AWS SQS Deletemessage: A Comprehensive Guide 101

There are many services included in Amazon Web Services. The use of such services has become widespread around the world to reduce the burden that comes with managing them. A prime example of this type of managed service is SQS, which allows software components to send, store, and receive messages at any volume without any limits.

In this article, the SQS Deletemessage command, its syntax, importance, parameters, and examples are discussed. It also gives an overview of Amazon SQS.

What is AWS SQS?

• With Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS), developers and technical professionals can send, store and retrieve multiple messages of varied sizes asynchronously.
• With this service, users can decouple individual microservices, distributed systems, and serverless applications so that they may scale without the need to maintain their message queues.
• AWS SQS is a hosted queue that allows you to integrate and decouple distributed software systems and components while maintaining security, durability, and availability. 
• Dead-letter queues and cost allocation tags are two common constructs offered by Amazon SQS. It provides a generic web services API that you can use with any AWS SDK-supported programming language.

There are two types of message queues available in SQS. Standard queues provide the highest throughput, best-effort ordering, and delivery at least once. SQS FIFO queues are designed to ensure that messages are processed exactly once, in the order in which they are received. 

• Amazon SQS is a messaging service that has been commoditized. IBM WebSphere MQ and Microsoft Message Queuing are two well-known examples of messaging service technologies. Users do not need to maintain their server, unlike with these technologies. Amazon handles it for them and charges a per-use fee for the SQS service.
• The authentication procedures provided by Amazon SQS allow for secure data handling. This is done through Amazon’s Amazon Web Services (AWS) identification, which requires users to have an AWS account with Amazon.com.
• To perform identification, AWS assigns a pair of related identifiers, your AWS access keys, to an AWS-enabled account. A public 20-character Access Key is the first identifier. This key is used to identify the user in an AWS service request.
• When looking up an account’s Secret Access Key, AWS uses the Access Key ID provided in a service request. The key is then used by Amazon.com to create a digital signature. If they match, the user is considered authentic; if they don’t, the authentication fails and the request is ignored.
• Amazon SQS guarantees delivery at least once. For redundancy and availability, messages are stored on multiple servers. If a message is delivered while a server is unavailable, it may not be removed from the queue of that server and may be resent.

Messages can be of any format, and the information they contain is not limited. Message bodies were initially limited to 8KB, but on 2010-07-01, they were increased to 64KB, and then to 256KB on 2013-06-18. The user has a few options for overcoming this restriction for larger messages. A large message can be split into multiple segments and sent separately, or the message data can be stored using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or Amazon DynamoDB with just a pointer to the SQS message data. For this purpose, Amazon has made available an Extended Client Library.

• Unlimited queues and message traffic are supported by the service.
• Amazon SQS allows developers to securely exchange messages between software components. Users can use common programming languages to access Amazon SQS’s standard web services application program interface.
• Asynchronous tasks are supported by Amazon SQS. This means that instead of a single application directly invoking another, the app can simply send a message to a queue and wait for it. Later, other applications will be able to access the message.
• First-in, first-out (FIFO), and standard queues are the two types of Amazon SQS queues. Message strings in FIFO queues are kept in the same order in which they were sent and received. FIFO queues can send, receive, and delete up to 300 messages per second. FIFO queues are used to communicate between apps where the order of operations and events is important.
• Message strings are kept in the same order in which they were sent in standard queues, but processing requirements may change the original order or sequence of messages. Standard queues, for example, can be used to batch messages for later processing or to distribute tasks to multiple worker nodes.
• Message delivery frequency differs between standard and FIFO queues, with FIFO messages arriving exactly once and standard queue messages arriving at least once.

Key Features of AWS SQS

The following features make AWS SQS a popular message management solution among developers:

• Durability: Amazon SQS relies on multiple servers to store your messages safely. Moreover, its Standard Queues & FIFO Queues operate on an at-least-once & exactly-once message delivery system.
• Availability: Amazon SQS leverages redundant infrastructure to generate high-speed concurrent messaging. This way, it ensures that you experience an increased availability of messages for both production and consumption.
• Scalability: Amazon SQS offers you high scalability as it can independently process all the buffered message requests. Furthermore, it can scale transparently in sudden load spikes and does not need any prior instructions.
• Reliability: Amazon SQS uses a message locking mechanism during the processing phase. This allows multiple producers to send messages simultaneously to various consumers.

You can learn more about AWS SQS here.

