How to peek at messages in the queue
Question:
I don’t want the message to count as “read” but I’d like to know what’s in the queue. The documentation:
http://boto.s3.amazonaws.com/ref/sqs.html#module-boto.sqs
Isn’t very straight forward about what absorbs a message and what doesn’t. The dump message seems close, but I’d rather do this in memory rather than to a file.
The faq:
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1343#12
Has some sketchy solution:
How do I peek at a message?
With version 2008-01-01, the PeekMessage action has been removed from
Amazon SQS. This functionality was used mainly to debug small systems
— specifically to confirm a message was successfully sent to the queue
or deleted from the queue. To do this with version 2008-01-01, you can
log the message ID and the receipt handle for your messages and
correlate them to confirm when a message has been received and
deleted.
Has anyone had any luck with this? It seems like very basic queue functionality and I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a clean way to do this.
Answers:
There is no longer a true peek function available in SQS but you can probably accomplish what you want by simply using get_messages and setting the visibility_timeout quite low. As long as you don’t delete the messages you have read, they will reappear on the queue after the visibility_timeout has expired and will be available for reading. The only tricky part is trying to figure out how long the timeout should be. If you have lots and lots of messages in the queue, you will have to make multiple calls to get_messages to retrieve them all and you probably don’t want previously read messages reappearing while you are still peeking at the messages.
Update 11/11/2020
Right-clicking no longer works on new SQS console.
See @marmor’s answer
Original Answer (old dashboard)
If you have access to Amazon’s AWS Console, on the queue list page, you can right-click on a queue.
Then select View/Delete Messages from the pop-up menu.
This will pop-up a window where you can start polling for messages in the queue.
Refer to images below:
Right click no longer works in the new SQS console.
To view queue messages in the SQS console you now need to click into a queue > Send and receive messages > Poll for messages
I have created a desktop application named SQSCLI
A Graphical Desktop Application available for Windows & Mac
It has a Long Polling Support and it uses AWS profiles available in your local.
Video Demo of this application
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNHHvts9oo
More details on this link
In the new AWS Console:
- Visit the main queue page at https://console.aws.amazon.com/sqs
- Click on the name of your queue – this will take you to its details page
- Click on the "Send and Receive Messages" button (top right)
- Click on the "Poll for Messages" button
- Click on the message id to view message details
I don’t want the message to count as “read” but I’d like to know what’s in the queue. The documentation:
http://boto.s3.amazonaws.com/ref/sqs.html#module-boto.sqs
Isn’t very straight forward about what absorbs a message and what doesn’t. The dump message seems close, but I’d rather do this in memory rather than to a file.
The faq:
http://aws.amazon.com/articles/1343#12
Has some sketchy solution:
How do I peek at a message?
With version 2008-01-01, the PeekMessage action has been removed from
Amazon SQS. This functionality was used mainly to debug small systems
— specifically to confirm a message was successfully sent to the queue
or deleted from the queue. To do this with version 2008-01-01, you can
log the message ID and the receipt handle for your messages and
correlate them to confirm when a message has been received and
deleted.
Has anyone had any luck with this? It seems like very basic queue functionality and I’d be shocked if there wasn’t a clean way to do this.
There is no longer a true peek function available in SQS but you can probably accomplish what you want by simply using get_messages and setting the visibility_timeout quite low. As long as you don’t delete the messages you have read, they will reappear on the queue after the visibility_timeout has expired and will be available for reading. The only tricky part is trying to figure out how long the timeout should be. If you have lots and lots of messages in the queue, you will have to make multiple calls to get_messages to retrieve them all and you probably don’t want previously read messages reappearing while you are still peeking at the messages.
Update 11/11/2020
Right-clicking no longer works on new SQS console.
See @marmor’s answer
Original Answer (old dashboard)
If you have access to Amazon’s AWS Console, on the queue list page, you can right-click on a queue.
Then select View/Delete Messages from the pop-up menu.
This will pop-up a window where you can start polling for messages in the queue.
Refer to images below:
Right click no longer works in the new SQS console.
To view queue messages in the SQS console you now need to click into a queue > Send and receive messages > Poll for messages
I have created a desktop application named SQSCLI
A Graphical Desktop Application available for Windows & Mac
It has a Long Polling Support and it uses AWS profiles available in your local.
Video Demo of this application
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALNHHvts9oo
More details on this link
In the new AWS Console:
- Visit the main queue page at https://console.aws.amazon.com/sqs
- Click on the name of your queue – this will take you to its details page
- Click on the "Send and Receive Messages" button (top right)
- Click on the "Poll for Messages" button
- Click on the message id to view message details