Schedule delayed message delivery in RabbitMQ using the delayed message exchange plugin
domain: rabbitmq.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
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Steps
Enable the community rabbitmq_delayed_message_exchange plugin on the broker (rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_delayed_message_exchange)
Declare an exchange with type x-delayed-message and an additional argument x-delayed-type set to the underlying routing behavior you want (direct, topic, fanout, or another exchange type)
Publish messages to this exchange with a custom header x-delay set to the desired delay in milliseconds
RabbitMQ holds the message internally and, once the delay elapses, routes it to bound queues/exchanges according to the x-delayed-type routing rules and the message's routing key
On the consumer side, expect the x-delay header to be present but negated (e.g. a 5000ms delay arrives with x-delay = -5000)
Bind queues to the delayed exchange exactly as you would for its underlying exchange type
Known gotchas
This plugin is designed for delays of seconds to a day or two at most — it is not a long-term scheduling/cron solution and delayed messages are held in the exchange's process memory until due
The exchange has no concept of consumers: once the delay expires, routing happens immediately based on bindings at that moment, even if no consumer is currently listening
x-delayed-type is required at exchange declaration time; omitting it or mismatching it with your bindings will produce unexpected (non-delayed-appropriate) routing behavior
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