Discarding Old Messages

Messages sent through the Particular Service Platform can be configured with a Time-To-Be-Received (TTBR) value. TTBR instructs the platform to automatically discard a message if it is not processed within a specified period, freeing up system resources and preventing outdated messages from being handled.

Benefits of using TTBR:

• Reduces processing of stale or irrelevant messages.
• Frees up resources in high-volume environments.
• Ensures only timely, valuable messages are processed.

TTBR applies only to messages that have not been handled. A message is considered handled if it has been successfully processed, moved to the error queue, or audited. The TTBR value is removed from handled messages to prevent message loss. You can inspect the original TTBR value in the NServiceBus.TimeToBeReceived header.

If a message has no value after a certain period, specify a TTBR to allow it to be discarded.

How to Set Time-To-Be-Received

You can specify a TTBR interval for a message in the following ways:

Using an Attribute

Apply an attribute to the message class to set TTBR:

// Discard after one minute
[TimeToBeReceived("00:01:00")]
public class MyMessage
{
}

Using a Custom Convention

Define a custom convention in code to set TTBR for specific messages:

var conventions = endpointConfiguration.Conventions();
conventions.DefiningTimeToBeReceivedAs(
    type =>
    {
        if (type == typeof(MyMessage))
        {
            return TimeSpan.FromMinutes(1);
        }
        return TimeSpan.MaxValue;
    });

Clock synchronization considerations

When using TTBR, clock synchronization issues (clock skew) between sender and receiver can cause premature message discard. If the receiver's clock is ahead of the sender's, messages may be rejected immediately as stale.

Discarding messages at startup

In certain situations, it may be necessary to prevent messages in the incoming queue from being processed after restarting the endpoint. This usually applies to development and test environments, but may also be appropriate for messages containing information that gets outdated or otherwise unneeded, e.g., change notifications, readings from sensors in IoT apps, etc.

To discard all existing messages in the incoming queue at startup:

endpointConfiguration.PurgeOnStartup(true);

Caveats

Time-To-Be-Received relies on the transport infrastructure to discard expired messages. As a result, runtime behavior is highly affected by the implementation in the different transports.

MSMQ transport

MSMQ continuously checks the TTBR of all queued messages. As soon as the message has expired, it is removed from the queue, and disk space gets reclaimed.

For more details about how the MSMQ transport handles TTBR, see discarding expired messages in MSMQ.

RabbitMQ transport

RabbitMQ checks the TTBR value, but only for the message at the front of the queue. Expired messages are not removed from the queue, and their disk space is not reclaimed until they reach the front of the queue. Using TTBR as a disk-saving measure on RabbitMQ is recommended only when all messages in the queue use the same TTBR value. Otherwise, messages in front of the queue may prevent other stale messages from being cleaned.

Azure transports

The Azure transports evaluate the TTBR for a message only when the client requests it. Expired messages are not removed from the queue, and their disk space will not be reclaimed until they reach the front of the queue and a consumer tries to read them. Using TTBR as a storage-saving measure on the Azure transports is not a good choice for queues with long-lived messages like audit and forward.

SQL transport

The SQL Server transport runs a periodic task that removes expired messages from the queue. The task is first executed when the endpoint starts and is subsequently scheduled to execute 5 minutes after the previous run when the task has been completed. Expired messages are not received from the queue and their disk space will be reclaimed when the periodic task executes.