Managing Visibility Timeout in Amazon SQS

This Python example shows you how to specify the time interval during which messages received by a queue are not visible.

The Scenario

In this example, Python code is used to manage visibility timeout. The code uses the SDK for Python to manage visibility timeout by using this method of the AWS.SQS client class:

• set_queue_attributes.

For more information about Amazon SQS visibility timeout, see Visibility Timeout in the Amazon Simple Queue Service Developer Guide.

All the example code for the Amazon Web Services (AWS) SDK for Python is available here on GitHub.

Prerequisite Tasks

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

• Configure your AWS credentials, as described in Quickstart.
• Create an Amazon SQS queue. For an example of creating a queue, see Using Queues in Amazon SQS.
• Send a message to the queue. For an example of sending a message to a queue, see Sending and Receiving Messages in Amazon SQS.

Change the Visibility Timeout

The example below shows how to:

• Change the visibility timeout using set_queue_attributes.

  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'
    ],
)

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

# Change visibility timeout of message from queue
sqs.change_message_visibility(
    QueueUrl=queue_url,
    ReceiptHandle=receipt_handle,
    VisibilityTimeout=20
)
print('Received and changed visibility timeout of message: %s' % message)