Sending and receiving messages in Amazon SQS#

This Python example shows you how to send, receive, and delete messages in a queue.

The scenario#

In this example, Python code is used to send and receive messages. The code uses the AWS SDK for Python to send and receive messages by using these methods of the AWS.SQS client class:

For more information about Amazon SQS messages, see Sending a Message to an Amazon SQS Queue and Receiving and Deleting a Message from an Amazon SQS Queue in the Amazon Simple Queue Service Developer Guide.

Prerequisite tasks#

To set up and run this example, you must first complete these tasks:

  • Create an Amazon SQS queue. For an example of creating an Amazon SQS queue, see Create a queue.

Send a message to a queue#

The example below shows how to:

Example#

import boto3

# Create SQS client
sqs = boto3.client('sqs')

queue_url = 'SQS_QUEUE_URL'

# Send message to SQS queue
response = sqs.send_message(
    QueueUrl=queue_url,
    DelaySeconds=10,
    MessageAttributes={
        'Title': {
            'DataType': 'String',
            'StringValue': 'The Whistler'
        },
        'Author': {
            'DataType': 'String',
            'StringValue': 'John Grisham'
        },
        'WeeksOn': {
            'DataType': 'Number',
            'StringValue': '6'
        }
    },
    MessageBody=(
        'Information about current NY Times fiction bestseller for '
        'week of 12/11/2016.'
    )
)

print(response['MessageId'])

Receive and delete messages from a queue#

The example below shows how to:

Example#

import boto3

# Create SQS client
sqs = boto3.client('sqs')

queue_url = 'SQS_QUEUE_URL'

# Receive message from SQS queue
response = sqs.receive_message(
    QueueUrl=queue_url,
    AttributeNames=[
        'SentTimestamp'
    ],
    MaxNumberOfMessages=1,
    MessageAttributeNames=[
        'All'
    ],
    VisibilityTimeout=0,
    WaitTimeSeconds=0
)

message = response['Messages'][0]
receipt_handle = message['ReceiptHandle']

# Delete received message from queue
sqs.delete_message(
    QueueUrl=queue_url,
    ReceiptHandle=receipt_handle
)
print('Received and deleted message: %s' % message)