This guide covers the use of exchanges according to the AMQP 0.9.1 specification including message publishing, common usage scenarios and how to accomplish typical operations using the Ruby amqp gem. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (including images and stylesheets). The source is available on Github.
This guide covers Ruby amqp gem 1.0.×.
An exchange accepts messages from a producer application and routes them to message queues. They can be thought of as the “mailboxes” of the AMQP world. Unlike some other messaging middleware products and protocols, in AMQP, messages are not published directly to queues. Messages are published to exchanges that route them to queue(s) using pre-arranged criteria called bindings.
There are multiple exchange types in the AMQP 0.9.1 specification, each with its own routing semantics. Custom exchange types can be created to deal with sophisticated routing scenarios (e.g. routing based on geolocation data or edge cases) or just for convenience.
A binding is an association between a queue and an exchange. A queue must be bound to at least one exchange in order to receive messages from publishers. Learn more about bindings in the Bindings guide.
Exchanges have several attributes associated with them:
There are four built-in exchange types in AMQP v0.9.1:
As stated previously, each exchange type has its own routing semantics and new exchange types can be added by extending brokers with plugins. Custom exchange types begin with “x-”, much like custom HTTP headers, e.g. x-recent-history exchange or x-random exchange.
Before we start looking at various exchange types and their routing semantics, we need to introduce message attributes. Every AMQP message has a number of attributes. Some attributes are important and used very often, others are rarely used. AMQP message attributes are metadata and are similar in purpose to HTTP request and response headers.
Every AMQP 0.9.1 message has an attribute called routing key. The routing key is an “address” that the exchange may use to decide how to route the message . This is similar to, but more generic than, a URL in HTTP. Most exchange types use the routing key to implement routing logic, but some ignore it and use other criteria (e.g. message content).
A fanout exchange routes messages to all of the queues that are bound to it and the routing key is ignored. If N queues are bound to a fanout exchange, when a new message is published to that exchange a copy of the message is delivered to all N queues. Fanout exchanges are ideal for the broadcast routing of messages.
Graphically this can be represented as:

There are two ways to declare a fanout exchange:
Here are two examples to demonstrate:
exchange = AMQP::Exchange.new(channel, :fanout, "nodes.metadata")
exchange = channel.fanout("nodes.metadata")
Both methods asynchronously declare a queue. Because the declaration necessitates a network round-trip, publishing operations on AMQP::Exchange instances are delayed until the broker reply (`exchange.declare-ok`) is received.
Also, both methods let you pass a block to run a piece of code when the broker responds with an `exchange.declare-ok` (meaning that the exchange has been successfully declared).
channel.fanout("nodes.metadata") do |exchange|
# exchange is declared and ready to be used.
end
To demonstrate fanout routing behavior we can declare ten server-named exclusive queues, bind them all to one fanout exchange and then publish a message to the exchange:
exchange = channel.topic("amqpgem.examples.routing.fanout_routing", :auto_delete => true)
10.times do
q = channel.queue("", :exclusive => true, :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange)
q.subscribe do |payload|
puts "Queue #{q.name} received #{payload}"
end
end
# Publish some test data after all queues are declared and bound
EventMachine.add_timer(1.2) { exchange.publish "Hello, fanout exchanges world!" }
When run, this example produces the following output:
Queue amq.gen-0p/BjxGNCue42RcJhpUrdg== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-3GXULvZuYh1KsOD83yvlNg== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-4EcyydTfoZzXjNSSLsh09Q== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-B1isyTpR5svB6ClQ2TQEBQ== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-FwLLioB7Mk4LGA4yJ1Mo7A== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-OtBQokiA/DmNkB5bPzaRig== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-RYHQUrj3yihb0DRF7KVpRg== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-SZJ40mGwbhdcbOGeHMhUkg== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-sDeVZg9Vx1knq+n9EMi8tA== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Queue amq.gen-uWOuVaosW4bWAHqKG6pZVw== received Hello, fanout exchanges world!
Each of the queues bound to the exchange receives a copy of the message.
Full example:
Because a fanout exchange delivers a copy of a message to every queue bound to it, its use cases are quite similar:
AMQP 0.9.1 brokers must implement a fanout exchange type and pre-declare one instance with the name of “amq.fanout”.
Applications can rely on that exchange always being available to them. Each vhost has a separate instance of that exchange, it is not shared across vhosts for obvious reasons.
A direct exchange delivers messages to queues based on a message routing key, an attribute that every AMQP v0.9.1 message contains.
