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IBM MQ samples and patterns

When your application needs messaging, you don't want to spend countless hours learning the basics, you want to jump straight in and play, see how things work.

We have taken parts that make up the current set of our IBM MQ samples and built applications that you can use to do just that.

You'll find put/get, pub/sub, request/response samples that you can run in the same language or you can try mixing things up and do a put in Java, get with Go etc.

There is a README for each language that helps you with the initial setup.

You need an MQ server with a queue or topic to run these samples against. To find out more about what MQ is and how it works, start from LearnMQ.

To get your MQ server set up, check out Ready, Set, Connect.

You can use your own MQ server, you'll just have to adjust the MQ objects accordingly so they match on both the server and the client side. The samples in this repository inspect the following environment variables for their Queue Manager and messaging configuration. These values can also be provided via a env.json file.

• HOST - Host name or IP address of your queue manager
• PORT - Listener port for your queue manager
• CHANNEL - MQ channel name
• QMGR - Queue manager name
• APP_USER - User name that application uses to connect to MQ
• APP_PASSWORD - Password that the application uses to connect to MQ
• QUEUE_NAME - Queue name for put/get, request/response
• TOPIC_NAME - Topic for publish/subscribe
• MODEL_QUEUE_NAME - Model Queue used as template to base dynamic queues on for request/response
• DYNAMIC_QUEUE_PREFIX - Prefix for dynamically created reply queue - you don't need to create this
• CIPHER_SUITE - If present in the env,json, TLS Cipher specification to use
• KEY_REPOSITORY - Path to the keystore .kbd and .sth files. If running on Apple Silicon then this will the path to the queue manager's exported .pem. If present in the env.json, TLS is enabled - this is on the app side.

If instead you choose to provide a client channel definition table (CCDT) file, then the Host, PORT, Channel and Cipher are provided by the CCDT and you can leave them out of the env.json. All the samples check if the environment variable MQCCDTURL is set and that the file it is pointing at exists. If it does then the logic sets the connection definition or connection factory to for CCDT processing. For example

export MQCCDTURL=file:///Users/xyz/Documents/dev/mqsamples/mq-dev-patterns/ccdt.json

We give you a sample ccdt.json from which you can base your own.

If you use our MQ server for developers in Docker, Linux or Windows, with the default config, you'll have the following MQ objects on the MQ server:

Host - localhost
Port - 1414 - Non TLS
Channel - DEV.APP.SVRCONN
Queue manager - QM1
App user - app (member of mqclient group)
App password - passw0rd (you can set your own when running the Docker container, MQ_APP_PASSWORD)
Queue - DEV.QUEUE.1
Topic - dev/
Cipher suite - TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256

Model queue and MQ container image

The default configuration for MQ objects that you get with our Docker container does not include a model queue.

We use a model queue in the request/response pattern as a template for the request application to create a temporary reply queue.

You can use the MQ Web Console to create the model queue. Access the MQ Web Console for your MQ running as a container at https://localhost:9443/ibmmq/console/. You can log in with the default admin details or your own, if you made changes.

Environment variables

All the samples make use of the same environment variables to define MQ connection settings - these match the default developer config objects on the MQ server. This separates configuration and credentials details from the code, and conforms to standard configuration injection mechanisms used in Cloud and DevOps environments.

With so many many environment variables needed, we've tried to make this easier by providing one env.json file in the main samples directory, that all the samples use for default configuration setting. Default values specfied in the env.json file are overridden by environment variables.

env.json format

{
  "MQ_ENDPOINTS": [{
    "HOST":"localhost",
    "PORT":"1414",
    "CHANNEL":"DEV.APP.SVRCONN",
    "QMGR":"QM1",
    "APP_USER":"app",
    "APP_PASSWORD":"passw0rd",
    "QUEUE_NAME":"DEV.QUEUE.1",
    "MODEL_QUEUE_NAME":"DEV.APP.MODEL.QUEUE",
    "TOPIC_NAME":"dev/",
    "CIPHER_SUITE":"TLS_RSA_WITH_AES_128_CBC_SHA256",
    "KEY_REPOSITORY": "./keys/clientkey"
    }]
}

IBM Z Xplore

If you are running these samples on IBM Z Xplore then you can use the env-zbindings.json file. Simply rename the env-zbindings.json to env.json

You can use the env.json file to 'switch on' or 'switch off' parts of the code.

Endpoints Array

Having the endpoints in the env.json defined as an array allows us to define multiple endpoints for the sample applications to use.

TLS

For example, removing the CIPHER_SUITE and KEY_REPOSITORY lines (don't forget to remove the comma from the last line in the json) will mean the sample will connect without using TLS.

