Subscribing

There are two approaches to subscribing to messages that have been published.

The Generator Approach

The first approach is to use the fedmsg.tail_messages() API. This returns a generator that yields messages as they arrive:

>>> import fedmsg
>>> for name, endpoint, topic, msg in fedmsg.tail_messages():
...     print topic, msg

For this to print anything, you need to be Publishing messages.

Note

This approach only works with messages published via ZeroMQ. If you are Publishing Without ZeroMQ then you will need to use The Consumer Approach.

The Consumer Approach

This approach requires a bit more work, but provides several advantages. Namely, it manages workers for you and supports replaying missed messages via a network service.

The first step is to write a class which extends fedmsg.consumers.FedmsgConsumer. The class documentation covers the details of implementing a consumer.

After you have implemented your consumer class and registered it under the moksha.consumer Python entry-point, you need to start the fedmsg-hub service, which will create your class in one or more worker threads and pass messages to these workers as they arrive.

To see a working example of this pattern, investigate the fedmsg.consumers.relay module.

Consuming Non-ZeroMQ Messages

In order to consume messages with STOMP, you will need to set the STOMP Configuration options.

Best Practices

When using fedmsg, messages will be lost. Your applications and services should be prepared to receive duplicate messages. Always provide a way for the application or service to recover gracefully for a lost or duplicate message.