Chapter 6. Network connections

6.1. Connection URLs

Connection URLs encode the information used to establish new connections.

Connection URL syntax

scheme://host[:port]

  • Scheme - The connection transport, either amqp for unencrypted TCP or amqps for TCP with SSL/TLS encryption.
  • Host - The remote network host. The value can be a hostname or a numeric IP address. IPv6 addresses must be enclosed in square brackets.
  • Port - The remote network port. This value is optional. The default value is 5672 for the amqp scheme and 5671 for the amqps scheme.

Connection URL examples

amqps://example.com
amqps://example.net:56720
amqp://127.0.0.1
amqp://[::1]:2000

6.2. Creating outgoing connections

To connect to a remote server, call the Container.connect() method with a connection URL. This is typically done inside the MessagingHandler.on_start() method.

Example: Creating outgoing connections

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        event.container.connect("amqp://example.com")

    def on_connection_opened(self, event):
        print("Connection", event.connection, "is open")

See the Chapter 7, Security section for information about creating secure connections.

6.3. Configuring reconnect

Reconnect allows a client to recover from lost connections. It is used to ensure that the components in a distributed system reestablish communication after temporary network or component failures.

AMQ Python enables reconnect by default. If a connection is lost or a connection attempt fails, the client will try again after a brief delay. The delay increases exponentially for each new attempt, up to a default maximum of 10 seconds.

To disable reconnect, set the reconnect connection option to False.

Example: Disabling reconnect

container.connect("amqp://example.com", reconnect=False)

To control the delays between connection attempts, define a class implementing the reset() and next() methods and set the reconnect connection option to an instance of that class.

Example: Configuring reconnect

class ExampleReconnect(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.delay = 0

    def reset(self):
        self.delay = 0

    def next(self):
        if self.delay == 0:
            self.delay = 0.1
        else:
            self.delay = min(10, 2 * self.delay)

        return self.delay

container.connect("amqp://example.com", reconnect=ExampleReconnect())

The next method returns the next delay in seconds. The reset method is called once before the reconnect process begins.

6.4. Configuring failover

AMQ Python allows you to configure multiple connection endpoints. If connecting to one fails, the client attempts to connect to the next in the list. If the list is exhausted, the process starts over.

To specify multiple connection endpoints, set the urls connection option to a list of connection URLs.

Example: Configuring failover

urls = ["amqp://alpha.example.com", "amqp://beta.example.com"]
container.connect(urls=urls)

It is an error to use the url and urls options at the same time.

6.5. Accepting incoming connections

AMQ Python can accept inbound network connections, enabling you to build custom messaging servers.

To start listening for connections, use the Container.listen() method with a URL containing the local host address and port to listen on.

Example: Accepting incoming connections

class ExampleHandler(MessagingHandler):
    def on_start(self, event):
        event.container.listen("0.0.0.0")

    def on_connection_opened(self, event):
        print("New incoming connection", event.connection)

The special IP address 0.0.0.0 listens on all available IPv4 interfaces. To listen on all IPv6 interfaces, use [::0].

For more information, see the server receive.py example.