How-to: Messaging with Azure Queues

Sven Van den brande

Jan 22, 2015 • 5 min read

In this how-to i will explain with a sample application how we can do some messaging with Azure Queues.

First we need to create a Service Bus Namespace on the Azure Portal. For the moment we need to use the old portal.
We can’t do it on the new portal….

Click in the dashboard in the menu on the left on the “Service Bus” item, click then on the “Create a new namespace” link.

Then you should see the following screen.

Fill in an unique namespace name, the Region for deployment, the type ( we need the messaging for our queue ) also select the messaging Tier ( see the following link for the pricing ).

After some time your service bus namespace is available

You can click on the namespace, this will open the main dashboard.

Now we can start building the solution in Visual Studio (2013).
First we need to add the “ServiceBus” reference to our project. You can do this with the Nuget Package Manager.

You can also install it with the Nuget Package Manager Console. Just use the following command

 1: Install-Package WindowsAzure.ServiceBus

He creates also an “App.config” file. You need to change the connectionstring with the one from the dashboard. You can get it when you click on the following icon in the Azure dashboard ![](https://svenvandenbrandeblog.blob.core.windows.net/migrated-old-blog-posts/2015/01/image20.png)

Just copy the full connection string under the SAS heading to your “App.config”.
It should be something like this…

xmlversion="1.0"encoding="utf-8"?> 2:<configuration>
<startup>
<supportedRuntimeversion="v4.0"sku=".NETFramework,Version=v4.5"/>
</startup>
<system.serviceModel>
<extensions>

<behaviorExtensions>
<addname="connectionStatusBehavior"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.ConnectionStatusElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="transportClientEndpointBehavior"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.TransportClientEndpointBehaviorElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="serviceRegistrySettings"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.ServiceRegistrySettingsElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
</behaviorExtensions>
<bindingElementExtensions>
<addname="netMessagingTransport"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.Configuration.NetMessagingTransportExtensionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="tcpRelayTransport"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.TcpRelayTransportElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="httpRelayTransport"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.HttpRelayTransportElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="httpsRelayTransport"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.HttpsRelayTransportElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="onewayRelayTransport"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.RelayedOnewayTransportElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
</bindingElementExtensions>
<bindingExtensions>
<addname="basicHttpRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.BasicHttpRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="webHttpRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.WebHttpRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="ws2007HttpRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.WS2007HttpRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="netTcpRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.NetTcpRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="netOnewayRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.NetOnewayRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="netEventRelayBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Configuration.NetEventRelayBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
<addname="netMessagingBinding"type="Microsoft.ServiceBus.Messaging.Configuration.NetMessagingBindingCollectionElement, Microsoft.ServiceBus, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=31bf3856ad364e35"/>
</bindingExtensions>
</extensions>
</system.serviceModel>
<appSettings>

<addkey="Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString"value="Endpoint=sb://[your namespace].servicebus.windows.net;SharedAccessKeyName=RootManageSharedAccessKey;SharedAccessKey=[your secret]"/>
</appSettings>
</configuration>

Now we can start our coding, to read and write some data to the queue in our Azure Servicebus namespace.

We use a couple methods, below i will describe them all..

The following method will create our queue. Also we delete the queue when it exists….

privatestaticvoid CreateQueue()
{
NamespaceManager namespaceManager = NamespaceManager.Create();
Console.WriteLine("\nCreating Queue '{0}'...", QueueName);

// Delete the queue when it exists
if (namespaceManager.QueueExists(QueueName))
{
namespaceManager.DeleteQueue(QueueName);
}

namespaceManager.CreateQueue(QueueName);
}

In the following method we will send the message. First we create a new message with “BrokeredMessage” after that we try to send it to our queue…

privatestaticvoid SendMessage()
{
queueClient = QueueClient.Create(QueueName);

BrokeredMessage message = new BrokeredMessage(string.Format("Sending message with Guid: {0}",Guid.NewGuid()));
message.MessageId = Guid.NewGuid().ToString();

Console.WriteLine("\nSending message to Queue...");

try
{
queueClient.Send(message);
}
catch (MessagingException e)
{
if (!e.IsTransient)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
throw;
}
else
{
HandleTransientErrors(e);
}
}
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Message sent: Id = {0}, Body = {1}", message.MessageId, message.GetBody<string>()));
Console.WriteLine();
}

In the following method we will receive the message. He tries to receive a message within 5 second. When i don’t find any message anymore means the queue is emtpy. When he finds a message we will mark is as complete. Then it will be deleted from our queue…

privatestaticvoid ReceiveMessages()
{
Console.WriteLine("\nReceiving message from Queue...");
BrokeredMessage message = null;
while (true)
{
try
{
//receive messages from Queue
message = queueClient.Receive(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(5));
if (message != null)
{
Console.WriteLine(string.Format("Message received: Id = {0}, Body = {1}", message.MessageId, message.GetBody<string>()));
Console.WriteLine();
// Further custom message processing could go here...
message.Complete();
}
else
{
//no more messages in the queue
break;
}
}
catch (MessagingException e)
{
if (!e.IsTransient)
{
Console.WriteLine(e.Message);
Console.WriteLine();
throw;
}
else
{
HandleTransientErrors(e);
}
}
}
}

Then we also have our main method. This will call the other methods….

publicstaticstring QueueName = "Orders";
privatestatic QueueClient queueClient;

staticvoid Main(string[] args)
{
Console.WriteLine("Creating a Queue");
CreateQueue();
while (true)
{
Console.WriteLine("Press S to start sending a message, Press R to receive messages, Press E to exit the console...");
ConsoleKeyInfo info = Console.ReadKey();
if (info.Key == ConsoleKey.S)
{
//Sending Message
SendMessage();
}
elseif (info.Key == ConsoleKey.R)
{
//Receive Messages
ReceiveMessages();
}
elseif (info.Key == ConsoleKey.E)
{
//Exit the console & close the queue client
queueClient.Close();
break;
}
}
}

You can also find the source code on my [Github](https://github.com/SvenVandenbrande/CodeExamples.git) –> QueueExample

Have fun with it… If you have a problem. Ping me on twitter or send a comment on this post.

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