# RabbitMQ C AMQP client library

[![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/alanxz/rabbitmq-c.png?branch=master)](http://travis-ci.org/alanxz/rabbitmq-c)

## Introduction

This is a C-language AMQP client library for use with v2.0+ of the
[RabbitMQ](http://www.rabbitmq.com/) broker.

 - <http://github.com/alanxz/rabbitmq-c>

Announcements regarding the library are periodically made on the
rabbitmq-discuss mailing list:

 - <http://lists.rabbitmq.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rabbitmq-discuss>

## Latest Stable Version

The latest stable release of [rabbitmq-c is v0.5.2](https://github.com/alanxz/rabbitmq-c/releases/tag/v0.5.2).
A complete list of changes can be found in the [Change Log](ChangeLog.md)

The v0.5.2 source tarball can be downloaded from:

<https://github.com/alanxz/rabbitmq-c/releases/download/v0.5.2/rabbitmq-c-0.5.2.tar.gz>

API documentation for v0.5.0+ can viewed from:

<http://alanxz.github.io/rabbitmq-c/docs/0.5.0/>

## Getting started

### Building and installing

#### Prereqs:
- [CMake v2.6 or better](http://www.cmake.org/)
- A C compiler (GCC 4.4+, clang, and MSVC are test. Other compilers may also
  work)
- *Optionally* [OpenSSL](http://www.openssl.org/) v0.9.8+ to enable support for
  connecting to RabbitMQ over SSL/TLS
- *Optionally* [POpt](http://freecode.com/projects/popt) to build some handy
  command-line tools.
- *Optionally* [XmlTo](https://fedorahosted.org/xmlto/) to build man pages for
  the handy command-line tools
- *Optionally* [Doxygen](http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/) to build
  developer API documentation.

After downloading and extracting the source from a tarball to a directory.
([see above][Latest Stable Version]), the commands to build rabbitmq-c on most
systems are:

    mkdir build && cd build
    cmake ..
    cmake --build [--config Release] .

The --config Release flag should be used in multi-configuration generators e.g.,
Visual Studio or XCode.

It is also possible to point the CMake GUI tool at the CMakeLists.txt in the root of
the source tree and generate build projects or IDE workspace

Installing the library and optionally specifying a prefix can be done with:

    cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local ..
    cmake --build . [--config Release] --target install

More information on CMake can be found on its FAQ (http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_FAQ)

Other interesting flags that can be passed to CMake:

* `BUILD_EXAMPLES=ON/OFF` toggles building the examples. ON by default.
* `BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=ON/OFF` toggles building rabbitmq-c as a shared library.
   ON by default.
* `BUILD_STATIC_LIBS=ON/OFF` toggles building rabbitmq-c as a static library.
   OFF by default.
* `BUILD_TESTS=ON/OFF` toggles building test code. ON by default.
* `BUILD_TOOLS=ON/OFF` toggles building the command line tools. By default
   this is ON if the build system can find the POpt header and library.
* `BUILD_TOOLS_DOCS=ON/OFF` toggles building the man pages for the command line
   tools. By default this is ON if BUILD_TOOLS is ON and the build system can
   find the XmlTo utility.
* `ENABLE_SSL_SUPPORT=ON/OFF` toggles building rabbitmq-c with SSL support. By
   default this is ON if the OpenSSL headers and library can be found.
* `ENABLE_THREAD_SAFETY=ON/OFF` toggles OpenSSL thread-safety. By default this
   is ON
* `BUILD_API_DOCS=ON/OFF` - toggles building the Doxygen API documentation, by
   default this is OFF

#### autotools

For legacy purposes, a GNU autotools based build system is also maintained. The required
utilities you need are autoconf v2.59+, automake v1.9+, libtool v2.2+, and pkg-config.

Then the standard autotools build procedure will build rabbitmq-c:

    autoreconf -i
    ./configure
    make
    make install

## Running the examples

Arrange for a RabbitMQ or other AMQP server to be running on
`localhost` at TCP port number 5672.

In one terminal, run

    ./examples/amqp_listen localhost 5672 amq.direct test

In another terminal,

    ./examples/amqp_sendstring localhost 5672 amq.direct test "hello world"

You should see output similar to the following in the listener's
terminal window:

    Delivery 1, exchange amq.direct routingkey test
    Content-type: text/plain
    ----
    00000000: 68 65 6C 6C 6F 20 77 6F : 72 6C 64                 hello world
    0000000B:

## Writing applications using `librabbitmq`

Please see the `examples` directory for short examples of the use of
the `librabbitmq` library.

### Threading

You cannot share a socket, an `amqp_connection_state_t`, or a channel
between threads using `librabbitmq`. The `librabbitmq` library is
built with event-driven, single-threaded applications in mind, and
does not yet cater to any of the requirements of `pthread`ed
applications.

Your applications instead should open an AMQP connection (and an
associated socket, of course) per thread. If your program needs to
access an AMQP connection or any of its channels from more than one
thread, it is entirely responsible for designing and implementing an
appropriate locking scheme. It will generally be much simpler to have
a connection exclusive to each thread that needs AMQP service.