Guided Lab: Creating a FIFO Topic in Amazon SNS

Tutorials-Dojo

Description

Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS) is a fully managed messaging service that enables the decoupling of applications by sending messages between different systems. One of the key features of SNS is FIFO (First In, First Out) topics, which ensure that messages are processed in the exact order they were sent and are delivered only once. This is critical for use cases where message order and consistency are essential, such as financial transactions, order processing systems, or other sequential workflows.

In this lab, you will learn how to create an SNS FIFO Topic using the AWS Management Console. By the end of this lab, you will understand how FIFO topics enable ordered message delivery and ensure no duplicate messages are processed.

Objectives

By the end of this lab, you will:

Understand the fundamentals of Amazon SNS.
Create a FIFO topic in Amazon SNS through the AWS Management Console.
Publish a message to the FIFO topic.

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Lab Steps

Create a FIFO Topic

1. Navigate to the Amazon SNS service:

Use the search bar to find “sns,” then select it from the list of services.

2. You will be directed to the Amazon SNS dashboard.

3. To create Topics, look for the Create topic section, type your topic name (for example, OrdersQueue), and click Next step.

4. You will be directed to a page where you can configure your topic. Follow the configurations below:

Select FIFO as the topic type.
Since we entered a name earlier, the Topic name should already filled (e.g., OrdersQueue.fifo).
Tick the Check box for Content-based deduplication
Leave other settings as default.

Important Configuration Details:

Topic Name: Ensure the topic name ends with .fifo (e.g., OrdersQueue.fifo). This suffix is required for FIFO topics.
Content-based Deduplication: Enable this if you want SNS to detect and remove duplicate messages automatically. If you do not enable this, you must provide a deduplication ID for each message.
- If enabled, SNS will use the message body to identify duplicates.

Other Settings:

You can leave the Default encryption settings unless your organization requires a specific encryption key (managed by AWS KMS).
Delivery retries and Dead-letter queue configurations can be left as default for this lab, but they are useful for handling failed message deliveries in production environments.

6. Click Create topic to finalize the creation of your FIFO topic.

Publish a Message to the FIFO Topic

1. Once the topic is created, you will be redirected to the topic’s details page. Review the configurations, such as ARN (Amazon Resource Name) and the settings enabled, to ensure the FIFO topic was created correctly.

2. Click on Publish message.

3. In the Message details section, enter the following information:

Subject: Enter a subject that describes the content (e.g., “TD Order Processed”).
Message Group ID: This is required for FIFO topics. Enter a unique identifier (e.g., TD-0001). All messages with the same group ID will be processed in the exact order they are received.
Message Deduplication ID: If content-based deduplication is disabled, you must provide a deduplication ID. If enabled, leave this field blank, as SNS will deduplicate based on the message content.

Provide the Message body (e.g., “Order ID 1234 has been placed”) in the message creation form.

Leave the rest as default.
Click Publish message to send the message to the topic.

4. After publishing, the console will successfully display a message with a published confirmation. Since SNS doesn’t store messages, you won’t see a section for viewing published messages, but they are delivered to subscribers immediately (if there are any).

Congratulations! You’ve successfully created an Amazon SNS FIFO topic. This exercise has demonstrated how FIFO topics ensure messages are processed in a strict order and are not duplicated. This is vital for scenarios where data consistency and message sequencing are important, such as transaction management or sequential processing.

As a best practice, remember to delete the SNS topic and any other resources created during this lab to keep your AWS environment clean.

Thank you for completing this lab. Keep experimenting and exploring the robust features of AWS SNS! Happy learning!