About

Message Queues are very crucial part of many applications specially Enterprise and Real Time applications. There are many message broker frameworks available in the market e.g. RabbitMq, ZeroMq, ServiceBus and so on. Each framework has different features, implementation and client(s) to interact with the framework (more on message brokers).

It is very common that in a single application you use more than one message broker. For example, ZeroMq is in-memory messaging queue and it is very efficient because of this reason; so, it can be used for logging purpose in a separate thread. Or the scenario could be using free message broker in Development Environment and paid one in Production Environment. So there are many possibilities using more than one message broker in a single application.

The challenge is that you need to learn and maintain different clients, handle seriliazation (binary, json etc.), exception handling, logging, thread safety and also need to define some abstraction to easily switch between different message brokers. So you spend good amount of time on HOW TO DO rather than WHAT TO DO. This is the reason Dynamic Queue is born for. You just focus on the main stream of work and the rest is on Dynamic Queue. Sounds good! Right? Please continue reading....

Dynamic Queue (this framework) is an abstraction which is independent from any specific message broker implementation, hides the details of any message broker client, seamless serilization, multi-threading, common interfaces to interact and the flexibility to switch the message broker without updating and compiling the single line of code (yes, this is true).

Communication Patterns

We can generally define the communication patterns as follow:

• Fire and forget [FaF] (Push-Pull, Producer-Consumer)
• Request and response [RaR] (Remote procedure call, Server-Client)
• Publisher and subscriber [PaS]

Dynamic Queue framework defines abstraction around these communication patterns. It further divides the interfaces as inbound and outbound. Please see the below table for details:

Pattern	Inbound-Interface	Outbound-Interface	Async
FaF	IInboundFaFMq<TMessage>	IOutboundFaFMq<TMessage>	✅
RaR	IInboundRaRMq<TRequest, TResponse>	IOutboundRaRMq<TResponse, TRequest>	❌
PaS	Not Implemented ❌	Not Implemented ❌	❌

Architecture

Dynamic Queue framework architecture has been designed with loosely coupled modules, interface-based dependencies, flexible configuration, seamless serialization and easy to extend. Below are further details:

Technology

The framework has built using C# 6.0 and .net 4.5.2.

Exception Handling

All the exceptions from the framework are thrown as QueueException with error code defined in QueueErrorCode enum and message.

Logging

Logging is optional and if logger is passed while creating the instance of any type (inbound or outbound), then the logging will be done. There are two interfaces define in MessageQueue.Log.Core dll as IQueueLogger and IQueueLoggerAsync. The default logger using NLog is defined in MessageQueue.Log.NLog and the usage can be seen in Samples (please see the Samples section below).

Serialization

Serialization is seamless and is done using Newtonsoft.

Configuration

The configuration can be stored in any type of store or configuration file. There is an interface named as IQueueConfigurationProvider in MessageQueue.CofigurationProvider.Core dll and the default implementation which retrieves configuration from AppSettings is defined in MessageQueue.CofigurationProvider.AppSettings. If you want to define your custom configuration provider, then simply implement IQueueConfigurationProvider.

  <!-- ZeroMq -->
  <add key="ZeroMqFaFOutbound:Address" value=">tcp://localhost:5551" />
  <add key="ZeroMqFaFOutbound:Implementation" value="MessageQueue.ZeroMq.Concrete.Outbound.ZmqOutboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.ZeroMq" />

  <!-- RabbitMq -->
  <add key="RabbitMqFaFOutbound:UserName" value="guest" />
  <add key="RabbitMqFaFOutbound:Password" value="guest" />
  <add key="RabbitMqFaFOutbound:Address" value="localhost" />
  <add key="RabbitMqFaFOutbound:QueueName" value="Test_SampleQueue" />
  <add key="RabbitMqFaFOutbound:Implementation" value="MessageQueue.RabbitMq.Concrete.Outbound.RmqOutboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.RabbitMq" />
/>

RabbitMqFaFOutbound and ZeroMqFaFOutbound are configuration identifiers to group the configuration for any particular instance.

Thread Safety

All the implementations of message brokers (some by default from the message broker and others managed by Dynamic Queue) are thread safe.

The Queue Factory

There is a class named as MessagingQueueFactory which is responsible to create any kind of interface implementation. This class is available in MessageQueue.Core dll. It exposes static methods for instance creation. It takes configuration provider, configuration identifier (string literal which groups the configuration) and optionally logger. Please see Samples for details.

