21.3 Sending a Message

The JmsTemplate contains many convenience methods to send a message. There are send methods that specify the destination using a javax.jms.Destination object and those that specify the destination using a string for use in a JNDI lookup. The send method that takes no destination argument uses the default destination. Here is an example that sends a message to a queue using the 1.0.2 implementation.

import javax.jms.ConnectionFactory;
import javax.jms.JMSException;
import javax.jms.Message;
import javax.jms.Queue;
import javax.jms.Session;

import org.springframework.jms.core.MessageCreator;
import org.springframework.jms.core.JmsTemplate;

public class JmsQueueSender {

    private JmsTemplate jmsTemplate;
    private Queue queue;

    public void setConnectionFactory(ConnectionFactory cf) {
        this.jmsTemplate = new JmsTemplate(cf, false);
    }

    public void setQueue(Queue queue) {
        this.queue = queue;
    }

    public void simpleSend() {
        this.jmsTemplate.send(this.queue, new MessageCreator() {
            public Message createMessage(Session session) throws JMSException {
              return session.createTextMessage("hello queue world");
            }
        });
    }
}

This example uses the MessageCreator callback to create a text message from the supplied Session object and the JmsTemplate is constructed by passing a reference to a ConnectionFactory and a boolean specifying the messaging domain. A zero argument constructor and connectionFactory / queue bean properties are provided and can be used for constructing the instance (using a BeanFactory or plain Java code). Alternatively, consider deriving from Spring's JmsGatewaySupport convenience base class, which provides pre-built bean properties for JMS configuration.

The method send(String destinationName, MessageCreator creator) lets you send to a message using the string name of the destination. If these names are registered in JNDI, you should set the destinationResolver property of the template to an instance of JndiDestinationResolver.

If you created the JmsTemplate and specified a default destination, the send(MessageCreator c) sends a message to that destination.

21.3.1 Using Message Converters

In order to facilitate the sending of domain model objects, the JmsTemplate has various send methods that take a Java object as an argument for a message's data content. The overloaded methods convertAndSend and receiveAndConvert in JmsTemplate delegate the conversion process to an instance of the MessageConverter interface. This interface defines a simple contract to convert between Java objects and JMS messages. The default implementation SimpleMessageConverter supports conversion between String and TextMessage, byte[] and BytesMesssage, and java.util.Map and MapMessage. By using the converter, you and your application code can focus on the business object that is being sent or received via JMS and not be concerned with the details of how it is represented as a JMS message.

The sandbox currently includes a MapMessageConverter which uses reflection to convert between a JavaBean and a MapMessage. Other popular implementations choices you might implement yourself are Converters that use an existing XML marshalling package, such as JAXB, Castor, XMLBeans, or XStream, to create a TextMessage representing the object.

To accommodate the setting of a message's properties, headers, and body that can not be generically encapsulated inside a converter class, the MessagePostProcessor interface gives you access to the message after it has been converted, but before it is sent. The example below demonstrates how to modify a message header and a property after a java.util.Map is converted to a message.

public void sendWithConversion() {
    Map map = new HashMap();
    map.put("Name", "Mark");
    map.put("Age", new Integer(47));
    jmsTemplate.convertAndSend("testQueue", map, new MessagePostProcessor() {
        public Message postProcessMessage(Message message) throws JMSException {
            message.setIntProperty("AccountID", 1234);
            message.setJMSCorrelationID("123-00001");
            return message;
        }
    });
}

This results in a message of the form:

MapMessage={
    Header={
        ... standard headers ...
        CorrelationID={123-00001}
    }
    Properties={
        AccountID={Integer:1234}
    }
    Fields={
        Name={String:Mark}
        Age={Integer:47}
    } 
}

21.3.2 SessionCallback and ProducerCallback

While the send operations cover many common usage scenarios, there are cases when you want to perform multiple operations on a JMS Session or MessageProducer. The SessionCallback and ProducerCallback expose the JMS Session and Session / MessageProducer pair respectfully. The execute() methods on JmsTemplate execute these callback methods.