RabbitMQ C AMQP client library

Introduction

This is a C-language AMQP client library for use with v2.0+ of the RabbitMQ broker.

• http://github.com/alanxz/rabbitmq-c

Announcements regarding the library are periodically made on the rabbitmq-c-users and cross-posted to rabbitmq-users.

• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rabbitmq-c-users
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/rabbitmq-users

Latest Stable Version

The latest stable release of rabbitmq-c can be found at:

• https://github.com/alanxz/rabbitmq-c/releases/latest

Documentation

API documentation for v0.8.0+ can viewed from:

http://alanxz.github.io/rabbitmq-c/docs/0.8.0/

Getting started

Building and installing

Prereqs:

• CMake v3.22 or better
• A C compiler (GCC 4.4+, clang, and MSVC are test. Other compilers may also work)
• Optionally OpenSSL v1.1.1+ to enable support for connecting to RabbitMQ over SSL/TLS
• Optionally POpt to build some handy command-line tools.
• Optionally XmlTo to build man pages for the handy command-line tools
• Optionally Doxygen to build developer API documentation.

After downloading and extracting the source from a tarball to a directory (see above), the commands to build rabbitmq-c on most systems are:

mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build . [--config Release]

The --config Release flag should be used in multi-configuration generators e.g., Visual Studio or XCode.

It is also possible to point the CMake GUI tool at the CMakeLists.txt in the root of the source tree and generate build projects or IDE workspace

Installing the library and optionally specifying a prefix can be done with:

cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ..
cmake --build . [--config Release] --target install

More information on CMake can be found on its FAQ (http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ)

Other interesting flags that can be passed to CMake:

• BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON/OFF toggles building the examples. OFF by default.
• BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON/OFF toggles building rabbitmq-c as a shared library. ON by default.
• BUILD_STATIC_LIBS=ON/OFF toggles building rabbitmq-c as a static library. ON by default.
• BUILD_TESTING=ON/OFF toggles building test code. ON by default.
• BUILD_TOOLS=ON/OFF toggles building the command line tools. By default this is ON if the build system can find the POpt header and library.
• BUILD_TOOLS_DOCS=ON/OFF toggles building the man pages for the command line tools. By default this is ON if BUILD_TOOLS is ON and the build system can find the XmlTo utility.
• ENABLE_SSL_SUPPORT=ON/OFF toggles building rabbitmq-c with SSL support. By default this is ON if the OpenSSL headers and library can be found.
• BUILD_API_DOCS=ON/OFF - toggles building the Doxygen API documentation, by default this is OFF
• RUN_SYSTEM_TESTS=ON/OFF toggles building the system tests (i.e. tests requiring an accessible RabbitMQ server instance on localhost), by default this is OFF

Building RabbitMQ - Using vcpkg

You can download and install RabbitMQ using the vcpkg dependency manager:

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
./vcpkg integrate install
./vcpkg install librabbitmq

The RabbitMQ port in vcpkg is kept up to date by Microsoft team members and community contributors. If the version is out of date, please create an issue or pull request on the vcpkg repository.

Running the examples

Arrange for a RabbitMQ or other AMQP server to be running on localhost at TCP port number 5672.

In one terminal, run

./examples/amqp_listen localhost 5672 amq.direct test

In another terminal,

./examples/amqp_sendstring localhost 5672 amq.direct test "hello world"

You should see output similar to the following in the listener's terminal window:

Delivery 1, exchange amq.direct routingkey test
Content-type: text/plain
----
00000000: 68 65 6C 6C 6F 20 77 6F : 72 6C 64                 hello world
0000000B:

Writing applications using librabbitmq

Please see the examples directory for short examples of the use of the librabbitmq library.

Threading

You cannot share a socket, an amqp_connection_state_t, or a channel between threads using librabbitmq. The librabbitmq library is built with event-driven, single-threaded applications in mind, and does not yet cater to any of the requirements of pthreaded applications.

Your applications instead should open an AMQP connection (and an associated socket, of course) per thread. If your program needs to access an AMQP connection or any of its channels from more than one thread, it is entirely responsible for designing and implementing an appropriate locking scheme. It will generally be much simpler to have a connection exclusive to each thread that needs AMQP service.

License & Copyright

Portions created by Alan Antonuk are Copyright (c) 2012-2021 Alan Antonuk. All Rights Reserved.

Portions created by VMware are Copyright (c) 2007-2012 VMware, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Portions created by Tony Garnock-Jones are Copyright (c) 2009-2010 VMware, Inc. and Tony Garnock-Jones. All Rights Reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.