Here is how it works:
A direct exchange is ideal for the unicast routing of messages (although they can be used for multicast routing as well).
Here is a graphical representation:

There are two ways to declare a direct exchange:
Here are two examples to demonstrate:
exchange = AMQP::Exchange.new(channel, :direct, "nodes.metadata")
exchange = channel.direct("nodes.metadata")
Both methods asynchronously declare a queue. Because the declaration necessitates a network round trip, publishing operations on AMQP::Exchange instances are delayed until a broker reply (`exchange.declare-ok`) is received.
Also, both methods let you pass a block to run a piece of code when the broker responds with `exchange.declare-ok` (meaning that the exchange has been successfully declared).
channel.direct("pages.content.extraction") do |exchange|
# exchange is declared and ready to be used.
end
Since direct exchanges use the message routing key for routing, message producers need to specify it:
exchange.publish("Hello, direct exchanges world!", :routing_key => "amqpgem.examples.queues.shared")
The routing key will then be compared for equality with routing keys on bindings, and consumers that subscribed with the same routing key each get a copy of the message:
Full example:
Direct exchanges are often used to distribute tasks between multiple workers (instances of the same application) in a round robin manner. When doing so, it is important to understand that, in AMQP 0.9.1, messages are load balanced between consumers and not between queues.
The Ruby amqp gem historically has a limitation that only one consumer (message handler) is allowed per AMQP::Queue instance, however, this limitation will be addressed in the future. With the amqp gem 0.8.x, if you want to load balance messages between multiple consumers in the same application/OS process, then you need to use a separate channel for each of the consumers.
The Working With Queues and Patterns and Use Cases guides provide more information on this subject.
AMQP 0.9.1 brokers must implement a direct exchange type and pre-declare two instances:
Applications can rely on those exchanges always being available to them. Each vhost has separate instances of those
exchanges, they are not shared across vhosts for obvious reasons.
The default exchange is a direct exchange with no name (the amqp gem refers to it using an empty string) pre-declared by the broker. It has one special property that makes it very useful for simple applications, namely that every queue is automatically bound to it with a routing key which is the same as the queue name.
For example, when you declare a queue with the name of “search.indexing.online”, the AMQP broker will bind it to the default exchange using “search.indexing.online” as the routing key. Therefore a message published to the default exchange with routing key = “search.indexing.online” will be routed to the queue “search.indexing.online”. In other words, the default exchange makes it seem like it is possible to deliver messages directly to queues, even though that is not technically what is happening.
The amqp gem offers two ways of obtaining a reference to the default exchange:
AMQP::Exchange#initialize can also be used, but requires more coding effort and it offers no benefits over instance methods on AMQP::Channel in this particular case.
Some examples of usage:
exchange = AMQP::Exchange.new(channel, :direct, "")
exchange = channel.default_exchange
exchange = channel.direct("")
The default exchange is used by the “Hello, World” example:
Additionally, the routing example above can be rewritten to use the default exchange:
Direct exchanges can be used in a wide variety of cases:
Topic exchanges route messages to one or many queues based on matching between a message routing key and the pattern that was used to bind a queue to an exchange. The topic exchange type is often used to implement various publish/subscribe pattern variations.
Topic exchanges are commonly used for the multicast routing of messages.
![]()
Topic exchanges can be used for broadcast routing, but fanout exchanges are usually more efficient for this use case.
Two classic examples of topic-based routing are stock price updates and location-specific data (for instance, weather broadcasts). Consumers indicate which topics they are interested in (think of it like subscribing to a feed for an individual tag of your favourite blog as opposed to the full feed). The routing is enabled by specifying a routing pattern_ to the AMQP::Queue#bind method, for example:
channel.queue("americas.south").bind(exchange, :routing_key => "americas.south.#").subscribe do |headers, payload|
puts "An update for South America: #{payload}, routing key is #{headers.routing_key}"
end
In the example above we bind a queue with the name of “americas.south” to the topic exchange declared earlier using the AMQP::Queue#bind method. This means that only messages with a routing key matching “americas.south.#” will be routed to the “americas.south” queue.
A routing pattern consists of several words separated by dots, in a similar way to URI path segments being joined by slash. A few of examples:
The following routing keys match the “americas.south.#” pattern:
In other words, the “#” part of the pattern matches 0 or more words.
For the pattern “americas.south.*”, some matching routing keys are:
but not
As you can see, the “*” part of the pattern matches 1 word only.
