crimson-education / client-sqs-extended

A library for managing AWS SQS message payloads using S3, in particular payloads larger than the 256KB SQS limit

SQS Extended Client

A library for managing large AWS SQS message payloads using S3. In particular it supports message payloads that exceed the 256KB SQS limit. It is largely a Javascript version of the Amazon SQS Extended Client Library for Java, although not an exact copy.

Install

To install the SQS Extended Client run:

npm install @crimson-education/client-sqs-extended

Usage

The SQS Extended Client wraps supplied SQS and S3 instances from the AWS SDK. In order to send messages a bucketName is required, which is the S3 bucket where the message payloads will be stored:

import { SQS } from '@aws-sdk/client-sqs';
import { S3 } from '@aws-sdk/client-s3';
import { SQSExtended } from '@crimson-education/client-sqs-extended';

const sqs = new SQS({ /* your SQS configuration */ });
const s3 = new S3({ /* your S3 configuration */ });

const sqsExtended = new SQSExtended(sqs, s3,
    {
        bucketName: '/* your bucket name */' // required for send message
        // other configuration options
    }
);

When receiving messages in an AWS Lambda Listener, you can call checkEvent on the event parameter to check if the event is a SQS Extended message, and fetch the expected body.

Once your Lambda succeeds, you will want to call eventSucceeded, which will then go and delete the extended data from S3.

export const handleSQS: Handler<SQSEvent> = async (event) => {
  await sqsExtended.checkEvent(event);

  // do something with the event
  console.log(event);

  await sqsExtended.eventSucceeded(event);
};

The SQS Extended Client is used exactly as an SQS instance from the AWS SDK. It supports all the message level functions, and both promise() and callbacks:

changeMessageVisibility()
changeMessageVisibilityBatch()
deleteMessage()
deleteMessageBatch()
sendMessage()
sendMessageBatch()
receiveMessage()

// e.g.
const response = await sqsExtended.receiveMessage({
    QueueUrl: queueUrl,
}).promise();

For bucket level functions (e.g. createBucket) use the SDK SQS instance directly.

Note that for sendMessageBatch() only the size of each message is considered, not the overall batch size. For this reason it is recommended to either use alwaysUseS3: true or reduce the message size threshold proportionally to the maximum batch size (e.g. messageSizeThreshold: 26214) when sending batches.

Options

The SQS Extended Client supports the following options:

• bucketName - S3 bucket where message payloads are stored (required for sending messages)
• alwaysUseS3 - flag indicating that messages payloads should always be stored in S3 regardless of size (default: false)
• messageSizeThreshold - maximum size in bytes for message payloads before they are stored in S3 (default: 262144)
• sendTransform - see Transforms section
• receiveTransform - see Transforms section

Note that the use of transforms overrides the alwaysUseS3 and messageSizeThreshold options.

Transforms

The SQS Extended Client allows transforms to be specified that control which elements from the message are stored in S3 and what remains as the SQS message body. By default the whole payload is uploaded to S3 if the message is over the size threshold, the transforms override this behaviour.

There are two transform functions:

• sendTransform - Splits a message into an object containing the messageBody to send to SQS and the s3Content to store in S3.
• receiveTransform - Recombines the message received from SQS and s3Content retrieved from S3 into the full message body.

For example, the following transforms split only the largeItem property from a JSON message body to store in S3. The rest of the message body is passed to SQS:

const sendTransform = (sqsMessage) => {
    const { largeItem, ...messageBody } = sqsMessage.MessageBody;
    return {
        s3Content: largeItem,
        messageBody: JSON.stringify(messageBody),
    };
};

const receiveTransform = (sqsMessage, s3Content) => ({
    ...JSON.parse(sqsMessage.Body),
    largeItem: s3Content,
});

const sqsExtended = new SQSExtended(sqs, s3,
    {
        bucketName: '/* your bucket name */',
        sendTransform,
        receiveTransform,
    }
);

Middleware

If using Middy middleware with AWS Lambda then the SQS Extended Client provides a middleware implementation:

const middy = require('@middy/core');
const SQSExtended = require('sqs-extended-client');

const handler = middy(/* Lambda event handler */)
    .use(new SQSExtended(sqs, s3).middleware());

Test

To execute the unit tests run:

npm install
npm run test

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright (c) 2020 DVLA

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.