Using the AMQ Python Client

AMQ Python supports the following industry-recognized standards and network protocols:

AMQ Python supports the OS and language versions listed below. For more information, see Red Hat AMQ 7 Supported Configurations.

AMQ Python is supported in combination with the following AMQ components and versions:

This section introduces the core API entities and describes how they operate together.

AMQ Python sends and receives messages. Messages are transferred between connected peers over senders and receivers. Senders and receivers are established over sessions. Sessions are established over connections. Connections are established between two uniquely identified containers. Though a connection can have multiple sessions, often this is not needed. The API allows you to ignore sessions unless you require them.

A sending peer creates a sender to send messages. The sender has a target that identifies a queue or topic at the remote peer. A receiving peer creates a receiver to receive messages. The receiver has a source that identifies a queue or topic at the remote peer.

The sending of a message is called a delivery. The message is the content sent, including all metadata such as headers and annotations. The delivery is the protocol exchange associated with the transfer of that content.

To indicate that a delivery is complete, either the sender or the receiver settles it. When the other side learns that it has been settled, it will no longer communicate about that delivery. The receiver can also indicate whether it accepts or rejects the message.

The sudo command

In this document, sudo is used for any command that requires root privileges. Exercise caution when using sudo because any changes can affect the entire system. For more information about sudo, see Using the sudo command.

File paths

In this document, all file paths are valid for Linux, UNIX, and similar operating systems (for example, /home/andrea). On Microsoft Windows, you must use the equivalent Windows paths (for example, C:\Users\andrea).

Variable text

This document contains code blocks with variables that you must replace with values specific to your environment. Variable text is enclosed in arrow braces and styled as italic monospace. For example, in the following command, replace <project-dir> with the value for your environment:

$ cd <project-dir>

For more information about using packages, see Appendix B, Using Red Hat Enterprise Linux packages.

The Hello World example creates a connection to the broker, sends a message containing a greeting to the examples queue, and receives it back. On success, it prints the received message to the console.

Change to the examples directory and run the helloworld.py example.

$ cd /usr/share/proton/examples/python/
$ python helloworld.py
Hello World!

The Hello World example creates a connection to the broker, sends a message containing a greeting to the examples queue, and receives it back. On success, it prints the received message to the console.

Download and run the Hello World example.

> curl -o helloworld.py https://raw.githubusercontent.com/apache/qpid-proton/master/python/examples/helloworld.py
> python helloworld.py
Hello World!

This client program connects to a server using <connection-url>, creates a sender for target <address>, sends a message containing <message-body>, closes the connection, and exits.

from __future__ import print_function

import sys

from proton import Message
from proton.handlers import MessagingHandler
from proton.reactor import Container

class SendHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def __init__(self, conn_url, address, message_body):
        super(SendHandler, self).__init__()

        self.conn_url = conn_url
        self.address = address
        self.message_body = message_body

    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect(self.conn_url)

        # To connect with a user and password:
        # conn = event.container.connect(self.conn_url, user="<user>", password="<password>")

        event.container.create_sender(conn, self.address)

    def on_link_opened(self, event):
        print("SEND: Opened sender for target address '{0}'".format
              (event.sender.target.address))

    def on_sendable(self, event):
        message = Message(self.message_body)
        event.sender.send(message)

        print("SEND: Sent message '{0}'".format(message.body))

        event.sender.close()
        event.connection.close()

def main():
    try:
        conn_url, address, message_body = sys.argv[1:4]
    except ValueError:
        sys.exit("Usage: send.py <connection-url> <address> <message-body>")

    handler = SendHandler(conn_url, address, message_body)
    container = Container(handler)
    container.run()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        main()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

Running the example

To run the example program, copy it to a local file and invoke it using the python command. For more information, see Chapter 3, Getting started.

