[rabbitmq-discuss] STOMP - Message queue selectors for consumers?

Tue Jun 7 05:20:19 BST 2011

Hi,
I'm afraid I'm something of a beginner when it comes to message queuing 
systems, although I've submitted several patches to the Perl STOMP 
modules in the process of using them recently, and have picked up what I 
think is a bit of knowledge.

Anyway, I have a query about RabbitMQ's STOMP plugin, and haven't quite 
been able to understand the docs on the matter.

My goal is to have a queue where the consumers of that queue only 
receive a subset of all messages. I want them to filter based on a 
header in the messages.

Eg.

SEND
destination:/queue/foo
x-country:australia

with the receiver somehow doing something like:
SUBSCRIBE
destination:/queue/foo?x-country=australia

Now currently I can achieve this goal by creating lots of queues, one 
for each possible value, and then the consumers can subscribe to all the 
queues.. but this is a bit messy.

Eg.
SEND
destination:/queue/foo.australia

SUBSCRIBE
destination:/queue/foo.australia

There are some discussions of routing keys in the STOMP plugin's docs, 
but I don't understand how they relate. Are they what I'm looking for?
I only want this to work with simple queues, not, as far as I know, 
exchanges. Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree though?

I note that in ActiveMQ's STOMP plugin, you can apply a selector to the 
subscription like this:

SUBSCRIBE
destination:/queue/foo
activemq.selector:country="australia"

Thanks,
Toby