CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rabbitmq
atkayla
atkayla

Reputation: 8859

What is the difference between RabbitMQ exclusive queue vs. exclusive consumer?

Having trouble wrapping my ahead around the differences between exclusive queue and exclusive consumer, and was wondering if I had this correct.

Let's say I have a queue, consumer1, and consumer2.

My understanding is:

exclusive queue

If queue is exclusive queue and was created by consumer1, only consumer1 can access the queue, and when consumer1 goes down, queue is deleted. It sounds like messages are then lost.

exclusive consumer

If queue is NOT exclusive and was created by consumer1, then both consumer1 and consumer2 can read from it. If consumer1 goes down, consumer2 can pick up where it left off. If consumer1 is exclusive consumer and starts a subscription first, then consumer2 cannot access queue, while it is locked by consumer1.

exclusive queue sounds like a weird use case to me whereas exclusive consumer sounds like the proper solution for "only 1 consumer should process from the queue at a time".

Upvotes: 5

Views: 4179

Answers (1)

Samuel Toh
Samuel Toh

Reputation: 19328

I think the difference between them is that for exclusive queue it can only be consumed by consumers that are on the same connection which is used for declaring the queue. When this connection is closed or disconnected, the exclusive queue is automatically closed by rabbitmq. The use case for it is that you usually want the queue to be destroyed when the exclusive (private) consumer exit or disconnect.

Whereas the use case for exclusive consumer on a normal queue is slightly different. The private consumer may be gone or disconnected but another consumer can be the successor of the next exclusive consumer, and it may not have to be on the same rabbitmq connection as the one used for declaring the queue.

Essentially both use cases are about allowing exclusive access to the queue but the latter is less strict.

Upvotes: 7

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