Full example:
Topic exchanges have a very broad set of use cases. Whenever a problem involves multiple consumers/applications that selectively choose which type of messages they want to receive, the use of topic exchanges should be considered. To name a few examples:
With the Ruby amqp gem, exchanges can be declared in two ways:
The previous sections on specific exchange types (direct, fanout, headers, etc.) provide plenty of examples of how these methods can be used.
To publish a message to an AMQP exchange, use AMQP::Exchange#publish:
exchange.publish("Some payload")
AMQP::Exchange#publish can accept any object that responds to the `to_s` method, not just string instances:
The message payload is completely opaque to the library and is not modified in any way.
You are encouraged to take care of data serialization before publishing (i.e. by using JSON, Thrift, Protocol Buffers or some other serialization library). Note that because AMQP is a binary protocol, text formats like JSON largely lose their advantage of being easy to inspect as data travels across the network, so consider using BSON instead.
A few popular options for data serialization are:
AMQP messages have various metadata attributes that can be set when a message is published. Some of the attributes are well-known and mentioned in the AMQP 0.9.1 specification, others are specific to a particular application. Well-known attributes are listed here as options that AMQP::Exchange#publish takes:
All other attributes can be added to a headers table (in Ruby parlance, headers hash) that AMQP::Exchange#publish accepts as the “:headers” argument.
An example to show how message metadata attributes are passed to AMQP::Exchange#publish:
It is recommended that application authors use well-known message attributes when applicable instead of relying on custom headers or placing information in the message body. For example, if your application messages have priority, publishing timestamp, type and content type, you should use the respective AMQP message attributes instead of reinventing the wheel.
In some scenarios it is useful for consumers to be able to know the identity of the user who published a message. RabbitMQ implements a feature known as validated User ID. If this property is set by a publisher, its value must be the same as the name of the user used to open the connection. If the user-id property is not set, the publisher’s identity is not validated and remains private.
Sometimes it is convenient to execute an operation after publishing a message. For this, AMQP::Exchange#publish provides an optional callback. It is important to clear up some expectations of when exactly it is run and how it is related to topics of message delivery reliability and so on.
exchange.publish(payload, :persistent => true, :type => "reports.done") do # ... end
A common expectation of the code above is that it is run after the message “has been sent”, or even “has been delivered”. Unfortunately, neither of these expectations can be met by the Ruby amqp gem alone. Message publishing happens in several steps:
As you can see, “when data is sent” is a complicated issue and while methods to flush buffers certainly exist on various platforms, doing so in a cross-platform way that includes the JVM (that EventMachine also runs on) is non-trivial. In addition, even flushing buffers does not guarantee that the data was received by the broker because it might have crashed while data was travelling down the wire. The only way to reliably know whether data was received by the broker or a peer application is to use message acknowledgements. This is how TCP works and this approach is proven to work at enormous scale of the modern Internet. AMQP (the protocol) fully embraces this fact and the amqp gem follows.
Given all of this, you may ask ‘when does the AMQP::Exchange#publish callback fire?’ The answer is on the next event loop tick. By then the data is pushed down to the OS kernel. As far as the Ruby library is concerned, it is reasonably safe behavior.
The AMQP::Exchange#publish callback is fired on the next event loop tick. Data is staged for delivery immediately. Applications MUST NOT assume that by the time the callback has fired, the data is guaranteed to leave the local machine networking stack, reach the AMQP broker or any peer applications that the message needs to be routed to.
In cases when you cannot afford to lose a single message, AMQP 0.9.1 applications can use one (or a combination of) the following protocol features:
A more detailed overview of the pros and cons of each option can be found in a blog post that introduces Publisher Confirms extension by the RabbitMQ team. The next sections of this guide will describe how the features above can be used with the Ruby amqp gem.
When publishing messages, it is possible to use the “:mandatory” option to publish a message as “mandatory”. When a mandatory message cannot be routed to any queue (for example, there are no bindings or none of the bindings match), the message is returned to the producer.
The following code example demonstrates a message that is published as mandatory but cannot be routed (no bindings) and thus is returned back to the producer:
When a message is returned, the application that produced it can handle that message in different ways:
Returned messages contain information about the exchange they were published to. For convenience, the amqp gem associates returned message callbacks with AMQP::Exchange instances. To handle returned messages, use AMQP::Exchange#on_return:
exchange.on_return do |basic_return, metadata, payload|
puts "#{payload} was returned! reply_code = #{basic_return.reply_code}, reply_text = #{basic_return.reply_text}"
end
A returned message handler has access to AMQP method (basic.return) information, message metadata and payload. The metadata and message body are returned without modifications so that the application can store the message for later redelivery.
