Amazon SQS - Receive Message

Declaration

<AMAWSSQS ACTIVITY="receive_message" ACCESSKEY="text" 
SECRETKEY="text (encrypted)" USERAGENT="text" 
MAXERRORRETRY="number" SERVICEURL="text" PROXYHOST="text" 
PROXYPORT="number" PROXYUSER="text" 
PROXYPWD="text (encrypted)" SIGNMETHOD="text" SIGNVERSION="number" 
QUEUEURL="text" MAXMSG="number" TIMEOUT="number" 
ATTR="text (options)" RESULTDATASET="text" />

Description: Retrieves one or more messages from the specified queue. For each message returned, the response includes message body, MD5 digest of the message body, message ID you received when you sent the message to the queue and receipt handle.

IMPORTANT: SQS activities use Amazon's SQS engine to perform their work, therefore, launching and operating Amazon SQS requires a valid Access Key ID and Secret Access Key.

Practical Usage

Used to retrieve one or more queue messages.

Connection Parameters

Property

Type

Required

Default

Markup

Description

Connection

 

 

 

 

Indicates where AWS user credentials and preferences should originate from. This is a design mode parameter used only during task construction and configuration, thus, comprises no markup. The available options are:

  • Host (default) - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are configured individually for this activity. This option is normally chosen if only a single activity is required to complete an operation.

  • Session - Specifies that user credentials and/or advanced preferences are obtained from a pre-configured session created in an earlier step with the use of the SQS - Create session activity. This option is normally chosen if a combination of related activities are required to complete an operation. Linking several activities to a single session eliminates redundancy. Additionally, a single task supports construction and simultaneous execution of multiple sessions, improving efficiency.

Session

Text

Yes if connection is session-based

SQSSession1

SESSION="SQSession1"

The name of an existing session to attach this activity to. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Session. The default session name is 'SQSSession1'.

Access key

Text

Yes if connection is host-based

(Empty)

ACCESSKEY=

"022QF06E7MXBSH9DHM02"

A 20-character alphanumeric string that uniquely identifies the owner of the AWS service account, similar to a username. This key along with a corresponding secret access key forms a secure information set that AWS uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.

Secret Access key

Text

Yes if connection is host-based

(Empty)

SECRETKEY=

"kWcrlUX5JEDGM/LtmEENI/

aVmYvHNif5zB+d9+ct"

A 40-character string that serves the role as password to access the AWS service account. This along with an associated access key forms a secure information set that SQS uses to confirm a valid user's identity. This parameter is active only if the Connection parameter is set to Host.

User agent

Text

No

AutoMate

USERAGENT="AutoMate"

The name of the client or application initiating requests to AWS, which in this case, is AutoMate. This parameter's default value is 'AutoMate'. 

Service URL

Text

No

(Empty)

SERVICEURL=

"https://sqs.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com"

The URL that provides the service endpoint. To make the service call to a different region, you can pass the region-specific endpoint URL. For example, entering  https://sqs.us-west-1.amazonaws.com points to US West (Northern California) region. A complete list of SQS regions, along with their associated endpoints and valid protocols can be found below under SQS Endpoints and Regions.

Maximum retry on error

Number

No

(Empty)

MAXERRORRETRY="4"

The total amount of times this activity should retry its request to the server before returning an error. Network components can generate errors anytime in the life of a request, thus, implementing retries can increase reliability. 

Proxy host

Text

No

(Empty)

PROXYHOST="proxy.host.com"

The host name (e.g., server.domain.com) or IP address (e.g., xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) of the proxy server to use when connecting to AWS.  

Proxy port

Number

No

(Empty)

PROXYPORT="1028"

The port that should be used to connect to the proxy server.

Proxy username

Text

No

(Empty)

PROXYUSER="username"

The username that should be used to authenticate connection with the proxy server (if required).

Proxy password

Text

No

(Empty)

PROXYPWD="encrypted"

The password that should be used to authenticate connection with the proxy server (if required).

