How to read msmq messages (me, not the pc)

Question

I want to look inside my queues, the msm console snapin has this property dialog, but it is very difficult to read and the messages which are important to me are encoded and look like this:

3C 3F 78 6D 6C 20 76 65 <?xml ve
72 73 69 6F 6E 3D 22 31 rsion="1
2E 30 22 20 65 6E 63 6F .0" enco
64 69 6E 67 3D 22 75 74 ding="ut
66 2D 38 22 3F 3E 0D 0A f-8"?>..
3C 65 73 62 3A 6D 65 73 <esb:mes
73 61 67 65 73 20 78 6D sages xm
6C 6E 73 3A 65 73 62 3D lns:esb=
22 68 74 74 70 3A 2F 2F "http://
73 65 72 76 69 63 65 62 serviceb
75 73 2E 68 69 62 65 72 us.hiber
6E 61 74 69 6E 67 72 68 natingrh

...

Anyone knows of a tool that would allow me to see my messages in a bit developer friendly way? A tool for easier administering queues would come handy to (like selecting multiple messages and drag and drop them)

Answer 1

This is about the best tool I've found: http://www.cogin.com/msmq/QueueExplorer/QueueExplorer2.2.php

Answer 2

I found these two methods while searching for an answer to this question and they actually worked perfectly.

    public System.Xml.XmlDocument ConvertToXMLDoc(System.Messaging.Message msg)
    {
        byte[] buffer = new byte[msg.BodyStream.Length];
        msg.BodyStream.Read(buffer, 0, (int)msg.BodyStream.Length);
        int envelopeStart = FindEnvolopeStart(buffer);
        System.IO.MemoryStream stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream(buffer, envelopeStart, buffer.Length - envelopeStart);
        System.ServiceModel.Channels.BinaryMessageEncodingBindingElement elm = new System.ServiceModel.Channels.BinaryMessageEncodingBindingElement();
        System.ServiceModel.Channels.Message msg1 = elm.CreateMessageEncoderFactory().Encoder.ReadMessage(stream, Int32.MaxValue);
        System.Xml.XmlDocument doc = new System.Xml.XmlDocument();
        doc.Load(msg1.GetReaderAtBodyContents());
        msg.BodyStream.Position = 0;
        return doc;
    }

    private int FindEnvolopeStart(byte[] stream)
    {
        int i = 0;
        byte prevByte = stream[i];
        byte curByte = (byte)0;
        for (i = 0; i < stream.Length; i++)            
        {
            curByte = stream[i];
            if (curByte == (byte)0x02 &&
            prevByte == (byte)0x56)
                break;
            prevByte = curByte;
        }
        return i - 1;
    }

Simply call the ConvertToXmlDoc function, providing the message from the message queue and you'll get an XmlDocument back. I am lazy, so I just drop the innerXml into a file so I can read it.

    MessageQueue queue = new MessageQueue(queueName);
    var msg = queue.Receive();
    var doc = ConvertToXMLDoc(msg);                
    using (var sw = new StreamWriter(@"C:\message.txt")))
           sw.Write(doc.InnerXml);

No application to buy and you get your data back in code so you can mess around with it.

PS: Credit where credit is due. The snippet came from http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en-US/wcf/thread/c03d80cd-492c-4ece-8890-6a35b12352e0 , which also links to a more detailed discussion of MSMQ's encoding format.