Reliable Messaging with RabbitMQ: Acknowledgments, Durability, and Persistence

2. Durability

What it is

Durability means the queue itself will survive a broker restart.

• If a queue is not durable → it disappears when RabbitMQ restarts.
• If a queue is durable → it will be recreated after restart.

Example

Goal: Ensure the infrastructure (exchange and queue) survives a broker restart.

// durability_example.go
package main

import (
	"log"

	amqp "github.com/rabbitmq/amqp091-go"
)

func mustConn() *amqp.Connection {
	conn, err := amqp.Dial("amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/")
	if err != nil { log.Fatal(err) }
	return conn
}

func main() {
	conn := mustConn()
	defer conn.Close()

	ch, err := conn.Channel()
	if err != nil { log.Fatal(err) }
	defer ch.Close()

	// Durable direct exchange
	if err := ch.ExchangeDeclare(
		"orders_ex",
		"direct",
		true,  // durable
		false, // autoDelete
		false, // internal
		false, // noWait
		nil,
	); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Durable queue
	q, err := ch.QueueDeclare(
		"orders_queue_durable",
		true,  // durable
		false, // autoDelete
		false, // exclusive
		false, // noWait
		nil,
	)
	if err != nil { log.Fatal(err) }

	// Bind queue to exchange with a routing key
	if err := ch.QueueBind(q.Name, "order.created", "orders_ex", false, nil); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	// Publish (message persistence is not the focus here)
	if err := ch.Publish(
		"orders_ex",
		"order.created",
		false, false,
		amqp.Publishing{Body: []byte("Order #123 created")},
	); err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	log.Println("published to a durable exchange/queue (infra survives restarts)")
}

Note: Durability ensures the exchange/queue definitions persist. To persist messages, see the next example.

How to enable

When declaring a queue, set it as durable = true.