SQS - Delivery Delay of 30 minutes

Question

From the documentation of SQS, Max time delay we can configure for a message to hide from its consumers is 15 minutes - http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSSimpleQueueService/latest/SQSDeveloperGuide/sqs-delay-queues.html

Suppose if I need to hide the messages for a day, what is the pattern? For eg. I want to mimic a daily cron for doing some action.

Thanks

Answer 1

The simplest way to do this is as follows:

SQS.push_to_queue({perform_message_at : "Thursday November 2022"},delay: 15 mins)

Inside your worker

message = SQS.poll_messages
if message.perform_message_at > Time.now
   SQS.push_to_queue({perform_message_at : "Thursday November 
   2022"},delay:15 mins)
else
   process_message(message)
end

Basically push the message back to the queue with the maximum delay and only process it when its processing time is less than the current time.

HTH.

Answer 2

Visibility timeout can do up to 12 hours. I think you can hack something together where you process a message but don't delete it and next time it is processed its been 12 hours. So a queue with one message and visibility timeout of 12 hours. That gets you a 12 hour cron.

Answer 3

Cloudwatch is likely a better way to do it. You can use a createEvent API with the timer, and have it trigger either a lambda function or an API call to whatever comes next.

Another way to do is to use the "wait" utility in an AWS step function.

https://docs.aws.amazon.com/step-functions/latest/dg/amazon-states-language-wait-state.html

In any case, unless you are extremely sure you will never need anything more than 15 minutes, the SQS backdoor to add the delay seems hacky.