Howto configure a custom Dead Letter Queue (DLQ) in WildFly

The Dead Letter Queue Address (DLQ) is a collector for messages which failed to be delivered over a number of attemps.

In WildFly, A dead letter address is defined in the address-setting element of the messaging-activemq subsystem configuration. To read the generic dead letter queue configuration for all destinations (“#”), use the following management CLI command as an example.

/subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default/address-setting=#:read-attribute(name=dead-letter-address)
{
    "outcome" => "success",
    "result" => "jms.queue.DLQ"
}

If a dead-letter-address is not specified, messages are removed after trying to deliver max-delivery-attempts times. By default, messages delivery is attempted 10 times. Setting max-delivery-attempts to -1 allows infinite redelivery attempts.

If you want to define a specific DLQ for a destination, you can set is as follows:

/subsystem=messaging-activemq/server=default/address-setting=jms.queue.TestQueue:add(dead-letter-address=jms.queue.MyDLQ,max-delivery-attempts=3)

In the above example, we have set a custom DLQ (“jms.queue.MyDLQ”) for the address “jms.queue.TestQueue” where messages will be delivered after 3 failed attempts.

Please note that you must configure the jms.queue.MyDLQ before hand:

jms-queue --queue-address=MyDLQ --entries=java:/jms/MyDLQ