Publish/Subscribe

Before running the sample, look over the solution structure, the projects, and the classes. The projects Publisher,and Subscriber are Console Applications that each host an instance of NServiceBus.

Defining messages

The Shared project contains the definition of the messages that are sent between the processes. Open "OrderReceived.cs" to see the message that will be published by this sample. Note that this event implements a marker interface called IEvent to denote that this message is an event. To define messages without adding a dependency to NServiceBus, use Unobtrusive Mode Messages.

Creating and publishing messages

As the name implies, the Publisher project is a publisher of event messages. It uses the NServiceBus API to publish the OrderReceived event every time the 1 key is pressed. The created message is populated and published using the Publish API.

while (true)
{
    var key = Console.ReadKey();
    Console.WriteLine();

    var orderReceivedId = Guid.NewGuid();
    if (key.Key == ConsoleKey.D1)
    {
        var orderReceived = new OrderReceived
        {
            OrderId = orderReceivedId
        };
        await endpointInstance.Publish(orderReceived)
            .ConfigureAwait(false);
        Console.WriteLine($"Published OrderReceived Event with Id {orderReceivedId}.");
    }
    else
    {
        return;
    }
}

Implementing subscribers

To receive messages from the publisher, the subscribers must subscribe to the message types they are designed to handle. A subscriber must have a handler for the type of message and a configuration that tells the endpoint where to send subscriptions for messages:

• The Subscriber process handles and subscribes to the OrderReceived type.
• The handlers in each project are in files that end in with the word Handler for example OrderReceivedHandler.cs.
• Subscriber process uses the default auto-subscription feature of the bus where the the bus automatically sends subscription messages to the configured publisher. The auto-subscribe feature can be explicitly disabled as part of the endpoint configuration.

Run the sample

When running the sample, notice the three open console applications and many log messages on each. Almost none of these logs represent messages sent between the processes.

Bring the Publisher process to the foreground.

Click the 1 key repeatedly in the Publisher process console window, and see how the messages appear in the Subscriber console window.

Message Flow

Subscribe

Subscriber sends a subscription message to Publisher which is stored in the persistence of Publisher.

Publish

When a publish occur on Publisher it queries the persistence for subscribers.

Fault-tolerant messaging

Shut down Subscriber by closing its console window. Return to the Publisher process and publish a few more messages by pressing the 1 key several more times. Notice how the publishing process does not change and there are no errors even though the subscriber process is no longer running.

In Visual Studio, right click the project of the closed subscriber, and restart it by right clicking the Subscriber project and selecting Debug and then Start new instance.

Note how Subscriber immediately receives the messages that were published while it was not running. The publisher safely places the message into the transport in this case LearningTransport without knowledge of the running status of any subscriber. LearningTransport safely places the message in the inbound queue of the subscriber where it awaits handling. Even when processes or machines restart, NServiceBus protects messages from being lost.