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RabbitMQ's Channel#basicConsume method gives us the following arguments:

channel.basicConsume(queueName, autoAck, consumerTag, noLocal,
    exclusive, arguments, callback);

Giving us the ability to tell RabbitMQ exactly which queue we want to consume from.

But Channel#basicPublish has no such equivalency:

channel.basicPublish(exchangeName, routingKey, mandatory, immediateFlag,
    basicProperties, messageAsBytes);

Why can't I specify the queue to publish to here?!? How do I get a Channel publishing to, say, a queue named logging? Thanks in advance!

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    What you want to do can be done with exclusive queue, with direct exchange and known queue name and somehow with specific route key + topic exchange. – pinepain Aug 30 '13 at 12:00

3 Answers3

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To expand on @Tien Nguyen's answer, there is a "cheat" in RabbitMQ that effectively lets you publish directly to a queue. Each queue is automatically bound to the AMQP default exchange, with the queue's name as the routing key. The default exchange is also known as the "nameless exchange" - ie its name is the empty string. So if you publish to the exchange named "" with routing key equal to your queue's name, the message will go to just that queue. It is going through an exchange as @John said, it's just not one that you need to declare or bind yourself.

I don't have the Java client handy to try this code, but it should work.

channel.basicPublish("", myQueueName, false, false, null, myMessageAsBytes);

That said, this is mostly contrary to the spirit of how RabbitMQ works. For normal application flow you should declare and bind exchanges. But for exceptional cases the "cheat" can be useful. For example, I believe this is how the Rabbit Admin Console allows you to manually publish messages to a queue without all the ceremony of creating and binding exchanges.

Brian Reischl
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Basically queues can be binded to an exchange based on routingKeys.

Assume that you have 3 different publishers.
Publisher1 sending message to exchange with routingKey "events"
Publisher2 sending message to exchange with routingKey "tasks"
Publisher3 sending message to exchange with routingKey "jobs"

You can have a consumer that consumes only messages with specific routhingKey.
For example in order to have a consumer for "events" messages you declare like this

 channel.queueBind(queueName, exchangeName, "events");

If you want to consume all the messages coming to the exchange you give the routing as '#'

So in short what i can say is,
1. Messages will be published to an exchange.
2. Queues will be bound to exchange based on routingKeys.
3. RabbitMQ will forward messages with matching routing keys to the corresponding queues.

Please see the tutorial - http://www.rabbitmq.com/tutorials/tutorial-three-java.html

The core idea in the messaging model in RabbitMQ is that the producer never sends any messages directly to a queue. Actually, quite often the producer doesn't even know if a message will be delivered to any queue at all. Instead, the producer can only send messages to an exchange

Vishal John
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  • Awesome @John (+1 and green check) - thanks for the helpful, thorough and informative answer! –  Aug 30 '13 at 14:55
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please try this:

channel.basicPublish("", yourQueueName, null,
        message.getBytes((Charset.forName("UTF-8"))));

It worked for my project.

Tien Nguyen
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    Thanks @tien nguyen (+1) - However, it looks like you are using the [`basicPublish(java.lang.String exchange, java.lang.String routingKey, AMQP.BasicProperties props, byte[] body)`](http://www.rabbitmq.com/releases/rabbitmq-java-client/v1.7.2/rabbitmq-java-client-javadoc-1.7.2/com/rabbitmq/client/Channel.html#basicPublish%28java.lang.String,%20java.lang.String,%20com.rabbitmq.client.AMQP.BasicProperties,%20byte[]%29) overload of `basicPublish`. In that overload, the 2nd parameter (which you have as "yourQueueName" is called "routingKey". So, is "routingKey" RabbitMQ lingo for "queue name"? –  Aug 30 '13 at 12:38
  • @TicketMonster routingKey doesn't mean queue. A queue will be bound to an exchange based on routingKey and only will receive only messages which have that routingKey. see my answer. – Vishal John Aug 30 '13 at 14:35
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    in a bit more detail the message is sent to the default exchange so the routing key will in effect send to the queue. But no they are not equivalent – robthewolf Sep 01 '13 at 06:58