RabbitMQ in Rails

RabbitMQ is the right tool for complex routing (one publisher, many topologies of consumers), heterogeneous workers (Ruby + Python + Go all reading the same queue), and work distribution. Wrong tool when you need replay, long retention, or stream semantics — that's Kafka.

The opinion

Use bunny (synchronous AMQP client) for producing. Use sneakers for consuming long-running workers (it integrates with Rails). Always declare durable exchanges + queues + persistent messages. Acknowledge manually (manual_ack: true) after work succeeds — autoack drops messages on crash. Set a sane prefetch (10-50) per consumer. Use a dead-letter exchange for failures.

Counter-positions:

• Kafka for event streams with replay / fan-out / retention. RabbitMQ deletes messages after ack.
• Solid Queue / Sidekiq for in-app jobs. Don't pull in RabbitMQ for a delayed email.
• Redis Streams for lightweight Kafka-like patterns (see redis-streams-rails).

Setup