Hutch is a Ruby library for enabling asynchronous inter-service communication in a service-oriented architecture, using RabbitMQ.

To install with RubyGems:

gem install hutch

Hutch is a relatively young project that was extracted from production systems.

Hutch is a conventions-based framework for writing services that communicate over RabbitMQ. Hutch is opinionated: it uses topic exchanges for message distribution and makes some assumptions about how consumers and publishers should work.

Hutch uses Bunny under the hood.

Consumers receive messages from a RabbitMQ queue. That queue may be bound to one or more topics (represented by routing keys).

To create a consumer, include the Hutch::Consumer module in a class that defines a #process method. #process should take a single argument, which will be a Message object. The Message object encapsulates the message data, along with any associated metadata. To access properties of the message, use Hash-style indexing syntax:

message[:id]  # => "02ABCXYZ"

To subscribe to a topic, pass a routing key to consume in the class definition. To bind to multiple routing keys, simply pass extra routing keys in as additional arguments. Refer to the RabbitMQ docs on topic exchanges for more information about how to use routing keys. Here's an example consumer:

class FailedPaymentConsumer
  include Hutch::Consumer
  consume 'gc.ps.payment.failed'

  def process(message)
    mark_payment_as_failed(message[:id])
  end
end

If you are using Hutch with Rails and want to make Hutch log to the Rails logger rather than stdout, add this to config/initializers/hutch.rb

Hutch::Logging.logger = Rails.logger

After installing the Hutch gem, you should be able to start it by simply running hutch on the command line. hutch takes a number of options:

$ hutch -h
usage: hutch [options]
        --mq-host HOST               Set the RabbitMQ host
        --mq-port PORT               Set the RabbitMQ port
        --mq-tls                     Use TLS for the AMQP connection
        --mq-exchange EXCHANGE       Set the RabbitMQ exchange
        --mq-vhost VHOST             Set the RabbitMQ vhost
        --mq-username USERNAME       Set the RabbitMQ username
        --mq-password PASSWORD       Set the RabbitMQ password
        --mq-api-host HOST           Set the RabbitMQ API host
        --mq-api-port PORT           Set the RabbitMQ API port
        --mq-api-ssl                 Use SSL for the RabbitMQ API
        --config FILE                Load Hutch configuration from a file

        --require PATH               Require a Rails app or path
    -q, --quiet                      Quiet logging
    -v, --verbose                    Verbose logging
        --version                    Print the version and exit
    -h, --help                       Show this message and exit

The first three are for configuring which RabbitMQ instance to connect to. --require is covered in the next section. Configurations can also be specified in a YAML file for convenience by passing the file location to the --config option. The file should look like:

mq_username: peter
mq_password: rabbit
mq_host: broker.yourhost.com

Passing a setting as a command-line option will overwrite what's specified in the config file, allowing for easy customization.

Using Hutch with a Rails app is simple. Either start Hutch in the working directory of a Rails app, or pass the path to a Rails app in with the --require option. Consumers defined in Rails apps should be placed with in the app/consumers/ directory, to allow them to be auto-loaded when Rails boots.

To require files that define consumers manually, simply pass each file as an option to --require. Hutch will automatically detect whether you've provided a Rails app or a standard file, and take the appropriate behaviour:

$ hutch --require path/to/rails-app  # loads a rails app
$ hutch --require path/to/file.rb    # loads a ruby file

Hutch includes a publish method for sending messages to Hutch consumers. When possible, this should be used, rather than directly interfacing with RabbitMQ libraries.

Hutch.connect
Hutch.publish('routing.key', subject: 'payment', action: 'received')

You may need to send messages to Hutch from languages other than Ruby. This prevents the use of Hutch.publish, requiring custom publication code to be written. There are a few things to keep in mind when writing producers that send messages to Hutch.

• Make sure that the producer exchange name matches the exchange name that Hutch is using.
• Hutch works with topic exchanges, check the producer is also using topic exchanges.
• Use message routing keys that match those used in your Hutch consumers.
• Be sure your exchanges are marked as durable. In the Ruby AMQP gem, this is done by passing durable: true to the exchange creation method.
• Mark your messages as persistent. This is done by passing persistent: true to the publish method in Ruby AMQP.
• Wrapping publishing code in transactions or using publisher confirms is highly recommended. This can be slightly tricky, see this issue and this gist for more info.

Here's an example of a well-behaved publisher, minus publisher confirms:

AMQP.connect(host: config[:host]) do |connection|
  channel  = AMQP::Channel.new(connection)
  exchange = channel.topic(config[:exchange], durable: true)

  message = JSON.dump({ subject: 'Test', id: 'abc' })
  exchange.publish(message, routing_key: 'test', persistent: true)
end

Hutch requires RabbitMQ 2.x or later. 3.x releases are recommended.