🧱 Lesson 7 - Message Queues with RabbitMQ

#architecture #microservices #tutorial #dotnet

Series: From Code to Cloud: Building a Production-Ready .NET Application
By: Farrukh Rehman - Senior .NET Full Stack Developer / Team Lead
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/farrukh-rehman
GitHub: https://github.com/farrukh1212cs

Source Code Backend : https://github.com/farrukh1212cs/ECommerce-Backend.git

Source Code Frontend : https://github.com/farrukh1212cs/ECommerce-Frontend.git

🎯 Introduction

In a modern microservices or modular system, asynchronous processing is key to maintaining performance and scalability.
Imagine your application needs to send an email every time a user registers or a new product is added.
If you perform this action synchronously inside the request pipeline, your API will slow down and block other requests.

That’s where RabbitMQ — a message broker — comes in.
It allows you to publish messages (like “Send this email”) into a queue, which can later be consumed by a background service that actually sends the email.

This decouples your API logic from long-running or slow tasks.

🐇 Step 1 — Pull RabbitMQ Docker Image

Run the following command to pull and start RabbitMQ (with management dashboard):

docker run -d --hostname rabbitmq-host --name rabbitmq -p 5672:5672 -p 15672:15672 rabbitmq:3-management

✅ Ports Explanation:

5672 → for app communication
15672 → for web dashboard (management UI)

Then open your browser and visit:
👉 http://localhost:15672

Default credentials:
Username: guest | Password: guest

⚙️ Step 2 — Install NuGet Package

In the Infrastructure project, install the official RabbitMQ client library:

dotnet add ECommerce.Infrastructure package RabbitMQ.Client --version 6.8.1
dotnet add ECommerce.Infrastructure package Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Binder
dotnet add ECommerce.Infrastructure package Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting --version 8.0.1

🧩 Step 3 — Create Message Queue Interface
Path: ECommerce.Application/Services/Interfaces/IMessageQueueService.cs

namespace ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;

public interface IMessageQueueService
{
    Task PublishAsync<T>(string queueName, T message);
    void Subscribe<T>(string queueName, Func<T, Task> handler);
}

This defines a simple contract for publishing and consuming messages.

⚙️ Step 4 — Implement RabbitMQ Service
Path: ECommerce.Infrastructure/Messaging/RabbitMQService.cs

using ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using RabbitMQ.Client;
using RabbitMQ.Client.Events;
using System.Text;
using System.Text.Json;

namespace ECommerce.Infrastructure.Messaging;

public class RabbitMQService : IMessageQueueService, IDisposable
{
    private readonly IConnection _connection;
    private readonly RabbitMQ.Client.IModel _channel;

    public RabbitMQService(IConfiguration configuration)
    {
        var factory = new ConnectionFactory
        {
            HostName = configuration.GetValue<string>("RabbitMQ:Host") ?? "localhost",
            UserName = configuration.GetValue<string>("RabbitMQ:Username") ?? "guest",
            Password = configuration.GetValue<string>("RabbitMQ:Password") ?? "guest",
            Port = configuration.GetValue<int?>("RabbitMQ:Port") ?? 5672
        };

        _connection = factory.CreateConnection();
        _channel = _connection.CreateModel();
    }

    public Task PublishAsync<T>(string queueName, T message)
    {
        _channel.QueueDeclare(queueName, durable: true, exclusive: false, autoDelete: false);

        var body = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(JsonSerializer.Serialize(message));
        _channel.BasicPublish("", queueName, null, body);

        Console.WriteLine($"📤 Published message to queue '{queueName}'");
        return Task.CompletedTask;
    }

    public void Subscribe<T>(string queueName, Func<T, Task> handler)
    {
        _channel.QueueDeclare(queueName, durable: true, exclusive: false, autoDelete: false);

        var consumer = new EventingBasicConsumer(_channel);
        consumer.Received += async (sender, ea) =>
        {
            var body = ea.Body.ToArray();
            var message = JsonSerializer.Deserialize<T>(Encoding.UTF8.GetString(body));
            if (message != null)
                await handler(message);
        };

        _channel.BasicConsume(queueName, autoAck: true, consumer: consumer);
        Console.WriteLine($"📥 Subscribed to queue '{queueName}'");
    }

    public void Dispose()
    {
        _channel?.Dispose();
        _connection?.Dispose();
    }
}

🧱 Step 5 — Add Configuration in appsettings.json (we will use ethereal.email for testing)

"RabbitMQ": { "Host": "localhost", "Port": 5672, "Username": "guest", "Password": "guest" }, "SmtpSettings": { "Host": "smtp.ethereal.email", "Port": 587, "Username": "alize.hilpert67@ethereal.email", "Password": "E4GnEsxZGbrc1XcS7q", "EnableSsl": true, "From": "no-reply@ecommerce.com" }

📧 Step 6 — Email Notification DTO
Path: ECommerce.Application/DTOs/EmailNotificationDto.cs

namespace ECommerce.Application.DTOs;

public class EmailNotificationDto
{
    public string To { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    public string Subject { get; set; } = string.Empty;
    public string Body { get; set; } = string.Empty;
}