Messages potentially spend some time in the queues to which they were routed before they are consumed. During this period of time, the broker may crash or experience a restart. To survive it, messages must be persisted to disk. This has a negative effect on performance, especially with network attached storage like NAS devices and Amazon EBS. AMQP 0.9.1 lets applications trade off performance for durability, or vice versa, on a message-by-message basis.
To publish a persistent message, use the “:persistent” option that AMQP::Exchange#publish accepts:
exchange.publish(payload, :persistent => true)
Durability and Message Persistence provides more information on the subject.
When using amqp gem in multi-threaded environments, the rule of thumb is: avoid sharing AMQP::Channel instances across threads.
Starting with 0.8.0.RC14, AMQP::Exchange#publish synchronizes data delivery on the channel object associated with exchange. This protects application developers from the most common problems related to publishing messages on a shared channel from multiple threads, however, by no means protects from every possible concurrency hazard.
The following example publishes a message and safely closes the AMQP connection afterwards by passing a block to AMQP::Exchange#publish :
Now that message attributes and publishing have been introduced, it is time to take a look at one more core exchange type in AMQP 0.9.1. It is called headers exchange type and is quite powerful.
The best way to explain headers-based routing is with an example. Imagine a distributed continuous integration system that distributes builds across multiple machines with different hardware architectures (x86, IA-64, AMD64, ARM family and so on) and operating systems. It strives to provide a way for a community to contribute machines to run tests on and a nice build matrix like the one WebKit uses. One key problem such systems face is build distribution. It would be nice if a messaging broker could figure out which machine has which OS, architecture or combination of the two and route build request messages accordingly.
A headers exchange is designed to help in situations like this by routing on multiple attributes that are more easily expressed as message metadata attributes (headers) rather than a routing key string.
Headers exchanges route messages based on message header matching. Headers exchanges ignore the routing key attribute. Instead, the attributes used for routing are taken from the “headers” attribute. When a queue is bound to a headers exchange, the “:arguments” attribute is used to define matching rules:
# when binding to a headers exchange, :arguments parameter is used to specify matching rules
@channel.queue("", :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange, :arguments => { :os => 'linux' })
When matching on one header, a message is considered matching if the value of the header equals the value specified upon binding. Using the example above,
some messages that match would be:
exchange.publish "For linux/IA64", :headers => { :arch => "IA64", :os => 'linux' }
exchange.publish "For linux/x86", :headers => { :arch => "x86", :os => 'linux' }
exchange.publish "For any linux", :headers => { :os => 'linux' }
The following example demonstrates matching on integer values:
# consumer part
@channel.queue("", :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange, :arguments => { :cores => 8 })
# ...
# producer part
exchange.publish "For ocotocore", :headers => { :cores => 8 }
Matching on hashes (in AMQP 0.9.1 parlance – attribute tables) is also supported:
# consumer part
channel.queue("", :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange, :arguments => { :package => { :name => 'riak', :version => '0.14.2' } })
# ...
# producer part
exchange.publish "For nodes with Riak 0.14.2", :headers => { :package => { :name => 'riak', :version => '0.14.2' } }
It is possible to bind a queue to a headers exchange using more than one header for matching. In this case, the broker needs one more piece of information from the application developer, namely, should it consider messages with any of the headers matching, or all of them? This is what the “x-match” binding argument is for:
channel.queue("", :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange, :arguments => { 'x-match' => 'all', :arch => "ia64", :os => 'linux' })
In the example above, only messages that have an “arch” header value equal to “ia64” and an “os” header value equal to “linux” will be considered matching.
channel.queue("", :auto_delete => true).bind(exchange, :arguments => { 'x-match' => 'any', :os => 'macosx', :cores => 8 })
When the “x-match” argument is set to “any”, just one matching header value is sufficient. So in the example above, any message with a “cores” header value equal to 8 will be considered matching.
TBD
There are two ways to declare a headers exchange:
Here are two examples to demonstrate:
exchange = AMQP::Exchange.new(channel, :headers, "builds")
exchange = channel.headers("builds")
Both methods asynchronously declare a queue. Because declaration necessitates a network round trip, publishing operations on AMQP::Exchange instances are delayed until the broker reply (`exchange.declare-ok`) is received.
