[rabbitmq-discuss] RabbitMQ: Different consumer technique

[Ajinkya Apte]

(First time user of RabbitMQ)
Hey,
Technique:
Rather than writing a standalone PHP consumer script that keeps consuming the queue, I was planning on writing a batch get and quit PHP script. All that script does is get a batch of 10 from the queue, if the batch isn't available the script immediately exits. If available, it processes the batch and quits. I use a python script to make multiple calls to my 'Get Batch script' and make use of apache workers to do the work rather than making the php standalone script do the work. 

Questions:
1. Firstly, do you see a reason why I should not think about consuming the queue this way?
2. (I am using the amq php lib) How can I do a batch get and exit if the batch is not present. With what I have learnt seems like I can set the qos to my batch count and use batch_consume for this. But if the batch is not available the script seems to wait till the batch is available. Is there a way I can timeout? 
3. Do you have any usage recommendation for me?
4. Any plans of having basic.get_batch?

AJ

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