A shovel is used to move a message from a queue or exchange to a different queue or exchage. The queues or exchanges can reside on the same RabbitMQ node or on different RabbitMQ nodes.

AVOID TROUBLE

Before you can create a shovel, the rabbitmq_shovel plugin will need to be enabled, and you may want to also enable the rabbitmq_shovel_management plugin so that you can use Shovel Status and Shovel Management in the RabbitMQ web browser console and the RabbitMQ REST API to list/create/delete dynamic shovels. The rabbitmq-plugins list command can be used to determine if the plugins are enabled. If not, the rabbitmq-plugins enable command can be used to enable the plugins.

If the RabbitMQ node is not using SSL, the src-uri or dest-uri should start with amqp://. If SSL is being used, the src-uri or dest-uri should start with amqps://.

There are two types of shovels.

• Dynamic - Created using the rabbitmqctl set_parameter command, or using the RabbitMQ REST API, or using the RabbitMQ web browser console, or using Terraform
• Static - defined in advanced.config, node must be restarted to create/delete a static shovel

Here is an example of how you could use the rabbitmqctl command with the shovel_status option to return the status of each shovel.

rabbitmqctl shovel_status

Something like this should be returned.

Shovel status on node rabbit@server001

destination        destination_protocol  destination_queue  last_changed         name       source
source_exchange  source_exchange_key  source_protocol state   termination_reason  type     vhost

amqp:///shovel001  amqp091               queue001           2021-02-28 03:08:04  shovel001  amqp://rabbitmq.example.com:5672/%2F
exchange001      key001               amqp091         running                     dynamic  vhost001

amqp:///shovel002  amqp091               queue002           2021-02-28 03:08:04  shovel002  amqp://rabbitmq.example.com:5672/%2F
exchange001      key004               amqp091         running                     dynamic  vhost001

amqp:///shovel003  amqp091               queue001           2021-02-28 03:08:04  shovel003  amqp://rabbitmq.example.com:5672/%2F
exchange002      key001               amqp091         running                     dynamic  vhost002

If there is a shovel that is in a "terminated" state, something like this should be returned.

2021-06-03 23:11:25     shovel002               terminated      "needed a restart"      dynamic /

The rabbitmqctl shovel_status command may return a shovel that has been deleted using the rabbitmqctl delete_shovel or rabbitmqctl clear_parameter commands. In this scenario, restarting the RabbitMQ service should make it so that the rabbitmqctl shovel_status command does not return the shovel in the list of shovels.

The --formatter json option can be used to return the output in JSON and then this can be piped through the python command to return JSON formatted output.

rabbitmqctl shovel_status --formatter json | python -m json.tool
[
    {
        "destination": "amqp:///foo",
        "destination_protocol": "amqp091",
        "destination_queue": "a.queue",
        "last_changed": "2022-02-03 08:58:51",
        "name": "a.shovel",
        "source": "amqp:///bar",
        "source_exchange": "a.exchange",
        "source_exchange_key": "#.#.#.#",
        "source_protocol": "amqp091",
        "state": "running",
        "termination_reason": "",
        "type": "dynamic",
        "vhost": "foo"
    }
]