Both methods let you pass a block to run a piece of code when the broker responds with `exchange.declare-ok` (meaning that the exchange has been successfully declared).
channel.headers("builds") do |exchange|
# exchange is declared and ready to be used.
end
When there is just one queue bound to a headers exchange, messages are routed to it if any or all of the message headers match those specified upon binding. Whether it is “any header” or “all of them” depends on the “x-match” header value. In the case of multiple queues, a headers exchange will deliver a copy of a message to each queue, just like direct exchanges do. Distribution rules between consumers on a particular queue are the same as for a direct exchange.
Full example:
Headers exchanges can be looked upon as “direct exchanges on steroids” and because they route based on header values, they can be used as direct exchanges where the routing key does not have to be a string; it could be an integer or a hash (dictionary) for example.
Some specific use cases:
AMQP 0.9.1 brokers should (as defined by IETF RFC 2119) implement a headers exchange type and pre-declare one instance with the name of “amq.match”. RabbitMQ also pre-declares one instance with the name of “amq.headers”. Applications can rely on that exchange always being available to them. Each vhost has a separate instance of those exchanges and they are not shared across vhosts for obvious reasons.
The x-random AMQP exchange type is a custom exchange type developed as a RabbitMQ plugin by Jon Brisbin. To quote from the project README:
It is basically a direct exchange, with the exception that, instead of each consumer bound to that exchange with the same routing key getting a copy of the message, the exchange type randomly selects a queue to route to.
This plugin is licensed under Mozilla Public License 1.1, same as RabbitMQ.
The x-recent-history AMQP exchange type is a customer exchange type implemented as a RabbitMQ plugin by Alvaro Videla, one of the authors of RabbitMQ in action.
This plugin is licensed under the MIT license.
Please refer to Vendor-specific extensions to AMQP 0.9.1 spec
Consumer applications (applications that receive and process messages) may occasionally fail to process individual messages, or might just crash. Additionally, network issues might be experienced. This raises a question – “when should the AMQP broker remove messages from queues?” This topic is covered in depth in the Working With Queues guide, including prefetching and examples.
In this guide, we will only mention how message acknowledgements are related to AMQP transactions and the Publisher Confirms extension. Let us consider a publisher application (P) that communications with a consumer © using AMQP 0.9.1. Their communication can be graphically represented like this:
----- ----- -----
| | S1 | | S2 | |
| P | ====> | B | ====> | C |
| | | | | |
----- ----- -----
We have two network segments, S1 and S2. Each of them may fail. P is concerned with making sure that messages cross S1, while the broker (B) and C are concerned with ensuring that messages cross S2 and are only removed from the queue when they are processed successfully.
Message acknowledgements cover reliable delivery over S2 as well as successful processing. For S1, P has to use transactions (a heavyweight solution) or the more lightweight Publisher Confirms, a RabbitMQ-specific extension.
TBD
Queues are bound to exchanges using the AMQP::Queue#bind method. This topic is described in detail in the Working with queues documentation guide.
Queues are unbound from exchanges using the AMQP::Queue#unbind method. This topic is described in detail in the Working with queues documentation guide.
Exchanges are deleted using the AMQP::Exchange#delete method:
exchange.delete
AMQP::Exchange#delete takes an optional callback that is run when a `exchange.delete-ok` reply arrives from the broker.
exchange.delete do |delete_ok| # by now exchange is guaranteed to be deleted end
Exchanges can be auto-deleted. To declare an exchange as auto-deleted, use the “:auto_delete” option on declaration:
exchange = AMQP::Exchange.new(channel, :direct, "nodes.metadata", :auto_delete => true)
exchange = channel.direct("nodes.metadata", :auto_delete => true)
Full example:
TBD: explain when exchange is considered to be “no longer in use”
Since Ruby is a genuine object-oriented language, it is important to demonstrate how the Ruby amqp gem can be integrated into rich object-oriented code. This part of the guide focuses on exchanges and the problems/solutions concerning producer applications (applications that primarily generate and publish messages, as opposed to consumers that receive and process them).
Full example:
TBD
See Durability guide
See Error handling and recovery guide
See Vendor-specific Extensions guide
Documentation is organized as several documentation guides that cover all kinds of topics. Guides related to this one are
Please take a moment to tell us what you think about this guide on Twitter or the Ruby AMQP mailing list
Let us know what was unclear or what has not been covered. Maybe you do not like the guide style or grammar or discover spelling mistakes. Reader feedback is key to making the documentation better.
If, for some reason, you cannot use the communication channels mentioned above, you can contact the author of the guides directly