Creation of any interface implementation is dyamic and is based on the fully qualified class name and assembly name.

Message Brokers

As of now, following message brokers have been implemented:

Message Broker	FaF	RaR	PaS
ZeroMq	✅	✅	❌
RabbitMq	✅	✅	❌
ServiceBus	✅	❌	❌

See message brokers comparison

Configuration Parameters

ZeroMq - Configuration

Name	Description	Example	Required
Address	The address of the queue (no server as it is in-memory)	>tcp://localhost:5551	✅
Implementation	The relevant implementation (inbound or outbound)	MessageQueue.ZeroMq...	✅

ZeroMq - Interface Implementation

Pattern	Inbound-Interface	Outbound-Interface
FaF	MessageQueue.ZeroMq.Concrete.Inbound.ZmqInboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.ZeroMq	MessageQueue.ZeroMq.Concrete.Outbound.ZmqOutboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.ZeroMq
RaR	MessageQueue.ZeroMq.Concrete.Inbound.ZmqInboundRaR`2, MessageQueue.ZeroMq	MessageQueue.ZeroMq.Concrete.Outbound.ZmqOutboundRaR`2, MessageQueue.ZeroMq

---

RabbitMq - Configuration

Name	Description	Example	Required
Address	The address of the RabbitMq server	localhost	✅
Implementation	The relevant implementation (inbound or outbound)	MessageQueue.RabbitMq...	✅
QueueName	The queue name	MyQueue	✅
UserName	Username to connect with server	guest	✅
Password	Password to connect with server	guest	✅
Port	The port on which server is listening	1234	❌
Acknowledgment	The message acknowledgment setting (inbound only)	true OR false	❌
MaxConcurrentReceiveCallback	The max number of concurrent calls to the receive handler	5	❌
ExchangeName	The exchange name	MyExchange	❌
RoutingKey	The routing key	Key1	❌
ConnectionTimeoutInMinutes	The connection timeout in minutes	2	❌

RabbitMq - Interface Implementation

Pattern	Inbound-Interface	Outbound-Interface
FaF	MessageQueue.RabbitMq.Concrete.Inbound.RmqInboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.RabbitMq	MessageQueue.RabbitMq.Concrete.Outbound.RmqOutboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.RabbitMq
RaR	MessageQueue.RabbitMq.Concrete.Inbound.RmqInboundRaR`2, MessageQueue.RabbitMq	MessageQueue.RabbitMq.Concrete.Outbound.RmqOutboundRaR`2, MessageQueue.RabbitMq

---

ServiceBus - Configuration

Name	Description	Example	Required
Address	The servicebus endpoint address	Endpoint	✅
Implementation	The relevant implementation (inbound or outbound)	MessageQueue.ServiceBus...	✅
QueueName	The queue name	MyQueue	✅
Acknowledgment	The message acknowledgment setting (inbound only)	true OR false	❌
MaxConcurrentReceiveCallback	The max number of concurrent calls to the receive handler	5	❌

ServiceBus - Interface Implementation

Pattern	Inbound-Interface	Outbound-Interface
FaF	MessageQueue.ServiceBus.Concrete.Inbound.SbInboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.ServiceBus	MessageQueue.ServiceBus.Concrete.Outbound.SbOutboundFaF`1, MessageQueue.ServiceBus
RaR	Not Implemented	Not Implemented

The framework does not create the queues. The only scenario is in RaR pattern where it needs to create queue for the responses.

Setup

If you want to run the code in Visual Studio or any other .Net IDE, just download the source code, restore the nuget packages, update the configuration and you are good to go. Please see the section Samples below for details.

Samples

In the Test folder, there are four projects (console application) which consumes Dynamic Queue for each supported communication pattern and message broker. For FaF patter, MessageQueue.Sender [ code snippet ] and MessageQueue.Receiver[ code snippet ] test projects are configured and for RaR pattern, MessageQueue.RaR.Server [ code snippet ] and MessageQueue.RaR.Client [ code snippet ] test projects are configured. Configuration for all the projects is stored in AppSettings.cofig file.

FaF Samples

ZeroMq	RabbitMq	ServiceBus
✅	✅	✅

RaR Samples

ZeroMq	RabbitMq	ServiceBus
✅	✅	❌ Not Implemented

Nuget

ZeroMq

RabbitMq

ServiceBus

Logging-NLog

Appreciation

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