If I have a queue (SQS, AMQP), how do I notify my worker servers when there is an object in it?

Question

A lot of times my queue will remain empty. But when it does fill up, how does that queue notify my server to execute a python script?

I could make it so that the python script hits the queue every 5 seconds, but that's silly.

Answer 1

You should have a consumer on the queue, which registers a callback. The consumer will then poll the queue and call the callback when an item is received.

You don't say how you're accessing the queue, but a library like carrot does this for you.