Key Benefits of SQS

• Eliminate Administrative Overhead: To provide extremely accessible and scalable message queuing services, AWS manages all in-progress operations and underlying infrastructure. There is no direct value with AWS SQS; there is no need to purchase, install, or assemble messaging packages; nor is there a need to build out and maintain the supporting infrastructure. You can create applications quickly and grow them efficiently with Amazon SQS queues since they’re dynamically created and automatically scaled.
• Reliably Deliver Messages: Using AWS SQS, you can send any amount of data, at any level of output, without losing messages or having to rely on alternative services. Amazon SQS enables you to decouple components of an application so that they can run and fail in parallel, increasing the fault tolerance of the system. Every message area unit is duplicated across multiple zones and held on redundantly to ensure it is always accessible when necessary.
• Keep Sensitive Information Secure: In addition to using server-side secret writing (SSE) to encrypt every message body, you can also use Amazon SQS to exchange sensitive data between applications. The integration of AWS SQS with the AWS Key Management Service (KMS) puts you in control of the keys that protect both SQS messages and other AWS resources. With AWS KMS, your encryption keys are logged to AWS CloudTrail to comply with your regulatory and compliance requirements.
• Scale Elastically and Cost-Effectively: Through AWS SQS, you can dynamically scale your demand on the AWS cloud. AWS SQS scales flexibly with your application. You won’t have to worry about designing capabilities or pre-provisioning as a result. A queue can hold an unlimited number of messages, and common queues allow for nearly unlimited output. Pricing units provide significant value savings compared to self-managed electronic messaging middleware using an “always-on” model.
• Customization: Your queues don’t have to be identical; for example, a queue can have a default delay. You can either use Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) or Amazon DynamoDB to store the contents of messages larger than 256 KB, with Amazon SQS holding a pointer to the Amazon S3 object, or you can split a large message into smaller messages.

How is AWS SQS Used?

Amazon SQS allows developers to securely exchange messages between different software components. With Amazon SQS, users can use common programming languages to access a standard web services application interface.

The Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS) supports asynchronous processing. An application does not have to call another one directly; rather, it sends a message into a queue, where it waits. The message can then be accessed later by other applications.

Amazon SQS queues can be categorized into first-in, first-out (FIFO), and standard queues. As the messages are queued in FIFO order, they remain in the same order as they were sent and received. FIFO queues support up to 300 sends, receives, or deletes per second. A FIFO queue is used to communicate between applications in which the order of operations is important.

The standard queue tries to keep messages in the same order as they were sent, but processing requirements may force the order to be changed. It is possible, for instance, to batch messages for later processing or allocate tasks to multiple worker nodes using standard queues. When a message is delivered to a FIFO queue, it is delivered precisely once, as opposed to being delivered at least once to a standard queue.

Understanding AWS SQS Deletemessage Command

With the SQS DeleteMessage command, you can delete a message from a queue. If you want to delete a message, use the ReceiptHandle of the message (not the MessageId you receive when you send the message). 

Amazon SQS can remove a message from a queue even if another consumer locks it due to a visibility timeout setting. Amazon SQS Deletemessage command deletes messages that have been in a queue for longer than the retention period.

• SQS Deletemessage: Synopsis
• SQS Deletemessage: Options
• SQS Deletemessage: Example
• SQS Deletemessage: Batch Command

SQS Deletemessage: Synopsis

delete-message
--queue-url <value>
--receipt-handle <value>
[--cli-input-json <value>]
[--generate-cli-skeleton <value>]

SQS Deletemessage: Options

• queue-url (string): A URL for the Amazon SQS queue where messages are deleted. There is a case-sensitive requirement for queue URLs and names.
• receipt-handle (string): The message’s receipt handle for deletion.
• cli-input-json (string): The service operation is performed based on the JSON string provided. As stated in the –generate-cli-skeleton option, the JSON string follows that format. CLI arguments override JSON-provided values if they are provided on the command line. A JSON-provided value cannot contain arbitrary binary values since the string will be taken literally.
• generate-cli-skeleton (string): Without using an API call, the skeleton is printed to standard output. When no value is provided or when the value input is provided, print a sample input JSON that is available for use with –cli-input-json. The command outputs a sample JSON if provided if the command inputs are validated.

SQS Deletemessage: Example

Here is an example query request for deleting a message from the queue named MyQueue. AUTHPARAMS is structured based on the signature of the API request. 

