBind with a dictionary of headers. In fact we have two bindings: one where all headers must match between the message and the queue and one where the match is based on any of the headers. Then we publish 8 messages in total. Each message has its own set of headers declared by the Headers property of IBasicProperties. Note that the code binds a single queue with different header settings to the same exchange. It’s equally feasible to create 2 queues where each queue will have its own listener and set of headers.

If you run the code then you’ll see the bindings in the RabbitMq console:

The management UI is also suggesting that 5 of the 8 messages were routed to the queue:

The consumer’s code is the same as what we saw before. The only difference is the queue name and that we also print each header key and value. Note that each header value is transmitted as type object which must be cast to a byte array. The byte array can be then converted into a string:

using RabbitMQ.Client;
using RabbitMQ.Client.Events;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace RabbitMq.OneWayMessage.Receiver
{
	class Program
	{
		static void Main(string[] args)
		{
			ReceiveMessagesWithEvents();
		}

		private static void ReceiveMessagesWithEvents()
		{
			ConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();

			connectionFactory.Port = 5672;
			connectionFactory.HostName = "localhost";
			connectionFactory.UserName = "accountant";
			connectionFactory.Password = "accountant";
			connectionFactory.VirtualHost = "accounting";

			IConnection connection = connectionFactory.CreateConnection();
			IModel channel = connection.CreateModel();
			channel.BasicQos(0, 1, false);
			EventingBasicConsumer eventingBasicConsumer = new EventingBasicConsumer(channel);

			eventingBasicConsumer.Received += (sender, basicDeliveryEventArgs) =>
			{
				IBasicProperties basicProperties = basicDeliveryEventArgs.BasicProperties;
				Console.WriteLine("Message received by the event based consumer. Check the debug window for details.");
				Debug.WriteLine(string.Concat("Message received from the exchange ", basicDeliveryEventArgs.Exchange));
				Debug.WriteLine(string.Concat("Message: ", Encoding.UTF8.GetString(basicDeliveryEventArgs.Body)));
				StringBuilder headersBuilder = new StringBuilder();
				headersBuilder.Append("Headers: ").Append(Environment.NewLine);
				foreach (var kvp in basicProperties.Headers)
				{
					headersBuilder.Append(kvp.Key).Append(": ").Append(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(kvp.Value as byte[])).Append(Environment.NewLine);
				}
				Debug.WriteLine(headersBuilder.ToString());
				channel.BasicAck(basicDeliveryEventArgs.DeliveryTag, false);				
			};	
			
			channel.BasicConsume("company.queue.headers", false, eventingBasicConsumer);
		}
	}
}

…and here are the 5 messages routed to the queue:

Message received from the exchange company.exchange.headers
Message: Hello from the world of awesome mammals
Headers:
category: animal
type: mammal
mood: awesome

Message received from the exchange company.exchange.headers
Message: Hello from the world of mammals
Headers:
category: animal
type: mammal

Message received from the exchange company.exchange.headers
Message: Hello from the world of plants
Headers:
category: plant

Message received from the exchange company.exchange.headers
Message: Hello from the world of trees
Headers:
category: plant
type: tree

Message received from the exchange company.exchange.headers
Message: Hello from the world of sad trees
Headers:
mood: sad
type: tree

The messages from “insects”, “fungi” and “animals” were discarded as their routing patterns didn’t match any of the bindings we set up above.

There’s one more message exchange pattern we haven’t looked at so far: scatter/gather. We’ll do that in the next post.

View the list of posts on Messaging here.