Delayed message in RabbitMQ

Is it possible to send message via RabbitMQ with some delay? For example I want to expire client session after 30 minutes, and I send a message which will be processed after 30 minutes.

There are two approaches you can try:

Old Approach: Set the TTL(time to live) header in each message/queue(policy) and then introduce a DLQ to handle it. once the ttl expired your messages will move from DLQ to main queue so that your listener can process it.

Latest Approach: Recently RabbitMQ came up with RabbitMQ Delayed Message Plugin , using which you can achieve the same and this plugin support available since RabbitMQ-3.5.8.

You can declare an exchange with the type x-delayed-message and then publish messages with the custom header x-delay expressing in milliseconds a delay time for the message. The message will be delivered to the respective queues after x-delay milliseconds

byte[] messageBodyBytes = "delayed payload".getBytes("UTF-8");
Map<String, Object> headers = new HashMap<String, Object>();
headers.put("x-delay", 5000);
AMQP.BasicProperties.Builder props = new 
AMQP.BasicProperties.Builder().headers(headers);
channel.basicPublish("my-exchange", "", props.build(), messageBodyBytes);

More here: git

With the release of RabbitMQ v2.8, scheduled delivery is now available but as an indirect feature: http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/04/rabbitmq-scheduled-message-delivery.html

Thanks to Norman's answer, I could implement it in Node.js.

Everything is pretty clear from the code.

var ch = channel;
ch.assertExchange("my_intermediate_exchange", 'fanout', {durable: false});
ch.assertExchange("my_final_delayed_exchange", 'fanout', {durable: false});

// setup intermediate queue which will never be listened.
// all messages are TTLed so when they are "dead", they come to another exchange
ch.assertQueue("my_intermediate_queue", {
      deadLetterExchange: "my_final_delayed_exchange",
      messageTtl: 5000, // 5sec
}, function (err, q) {
      ch.bindQueue(q.queue, "my_intermediate_exchange", '');
});

ch.assertQueue("my_final_delayed_queue", {}, function (err, q) {
      ch.bindQueue(q.queue, "my_final_delayed_exchange", '');

      ch.consume(q.queue, function (msg) {
          console.log("delayed - [x] %s", msg.content.toString());
      }, {noAck: true});
});

As I don't have enough reputation to add comment, posting a new answer. This is just an addition to what has been already discussed at http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2012/04/rabbitmq-scheduled-message-delivery.html

Except instead of setting ttl on messages, you can set it at queue level. Also you can avoid creating a new exchange just for the sake of redirecting the messages to different Queue. Here is sample Java code:

Producer:

import com.rabbitmq.client.Channel;
import com.rabbitmq.client.Connection;
import com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;

public class DelayedProducer {
    private final static String QUEUE_NAME = "ParkingQueue";
    private final static String DESTINATION_QUEUE_NAME = "DestinationQueue";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        ConnectionFactory connectionFactory = new ConnectionFactory();
        connectionFactory.setHost("localhost");
        Connection connection = connectionFactory.newConnection();
        Channel channel = connection.createChannel();

        Map<String, Object> arguments = new HashMap<String, Object>();
        arguments.put("x-message-ttl", 10000);
        arguments.put("x-dead-letter-exchange", "");
        arguments.put("x-dead-letter-routing-key", DESTINATION_QUEUE_NAME );
        channel.queueDeclare(QUEUE_NAME, false, false, false, arguments);

        for (int i=0; i<5; i++) {
            String message = "This is a sample message " + i;
            channel.basicPublish("", QUEUE_NAME, null, message.getBytes());
            System.out.println("message "+i+" got published to the queue!");
            Thread.sleep(3000);
        }

        channel.close();
        connection.close();
    }
}

Consumer:

import com.rabbitmq.client.ConnectionFactory;
import com.rabbitmq.client.Connection;
import com.rabbitmq.client.Channel;
import com.rabbitmq.client.QueueingConsumer;

public class Consumer {
   private final static String DESTINATION_QUEUE_NAME = "DestinationQueue";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        ConnectionFactory factory = new ConnectionFactory();
        factory.setHost("localhost");
        Connection connection = factory.newConnection();
        Channel channel = connection.createChannel();

        channel.queueDeclare(QUEUE_NAME, false, false, false, null);
        System.out.println(" [*] Waiting for messages. To exit press CTRL+C");

        QueueingConsumer consumer = new QueueingConsumer(channel);
        boolean autoAck = false;
        channel.basicConsume(DESTINATION_QUEUE_NAME, autoAck, consumer);

        while (true) {
            QueueingConsumer.Delivery delivery = consumer.nextDelivery();
            String message = new String(delivery.getBody());
            System.out.println(" [x] Received '" + message + "'");
            channel.basicAck(delivery.getEnvelope().getDeliveryTag(), false);
        }
    }
}

It looks like this blog post describes using the dead letter exchange and message ttl to do something similar.

The code below uses CoffeeScript and Node.js to access Rabbit and implement something similar.

amqp   = require 'amqp'
events = require 'events'
em     = new events.EventEmitter()
conn   = amqp.createConnection()
  
key = "send.later.#{new Date().getTime()}"
conn.on 'ready', ->
  conn.queue key, {
    arguments:{
      "x-dead-letter-exchange":"immediate"
    , "x-message-ttl": 5000
    , "x-expires": 6000
    }
  }, ->
    conn.publish key, {v:1}, {contentType:'application/json'}
  
  conn.exchange 'immediate'
 
  conn.queue 'right.now.queue', {
      autoDelete: false
    , durable: true
  }, (q) ->
    q.bind('immediate', 'right.now.queue')
    q.subscribe (msg, headers, deliveryInfo) ->
      console.log msg
      console.log headers