If you have two docker containers, one with TLS and one without, changing the port number in the env.json allows you to switch between them.

Apple Silicon

The IBM MQ Client Toolkit on Apple Silicon (ARM64) made use of OpenSSL libraries for TLS before version 9.4.1. For the MQI based samples in this repository, this means that KEY_REPOSITORY in the env.json file or environment variable KEY_REPOSITORY be set to the path for the queue manager's exported .pem file. eg. If you have exported the qmgrcert.pem file to the root directory of this repository, then set KEY_REPOSITORY to ../qmgrcert.pem.

From 9.4.1, the toolkit uses the same keystore formats (p12 or kdb) as Linux.

Using port forwarding to run a multiple containers

Let's say you're already running MQ in a Docker container without TLS having set it up by following the Ready, Set, Connect tutorial.

Now you want to run the second Docker container to try the samples with TLS switched on.

You can have the same MQ objects set up in both, and switch between them by using the host port forwarding to make the non TLS queue manager available on port 1414 and the TLS one on port 1415.

Creating self signed certificates by using openssl

Do this in a directory you'll easily remember as you'll have to copy the server certificates over into a temporary folder each time you need to run MQ with TLS in a Docker container.

You'll also have to point to the client keystore location from the env.json file so that if you want to run samples with TLS, the sample knows where to look.

1. Create a new directory. Navigate inside this and generate a self-signed server key and certificate

   openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout key.key -x509 -days 365 -out key.crt

   An RSA private key will be generated and you'll need to complete information that will go inside the self signed certificate.

   IMPORTANT: this directory should initially be empty.

2. Verify that the certificate has been created successfully

   openssl x509 -text -noout -in key.crt

   When done, you'll see the certificate data output.

3. Create a client keystore.

• For JMS and XMS based clients, create a .jks client keystore and create and verify a keystore password:

  keytool -keystore clientkey.jks -storetype jks -importcert -file key.crt -alias server-certificate

• For MQI based Clients (Node, Python, Go)

  Create a key database, a stash file. You will need to have installed the MQI client, so that you can run the runmqakm tool:

  runmqakm -keydb -create -db clientkey.kdb -pw tru5tpassw0rd -type pkcs12 -expire 1000 -stash

• Import the server's public key certificate into the client key database

  runmqakm -cert -add -label QM1.cert -db clientkey.kdb -pw tru5tpassw0rd -trust enable -file key.crt

4. Move the client keystore

• Move the client keystore somewhere you will remember. Ensure the only files in the current directory are the key.key and key.crt files, as IBM MQ will use the contents of this directory to configure security inside the container.

5. Run the new docker container

• Give it a name, for example mqtls so you can differentiate it from your other MQ container when you docker ps, and point it at the location where you copied the server certificate.

  docker run --name mqtls --env LICENSE=accept \
    --env MQ_QMGR_NAME=QM1 \
    --env MQ_APP_PASSWORD=passw0rd \
    --volume ___PATH TO SERVER_KEY/CERTIFICATE DIRECTORY___:/etc/mqm/pki/keys/mykey \
    --publish 1415:1414 \
    --publish 9444:9443 \
    --detach \
    icr.io/ibm-messaging/mq:latest

• Remember to use a secure password for MQ_APP_PASSWORD.

You should be able to open the MQ Web console for this TLS container on https://localhost:9444/ibmmq/console.

If you choose to stop the container, check the ID or name of the TLS container that was running previously with:

docker ps -a

then run

docker start <container id or name>

to start the container again.

MQI Paths

The MQI samples; Node.js, Python, Go, require the MQI Client Toolkit to have been installed and the paths MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH (MacOS) or LD_LIBRARY_PATH (Windows or Linux) set.

If you have installed the MQI client manually, ensure that MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH is set to the root directory of your MQI Client installation and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH is set to $MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH/lib64.

Do not install any application requirements until MQ_INSTALLATION_PATH and DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH or LD_LIBRARY_PATH are set and exported (see language README docs for more info).

README docs

Language based MQI / JMS / XMS samples

Node.js

JMS

Python

C# .Net

Go

C

REST samples

Rust

Swift

react.js

AMQP samples

Go

C# .Net

QPID

Transaction samples

JMS

Spring

Framework samples

Spring

Transactions on Spring

Quarkus

Reactive samples

Vert.x

Serverless samples

AWS Lambda

Azure Functions

Code Engine

OpenWhisk Cloud Functions

Showcase app

Showcase

Kubernetes samples

Scaling with Keda

MQ container deployment examples

compose

compose