🧱 Step 7 — Add Interface for Email Sender
Path: ECommerce.Application/Services/Interfaces/IEmailSenderService.cs

using ECommerce.Application.DTOs;

namespace ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;

public interface IEmailSenderService
{
    Task SendEmailAsync(EmailNotificationDto email);
}

📬 Step 8 — Email Sender Service
Path: ECommerce.Infrastructure/Email/EmailSenderService.cs

using ECommerce.Application.DTOs;
using ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using System.Net;
using System.Net.Mail;

namespace ECommerce.Infrastructure.Email;

public class EmailSenderService : IEmailSenderService
{
    private readonly IConfiguration _config;

    public EmailSenderService(IConfiguration config)
    {
        _config = config;
    }

    public async Task SendEmailAsync(EmailNotificationDto email)
    {
        var smtp = _config.GetSection("SmtpSettings");

        using var client = new SmtpClient(smtp["Host"], int.Parse(smtp["Port"] ?? "587"))
        {
            Credentials = new NetworkCredential(smtp["Username"], smtp["Password"]),
            EnableSsl = bool.Parse(smtp["EnableSsl"] ?? "true")
        };

        var message = new MailMessage
        {
            From = new MailAddress(smtp["From"] ?? smtp["Username"]),
            Subject = email.Subject,
            Body = email.Body,
            IsBodyHtml = true
        };
        message.To.Add(email.To);

        await client.SendMailAsync(message);
        Console.WriteLine($"📨 Email sent to {email.To}");
    }
}

🧩 Step 9 — Background Worker to Consume Email Queue
Path: ECommerce.API/BackgroundServices/EmailNotificationConsumer.cs

using ECommerce.Application.DTOs;
using ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;

namespace ECommerce.API.BackgroundServices;

public class EmailNotificationConsumer : BackgroundService
{
    private readonly IMessageQueueService _queue;
    private readonly IEmailSenderService _emailSender;

    public EmailNotificationConsumer(IMessageQueueService queue, IEmailSenderService emailSender)
    {
        _queue = queue;
        _emailSender = emailSender;
    }

    protected override Task ExecuteAsync(CancellationToken stoppingToken)
    {
        _queue.Subscribe<EmailNotificationDto>("email_notifications", async email =>
        {
            Console.WriteLine($"📧 Sending email to: {email.To}");
            await _emailSender.SendEmailAsync(email);
        });

        return Task.CompletedTask;
    }
}

🧩 Step 10 — Register Everything DependencyInjection.cs
Path: ECommerce.Infrastructure/DependencyInjection.cs

using ECommerce.API.BackgroundServices;
using ECommerce.Application.Services.Interfaces;
using ECommerce.Infrastructure.Caching;
using ECommerce.Infrastructure.Data;
using ECommerce.Infrastructure.Email;
using ECommerce.Infrastructure.Messaging;
using Microsoft.EntityFrameworkCore;
using Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration;
using Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection;
using StackExchange.Redis;



namespace ECommerce.Infrastructure;

public static class DependencyInjection
{
    public static IServiceCollection AddInfrastructure(
        this IServiceCollection services,
        IConfiguration configuration)
    {
        var provider = configuration["DatabaseProvider"] ?? "MySQL";

        if (string.Equals(provider, "SqlServer", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            var conn = configuration.GetConnectionString("SqlServer");
            services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext, SqlServerDbContext>(options =>
                options.UseSqlServer(conn));
        }
        else if (string.Equals(provider, "MySQL", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {
            var conn = configuration.GetConnectionString("MySQL");
            services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext, MySqlDbContext>(options =>
                options.UseMySql(conn, ServerVersion.AutoDetect(conn)));
        }
        else if (string.Equals(provider, "PostgreSQL", StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase))
        {

            var conn = configuration.GetConnectionString("PostgreSQL");
            services.AddDbContext<AppDbContext, PostgresDbContext>(options =>
                options.UseNpgsql(conn));
        }
        else
        {
            throw new InvalidOperationException($"Unsupported provider: {provider}");
        }

        // ✅ Redis cache setup
        var redisConnection = configuration.GetConnectionString("Redis");
        if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(redisConnection))
        {
            services.AddSingleton<IConnectionMultiplexer>(sp =>
                ConnectionMultiplexer.Connect(redisConnection));

            services.AddSingleton<ICacheService, RedisCacheService>();
        }

        // RabbitMQ setup
        services.AddSingleton<IMessageQueueService, RabbitMQService>();
        services.AddScoped<IEmailSenderService, EmailSenderService>();

        return services;
    }
}

🧩 Step 11 — Update Program.cs
Path: ECommerce.API/Program.cs

// add infrastructure (DbContext + provider selection)
builder.Services.AddInfrastructure(builder.Configuration);

builder.Services.AddHostedService<EmailNotificationConsumer>();