Signature method

Text

No

(Empty)

SIGNMETHOD="HmacSHA256"

The signature method to use for signing the request. This provides a valid hashing algorithm for signature calculation. Acceptable AWS signature methods are HmacSHA1 and HmacSHA256.

Signature version

Number

No

(Empty)

SIGNVERSION="2"

The signature version for signing the request. Valid AWS signature versions are 2 and 4. The difference with version 4 is that it allows you to sign your message using a key that is derived from your secret access key rather than using the secret access key itself.

Queue Parameters

Property

Type

Required

Default

Markup

Description

Queue URL

Text

Yes

(Empty)

QUEUEURL=

"https://queue.amazonaws.com/

963068290131/TestSNSNotification"

The URL uniquely identifying the queue, which includes the queue name and other components that SQS determines.

Max number of messages (between 1-10)

Number

Yes

1

MAXMSG="2"

Maximum number of messages to return.

Visibility Timeout (seconds)

Number

No

(Empty)

TIMEOUT="1260"

The duration (in seconds) that the received messages are hidden from subsequent retrieve requests after being retrieved by an initial Receive Message request.

Attribute(s) (optional)

Text (Options)

No

(Empty)

  1. ATTR="All"

  2. ATTR="sender_id"

  3. ATTR="sent_timestamp"

  4. ATTR="receive_count"

  5. ATTR="first_receive_timestamp"

The attribute you want to get. The available options are:

  • All(default) - Returns all values.

  • Sender ID - Returns the AWS account number (or the IP address, if anonymous access is allowed) of the sender.

  • Sent timestamp - Returns the time when the message was sent (in milliseconds).

  • Approximate receive count - Returns the number of times a message has been received but not deleted.

  • First receive timestamp - Returns the time when the message was first received (in milliseconds).

Create and populate dataset with queue information

Text

No

(Empty)

RESULTDATASET="theDataset"

The name of the dataset to create and populate with SQS message information being received. More details regarding datasets can be found below under Datasets.

Description tab - A custom description can be provided on the Description tab to convey additional information or share special notes about a task step.

Error Causes tab - Specify how this step should behave upon the occurrence of an error. (Refer to Task Builder > Error Causes Tab for details.)

On Error tab - Specify what AWE should do if this step encounters an error as defined on the Error Causes tab. (Refer to Task Builder > On Error Tab for details.)

SQS Endpoints and Regions

For a complete list of Amazon Service endpoints, refer to the AWS documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/general/latest/gr/rande.html.

Datasets

A dataset is a multiple column, multiple row container object. This activity creates and populates a dataset containing a specific set of fields in addition to the standard dataset fields. The table below describes these fields (assuming the name of the created and assigned dataset is theDataset).

Name

Type

Return Value

theDataset.Body

Text

The message's contents.

theDataset.MD5OfBody

Text

An MD5 digest of the non-URL-encoded message body string (e.g., 1c531e2d189cdcb9ec81ef36f4c22d85).

theDataset.ReceiptHandle

Text

A string associated with a specific instance of receiving the message.

theDataset.MessageID

Text

The message's SQS-assigned ID (e.g., e07cab7e-aa08-469b-aa53-73978906e0bd).

theDataset.Attribute

Text

Returns the Sender Id, sent timestamp, approximate receive count, and/or approximate first receive timestamp. The sent timestamp and approximate first receive timestamp are each returned as an integer representing the epoch time in milliseconds.

Example

The sample AML code below can be copied and pasted directly into the Steps panel of the Task Builder.

Description: Receive message from queue ""https://queue.amazonaws.com/QueueID"". Store SQS message information into dataset "theDataset". Return "2" messages. Set visibility timeout to "1260" seconds. Return "ApproximateReceiveCount" message attribute(s). Use default SQS session.

<AMAWSSQS ACTIVITY="receive_message" 
QUEUEURL="&quot;https://queue.amazonaws.com/QueueID&quot;" 
MAXMSG="2" TIMEOUT="1260" ATTR="ApproximateReceiveCount" 
RESULTDATASET="theDataset" />