$ python send.py amqp://localhost queue1 hello

This client program connects to a server using <connection-url>, creates a receiver for source <address>, and receives messages until it is terminated or it reaches <count> messages.

from __future__ import print_function

import sys

from proton.handlers import MessagingHandler
from proton.reactor import Container

class ReceiveHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def __init__(self, conn_url, address, desired):
        super(ReceiveHandler, self).__init__()

        self.conn_url = conn_url
        self.address = address
        self.desired = desired
        self.received = 0

    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect(self.conn_url)

        # To connect with a user and password:
        # conn = event.container.connect(self.conn_url, user="<user>", password="<password>")

        event.container.create_receiver(conn, self.address)

    def on_link_opened(self, event):
        print("RECEIVE: Created receiver for source address '{0}'".format
              (self.address))

    def on_message(self, event):
        message = event.message

        print("RECEIVE: Received message '{0}'".format(message.body))

        self.received += 1

        if self.received == self.desired:
            event.receiver.close()
            event.connection.close()

def main():
    try:
        conn_url, address = sys.argv[1:3]
    except ValueError:
        sys.exit("Usage: receive.py <connection-url> <address> [<message-count>]")

    try:
        desired = int(sys.argv[3])
    except (IndexError, ValueError):
        desired = 0

    handler = ReceiveHandler(conn_url, address, desired)
    container = Container(handler)
    container.run()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    try:
        main()
    except KeyboardInterrupt:
        pass

Running the example

To run the example program, copy it to a local file and invoke it using the python command. For more information, see Chapter 3, Getting started.

$ python receive.py amqp://localhost queue1

AMQ Python is an asynchronous event-driven API. To define how an application handles events, the user implements callback methods on the MessagingHandler class. These methods are then called as network activity or timers trigger new events.

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        print("The container event loop has started")

    def on_sendable(self, event):
        print("A message can be sent")

    def on_message(self, event):
        print("A message is received")

These are only a few common-case events. The full set is documented in the API reference.

The event argument has attributes for accessing the object the event is regarding. For example, the on_connection_opened event sets the event connection attribute.

In addition to the primary object for the event, all objects that form the context for the event are set as well. Attributes with no relevance to a particular event are null.

event.container
event.connection
event.session
event.sender
event.receiver
event.delivery
event.message

The container is the top-level API object. It is the entry point for creating connections, and it is responsible for running the main event loop. It is often constructed with a global event handler.

handler = ExampleHandler()
container = Container(handler)
container.run()

Each container instance has a unique identity called the container ID. When AMQ Python makes a connection, it sends the container ID to the remote peer. To set the container ID, pass it to the Container constructor.

container = Container(handler)
container.container_id = "job-processor-3"

If the user does not set the ID, the library will generate a UUID when the container is constucted.

Connection URLs encode the information used to establish new connections.

scheme://host[:port]

amqps://example.com
amqps://example.net:56720
amqp://127.0.0.1
amqp://[::1]:2000

To connect to a remote server, call the Container.connect() method with a connection URL. This is typically done inside the MessagingHandler.on_start() method.

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")

    def on_connection_opened(self, event):
        print("Connection", event.connection, "is open")

For information about creating secure connections, see Chapter 7, Security.

Reconnect allows a client to recover from lost connections. It is used to ensure that the components in a distributed system reestablish communication after temporary network or component failures.

AMQ Python enables reconnect by default. If a connection is lost or a connection attempt fails, the client will try again after a brief delay. The delay increases exponentially for each new attempt, up to a default maximum of 10 seconds.

To disable reconnect, set the reconnect connection option to False.

container.connect("amqp://example.com", reconnect=False)

To control the delays between connection attempts, define a class implementing the reset() and next() methods and set the reconnect connection option to an instance of that class.

class ExampleReconnect(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.delay = 0

    def reset(self):
        self.delay = 0

    def next(self):
        if self.delay == 0:
            self.delay = 0.1
        else:
            self.delay = min(10, 2 * self.delay)

        return self.delay

container.connect("amqp://example.com", reconnect=ExampleReconnect())

The next method returns the next delay in seconds. The reset method is called once before the reconnect process begins.

AMQ Python allows you to configure multiple connection endpoints. If connecting to one fails, the client attempts to connect to the next in the list. If the list is exhausted, the process starts over.

To specify multiple connection endpoints, set the urls connection option to a list of connection URLs.

urls = ["amqp://alpha.example.com", "amqp://beta.example.com"]
container.connect(urls=urls)

It is an error to use the url and urls options at the same time.

AMQ Python can accept inbound network connections, enabling you to build custom messaging servers.

To start listening for connections, use the Container.listen() method with a URL containing the local host address and port to listen on.