Sample Request

https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue/
?Action=DeleteMessage
&ReceiptHandle=MbZj6wDWli%2BJvwwJaBV%2B3dcjk2YW2vA3%2BSTFFljT
M8tJJg6HRG6PYSasuWXPJB%2BCwLj1FjgXUv1uSj1gUPAWV66FU/WeR4mq2OKpEGY
WbnLmpRCJVAyeMjeU5ZBdtcQ%2BQEauMZc8ZRv37sIW2iJKq3M9MFx1YvV11A2x/K
SbkJ0=
&Expires=2020-04-18T22%3A52%3A43PST
&Version=2012-11-05
&AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response

<DeleteMessageResponse>
    <ResponseMetadata>
        <RequestId>b5293cb5-d306-4a17-9048-b263635abe42</RequestId>
    </ResponseMetadata>
</DeleteMessageResponse>

SQS Deletemessage: Batch Command

With the SQS DeleteMessage Batch command, up to ten messages will be deleted from the queue. This is a batch version of the SQS DeleteMessage command. It reports the results of each action separately.

Actions can take lists of parameters. Those lists can be specified with the param.n notation. Integer values for n begin with 1. As an example, consider the following parameter list:

&AttributeName.1=first
&AttributeName.2=second

Request Parameters

DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry.N
This is a list of receipt handles for messages that should be deleted.
Type: Array of DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry objects
Required: Yes
QueueUrl
A URL to the Amazon SQS deletion queue.
The URL and name of queues are case-sensitive.
Type: String
Required: Yes

Response Elements

The service returns the following elements.

BatchResultErrorEntry.N
A list of BatchResultErrorEntry items.
Type: Array of BatchResultErrorEntry objects
DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry.N
A list of DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry items.
Type: Array of DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry objects

Example

In the next example, two messages are deleted using SQS DeleteMessage Batch request. Ensure that the URL is URL-encoded. The message body in this example is URL-encoded, however, so the example can be read more easily. API requests have a signature that determines the structure of AUTHPARAMS. 

Sample Request

https://sqs.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/123456789012/MyQueue/
&Action=DeleteMessageBatch
&DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry.1.Id=msg1
&DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry.1.ReceiptHandle=gfk0T0R0waama4fVFffkjPQrr
vzMrOg0fTFk2LxT33EuB8wR0ZCFgKWyXGWFoqqpCIiprQUEhir%2F5LeGPpYTLzjqLQxyQYaQ
ALeSNHb0us3uE84uujxpBhsDkZUQkjFFkNqBXn48xlMcVhTcI3YLH%2Bd%2BIqetIOHgBCZAP
x6r%2B09dWaBXei6nbK5Ygih21DCDdAwFV68Jo8DXhb3ErEfoDqx7vyvC5nCpdwqv%2BJhU%2
FTNGjNN8t51v5c%2FAXvQsAzyZVNapxUrHIt4NxRhKJ72uICcxruyE8eRXlxIVNgeNP8ZEDcw
7zZU1Zw%3D%3D
&DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry.2.Id=msg2
&DeleteMessageBatchRequestEntry.2.ReceiptHandle=gfk0T0R0waama4fVFffkjKzmh
MCymjQvfTFk2LxT33G4ms5subrE0deLKWSscPU1oD3J9zgeS4PQQ3U30qOumIE6AdAv3w%2F%
2Fa1IXW6AqaWhGsEPaLm3Vf6IiWqdM8u5imB%2BNTwj3tQRzOWdTOePjOjPcTpRxBtXix%2BE
vwJOZUma9wabv%2BSw6ZHjwmNcVDx8dZXJhVp16Bksiox%2FGrUvrVTCJRTWTLc59oHLLF8sE
kKzRmGNzTDGTiV%2BYjHfQj60FD3rVaXmzTsoNxRhKJ72uIHVMGVQiAGgB%2BqAbSqfKHDQtV
OmJJgkHug%3D%3D
&Expires=2020-10-18T22%3A52%3A43PST
&Version=2012-11-05
&AUTHPARAMS

Sample Response

<DeleteMessageBatchResponse>
    <DeleteMessageBatchResult>
        <DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry>
            <Id>msg1</Id>
        </DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry>
        <DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry>
            <Id>msg2</Id>
        </DeleteMessageBatchResultEntry>
    </DeleteMessageBatchResult>
    <ResponseMetadata>
        <RequestId>d6f86b7a-74d1-4439-b43f-196a1e29cd85</RequestId>
    </ResponseMetadata>
</DeleteMessageBatchResponse>

Conclusion

The Amazon SQS queuing service is used to process messages. SQS is a system that pulls events from the queue, so when an event is delivered to the queue nothing happens to it. You can delete a message from an SQS queue using the SQS DeleteMessage command.

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