In the previous article we looked at administering RabbitMQ from the command line. In this next article we will set-up a basic queue and also send and receive a basic message via the management portal.

Before we go and dive into some code and look at our samples, let’s work through a very simple scenario where we create an exchange and a queue and bind them together via the management portal. We will then send a message to the exchange and pull it from the queue. It is a very simple example, but it serves as a good introduction before we tackle some real world scenarios.

First of all go to the management portal and click on the exchanges tab. Once you are on the exchanges page, open up the ‘Add a new exchange’ section and fill it in as shown in the following screenshot. You will then need to click on the “Add exchange” button to add the exchange.

This will add a new ‘direct’ exchange to the list of exchanges. Now click on the Queues tab at the top of the page to go to the queue list. Open up the ‘Add a new queue’ section and fill it in as per the following screenshot. Now click the “Add queue” button.

In the previous article we looked the Rabbit MQ management portal in more detail. In this article we will look at configuring RabbitMQ from the command line.

As well as using the web based management portal to administer RabbitMQ you can also use the command line (rabbitmqctrl.bat) interface. In this chapter we will demonstrate some of the basic features that you may need to use most frequently, but for a more exhaustive list of commands you can read the RabbitMQ manual page for the rabbitmqctrl.bat tool.

At a high level rabbitmqctrl lets you manage the run state of the message broker, manage your RabbitMQ clusters, administer users and permissions, manage policies and list exchanges, bindings, and queues.

Let’s work through a simple example of stopping and starting the RabbitMQ broker and checking the broker status.

Open up a command prompt and navigate to “C:\Program Files (x86)\RabbitMQ Server\rabbitmq_server-3.4.4\sbin

From the command prompt type:

 Rabbitmqctl status

You will see the following output in the command line window.

To stop the RabbitMQ broker from running you type the following into the command line:

 Rabbitmqctl stop

This will give you console output that looks as following:

If you run the status command line again by typing:

 Rabbitmqctl status

You will see that the RabbitMQ service has stopped. This will mean RabbitMQ will stop receiving and processing messages. If you have not setup durable queues and messages you will lose any messages already in the system.

In the previous article we look at the AMQP messaging standard that sits behind RabbitMQ. In this article we will look at installing and configuring RabbitMQ.

Basic Installation

Now that we have covered the basics of message queuing, RabbitMQ, and the AMQP model, let’s get RabbitMQ installed and configured. When you set up RabbitMQ on a server, you need to install two components. First, you need the Erlang run time and then RabbitMQ itself. First, go to the RabbitMQ website to download it.

Once you are on this page, select “Install: Windows” from the grey panel to the right of the screen:

From this page, click the link to the “Erlang Windows Binary File” as shown in the following screen shot. This will take you to the Erlang website downloads page.

When you are on the Erlang site, pick the latest version of the runtime that matches your operating system. If you are running a 64bit operating system, then pick the 64bit version and visa versa with the 32bit version.