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        event.container.listen("0.0.0.0")

    def on_connection_opened(self, event):
        print("New incoming connection", event.connection)

The special IP address 0.0.0.0 listens on all available IPv4 interfaces. To listen on all IPv6 interfaces, use [::0].

For more information, see the server receive.py example.

AMQ Python uses SSL/TLS to encrypt communication between clients and servers.

To connect to a remote server with SSL/TLS, use a connection URL with the amqps scheme.

container.connect("amqps://example.com")

AMQ Python can authenticate connections with a user and password.

To specify the credentials used for authentication, set the user and password options on the connect() method.

container.connect("amqps://example.com", user="alice", password="secret")

AMQ Python uses the SASL protocol to perform authentication. SASL can use a number of different authentication mechanisms. When two network peers connect, they exchange their allowed mechanisms, and the strongest mechanism allowed by both is selected.

By default, AMQ Python allows all of the mechanisms supported by the local SASL library configuration. To restrict the allowed mechanisms and thereby control what mechanisms can be negotiated, use the allowed_mechs connection option. It takes a string containing a space-separated list of mechanism names.

container.connect("amqps://example.com", allowed_mechs="ANONYMOUS")

This example forces the connection to authenticate using the ANONYMOUS mechanism even if the server we connect to offers other options. Valid mechanisms include ANONYMOUS, PLAIN, SCRAM-SHA-256, SCRAM-SHA-1, GSSAPI, and EXTERNAL.

AMQ Python enables SASL by default. To disable it, set the sasl_enabled connection option to false.

event.container.connect("amqps://example.com", sasl_enabled=False)

Kerberos is a network protocol for centrally managed authentication based on the exchange of encrypted tickets. See Using Kerberos for more information.

Some message servers support on-demand creation of queues and topics. When a sender or receiver is attached, the server uses the sender target address or the receiver source address to create a queue or topic with a name matching the address.

The message server typically defaults to creating either a queue (for one-to-one message delivery) or a topic (for one-to-many message delivery). The client can indicate which it prefers by setting the queue or topic capability on the source or target.

To select queue or topic semantics, follow these steps:

class CapabilityOptions(SenderOption):
    def apply(self, sender):
        sender.target.capabilities.put_object(symbol("queue"))

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")
        event.container.create_sender(conn, "jobs", options=CapabilityOptions())

class CapabilityOptions(ReceiverOption):
    def apply(self, receiver):
        receiver.source.capabilities.put_object(symbol("topic"))

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")
        event.container.create_receiver(conn, "notifications", options=CapabilityOptions())

For more information, see the following examples:

A durable subscription is a piece of state on the remote server representing a message receiver. Ordinarily, message receivers are discarded when a client closes. However, because durable subscriptions are persistent, clients can detach from them and then re-attach later. Any messages received while detached are available when the client re-attaches.

Durable subscriptions are uniquely identified by combining the client container ID and receiver name to form a subscription ID. These must have stable values so that the subscription can be recovered.

To create a durable subscription, follow these steps:

To detach from a subscription, use the Receiver.detach() method. To terminate the subscription, use the Receiver.close() method.

For more information, see the durable-subscribe.py example.

A shared subscription is a piece of state on the remote server representing one or more message receivers. Because it is shared, multiple clients can consume from the same stream of messages.

The client configures a shared subscription by setting the shared capability on the receiver source.

Shared subscriptions are uniquely identified by combining the client container ID and receiver name to form a subscription ID. These must have stable values so that multiple client processes can locate the same subscription. If the global capability is set in addition to shared, the receiver name alone is used to identify the subscription.

To create a durable subscription, follow these steps:

To detach from a subscription, use the Receiver.detach() method. To terminate the subscription, use the Receiver.close() method.

For more information, see the shared-subscribe.py example.

To send a message, override the on_sendable event handler and call the Sender.send() method. The sendable event fires when the Sender has enough credit to send at least one message.

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")
        sender = event.container.create_sender(conn, "jobs")

    def on_sendable(self, event):
        message = Message("job-content")
        event.sender.send(message)

For more information, see the send.py example.

When a message is sent, the sender can keep a reference to the delivery object representing the transfer. After the message is delivered, the receiver accepts or rejects it. The sender is notified of the outcome for each delivery.

