RabbitMQ Simulator

The RabbitMQ Simulator is a web based tool that can be used to represent messaging topologies on a blank canvas.

The idea is to be able to drag & drop components like Exchanges, Queues, Producers and Consumers and be able to interconnect them by drawing lines to represent bindings and so on.

Here's how a messaging topology represented with the simulator looks like:

And you can see it in action in this video: https://vimeo.com/56986242

Possible Uses

Teaching RabbitMQ concepts at conferences for example
Topology Design that can be imported into RabbitMQ
Debugging. By importing a topology from RabbitMQ the Simulator can be used as a message flow visualizer

Features

The simulator currently implements the following features:

Three exchange types: direct, fanout and topic:
Queue Bindings and Exchange to Exchange bindings
Publishers that can specify payload, routing key and publish interval, like "publish 1 message every 2 seconds"
Message queueing
Round-robin message delivery
Default "Anon" exchange representation
Export topology for a "play only" mode (useful for tutorials)

Running the Simulator

There are many ways to run the Simulator: you can do it either as a bunch of static HTML/JS/CSS files, or with a node.js server. The node.js server way will allow you to import/export data from RabbitMQ.

Running as static HTML/JS/CSS files

Just open the file build/index.html in your browser and you will have access to the simulator.

Running from node.js

This project depends on node.js and various node libraries for building the source files, therefore you will need to install node on your machine if you want to run it.

git clone https://github.com/RabbitMQSimulator/RabbitMQSimulator.git
cd RabbitMQSimulator
npm install
cp config.sample.json config.json

Once you have everything in place you can run the node.js app by calling:

node app.js

Then open http:localhost:3000.

If you want to be able to import/export from RabbitMQ then a broker needs to be running on localhost, with the management plugin enabled. At the moment the simulator uses the default guest:guest credentials but that will be fixed in the future.

To have the import/export feature enabled you need to create the following environment variable:

export SIM_ENABLE_EXPORT=true

Using the Simulator

Once you accessed the simulator from http:localhost:3000 you can drag elements into the white canvas. To interconnect them simply hold alt or shift while dragging from the connection source to the target.

You can click on the different elements in order to change names, routing keys and so on.

Each element has its own functionality when clicked. For example a producer will open the New Message Form while an exchange will allow you to change its name and type.

The Advanced Mode button will let you see bindings to the Default or Anon Exchange.

The Export and Import buttons are used to save/load configuration from RabbitMQ.

The To Player functionality is currently in development and therefore not documented.

Developing the Simulator

The file web/js/Simulator.pde and the file web/js/scripts.js are built using Grunt. To build them type the following command inside the Simulator folder:

grunt

If you don't have Grunt installed as a CLI tool then follow the instructions here: http://gruntjs.com/getting-started.

TODO

Improve form usability for the different components.
Fix login credentials for the RabbitMQ Management API.
Better placement algorithm when importing data from RabbitMQ.
Better label placement algorithm when importing data from RabbitMQ.
…

Contributions

Thank you for your interest in making a contribution of code to the RabbitMQ Simulator Project. If you are interested in contributing to this project please contact us at mailto:contribute@tryrabbitmq.com. Before making a contribution, whether it be via a pull request on Github or a code fragment or patch submitted by email or a public discussion group, we ask that you agree to the terms of the RabbitMQ Simulator Contributor Agreement. This Contributor Agreement provides that any code you contribute to the RabbitMQ Simulator project, will be jointly owned by VMware and the contributor.

nserban/RabbitMQSimulator