RabbitMQ DefaultConsumer causing too many consumer tags

Question

I have a RabbitMQ client application that listens to a specific queue. The client creates and instance of DefaultConsumer and implements the handleDelivery method. Here is the code

    protected LinkedBlockingQueue<Message> messages = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();

    public void receiveMessages() {
        try {
//            channel.basicQos(pollCount);
            Message message = new Message();
            Consumer consumer = new DefaultConsumer(channel) {
                @Override
                public void handleDelivery(String consumerTag, Envelope envelope, AMQP.BasicProperties properties, byte[] body)
                        throws IOException {
                    long deliveryTag = envelope.getDeliveryTag();
                    String response = new String(body, "UTF-8");
                    if (response != null) {
                        message.setId(NUID.nextGlobal());
                        message.setPayload(response);
                        message.setDeliveryTag(deliveryTag);
                        messages.add(message);
                        logger.info("Message received: ", message.getPayload());
                    }
                }
            };
            logger.debug("**********Channel status: " + channel.isOpen());
            channel.basicConsume(queueName, false, consumer);
        } catch (Exception e) {
            logger.error("Exception while getting messages from Rabbit ", e);

        }
    }

The method receiveMessages() is called frequently through a thread every 500ms and drains the messages into a different List for consumption. Due to this poll on receiveMessages() I observed that the consumer tags are continuously getting created and growing when viewed through rabbit console like in the picture. Is it normal to see those increasing consumer tags?

Answer 1

I finally found a working solution. As Luke Bakken highlighted there is no polling required. I just call receiveMesssages() only once now. Thereafter my consumer is receiving callbacks as the messages are published into the queue.

 protected LinkedBlockingQueue<Message> messages = new LinkedBlockingQueue<>();
 public void receiveMessages() {
    try {
        Message message = new Message();
        DeliverCallback deliverCallback = (consumerTag, delivery) -> {
            long deliveryTag = delivery.getEnvelope().getDeliveryTag();
            String response = new String(delivery.getBody(), "UTF-8");
            if (response != null) {
                message.setId(NUID.nextGlobal());
                message.setPayload(response);
                message.setDeliveryTag(deliveryTag);
                messages.add(message);
                logger.info("Message received: ", message.getPayload());
            };
        channel.basicConsume(queueName, false, deliverCallback, consumerTag -> { });
    } catch (Exception e) {
        logger.error("Exception while getting messages from Rabbit ", e);
    }
}

The rabbit console now shows only 1 consume tag entry under the bound queue.