To monitor the outcome of a sent message, override the on_accepted and on_rejected event handlers and map the delivery state update to the delivery returned from send().

def on_sendable(self, event):
    message = Message(self.message_body)
    delivery = event.sender.send(message)

def on_accepted(self, event):
    print("Delivery", event.delivery, "is accepted")

def on_rejected(self, event):
    print("Delivery", event.delivery, "is rejected")

To receive a message, create a receiver and override the on_message event handler.

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        conn = event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")
        receiver = event.container.create_receiver(conn, "jobs")

    def on_message(self, event):
        print("Received message", event.message, "from", event.receiver)

For more information, see the receive.py example.

To explicitly accept or reject a delivery, use the Delivery.update() method with the ACCEPTED or REJECTED state in the on_message event handler.

def on_message(self, event):
    try:
        process_message(event.message)
        event.delivery.update(ACCEPTED)
    except:
        event.delivery.update(REJECTED)

By default, if you do not explicity acknowledge a delivery, then the library accepts it after on_message returns. To disable this behavior, set the auto_accept receiver option to false.

All of the exceptions that AMQ Python throws inherit from the ProtonException class, which in turn inherits from the Python Exception class.

The following example illustrates how to catch any exception thrown from AMQ Python:

try:
    # Something that might throw an exception
except ProtonException as e:
    # Handle Proton-specific problems here
except Exception as e:
    # Handle more general problems here
}

If you do not require API-specific exception handling, you only need to catch Exception, since ProtonException inherits from it.

You can handle protocol-level errors by overriding the following messaging_handler methods:

These event-handling functions are called whenever there is an error condition with the specific object that is in the event. After calling the error handler, the appropriate close handler is also called.

The client can log AMQP protocol frames to the console. This data is often critical when diagnosing problems.

To enable protocol logging, set the PN_TRACE_FRM environment variable to 1:

$ export PN_TRACE_FRM=1
$ <your-client-program>

To disable protocol logging, unset the PN_TRACE_FRM environment variable.

The client offers distributed tracing based on the Jaeger implementation of the OpenTracing standard. Use the following steps to enable tracing in your application:

For more information about Jaeger configuration, see Jaeger Sampling.

When testing or debugging, you may want to force Jaeger to trace a particular operation. See the Jaeger Python client documentation for more information.

To view the traces your application captures, use the Jaeger Getting Started to run the Jaeger infrastructure and console.

If set, AMQ Python uses the value of the MESSAGING_CONNECT_FILE environment variable to locate the configuration file.

If MESSAGING_CONNECT_FILE is not set, AMQ Python searches for a file named connect.json at the following locations and in the order shown. It stops at the first match it encounters.

If no connect.json file is found, the library uses default values for all options.

The connect.json file contains JSON data, with additional support for JavaScript comments.

All of the configuration attributes are optional or have default values, so a simple example need only provide a few details:

{
    "host": "example.com",
    "user": "alice",
    "password": "secret"
}

SASL and SSL/TLS options are nested under "sasl" and "tls" namespaces:

{
    "host": "example.com",
    "user": "ortega",
    "password": "secret",
    "sasl": {
        "mechanisms": ["SCRAM-SHA-1", "SCRAM-SHA-256"]
    },
    "tls": {
        "cert": "/home/ortega/cert.pem",
        "key": "/home/ortega/key.pem"
    }
}

The option keys containing a dot (.) represent attributes nested inside a namespace.

AMQP messages are composed using the AMQP type system. This common format is one of the reasons AMQP clients in different languages are able to interoperate with each other.

When sending messages, AMQ Python automatically converts language-native types to AMQP-encoded data. When receiving messages, the reverse conversion takes place.

AMQP defines a standard mapping to the JMS messaging model. This section discusses the various aspects of that mapping. For more information, see the AMQ JMS Interoperability chapter.

JMS message types

AMQ Python provides a single message type whose body type can vary. By contrast, the JMS API uses different message types to represent different kinds of data. The table below indicates how particular body types map to JMS message types.

For more explicit control of the resulting JMS message type, you can set the x-opt-jms-msg-type message annotation. See the AMQ JMS Interoperability chapter for more information.

AMQ Broker is designed to interoperate with AMQP 1.0 clients. Check the following to ensure the broker is configured for AMQP messaging:

AMQ Interconnect works with any AMQP 1.0 client. Check the following to ensure the components are configured correctly: