Publish messages to topics

This document provides information about publishing messages.

A publisher application creates and sends messages to a topic. Pub/Sub offers at-least-once message delivery and best-effort ordering to existing subscribers.

The general flow for a publisher application is:

  1. Create a message containing your data.
  2. Send a request to the Pub/Sub server to publish the message to the specified topic.

Before you begin

Before configuring the publish workflow, ensure you have completed the following tasks:

Required roles

To get the permissions that you need to publish messages to a topic, ask your administrator to grant you the Pub/Sub Publisher (roles/pubsub.publisher) IAM role on the topic. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

You might also be able to get the required permissions through custom roles or other predefined roles.

You need additional permissions to create or update topics and subscriptions.

Message format

A message consists of fields with the message data and metadata. Specify at least one of the following in the message:

The Pub/Sub service adds the following fields to the message:

  • A message ID unique to the topic
  • A timestamp for when the Pub/Sub service receives the message

To learn more about messages, see Message format.

Publish messages

You can publish messages with the Google Cloud console, Google Cloud CLI, Pub/Sub API, and the client libraries. The client libraries can asynchronously publish messages.

The following samples demonstrate how to publish a message to a topic.

Console

To publish a message, follow these steps:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Pub/Sub topics page.

    Go to the Pub/Sub topics page

  2. Click the topic ID.

  3. In the Topic details page under Messages, click Publish message.

  4. In the Message body field, enter the message data.

  5. Click Publish.

gcloud

To publish a message, use the gcloud pubsub topics publish command:

gcloud pubsub topics publish TOPIC_ID \
  --message=MESSAGE_DATA \
  [--attribute=KEY="VALUE",...]

Replace the following:

  • TOPIC_ID: the ID of the topic
  • MESSAGE_DATA: a string with the message data
  • KEY: the key of a message attribute
  • VALUE: the value for the key of the message attribute

REST

To publish a message, send a POST request like the following:

POST  https://pubsub.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/topics/TOPIC_ID:publish
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth application-default print-access-token)

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: the project ID of the project with the topic
  • TOPIC_ID: the ID of the topic

Specify the following fields in the request body:

{
  "messages": [
    {
      "attributes": {
        "KEY": "VALUE",
        ...
      },
      "data": "MESSAGE_DATA",
    }
  ]
}

Replace the following:

  • KEY: the key of a message attribute
  • VALUE: the value for the key of the message attribute
  • MESSAGE_DATA: a base64-encoded string with the message data

The message must contain either a non-empty data field or at least one attribute.

If the request is successful, the response is a JSON object with the message ID. The following example is a response with a message ID:

{
  "messageIds": [
    "19916711285",
  ]
}

C++

Before trying this sample, follow the C++ setup instructions in Quickstart: Using Client Libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub C++ API reference documentation.

namespace pubsub = ::google::cloud::pubsub;
using ::google::cloud::future;
using ::google::cloud::StatusOr;
[](pubsub::Publisher publisher) {
  auto message_id = publisher.Publish(
      pubsub::MessageBuilder{}.SetData("Hello World!").Build());
  auto done = message_id.then([](future<StatusOr<std::string>> f) {
    auto id = f.get();
    if (!id) throw std::move(id).status();
    std::cout << "Hello World! published with id=" << *id << "\n";
  });
  // Block until the message is published
  done.get();
}

C#

Before trying this sample, follow the C# setup instructions in Quickstart: Using Client Libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub C# API reference documentation.


using Google.Cloud.PubSub.V1;
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Threading;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

public class PublishMessagesAsyncSample
{
    public async Task<int> PublishMessagesAsync(string projectId, string topicId, IEnumerable<string> messageTexts)
    {
        TopicName topicName = TopicName.FromProjectTopic(projectId, topicId);
        PublisherClient publisher = await PublisherClient.CreateAsync(topicName);

        int publishedMessageCount = 0;
        var publishTasks = messageTexts.Select(async text =>
        {
            try
            {
                string message = await publisher.PublishAsync(text);
                Console.WriteLine($"Published message {message}");
                Interlocked.Increment(ref publishedMessageCount);
            }
            catch (Exception exception)
            {
                Console.WriteLine($"An error occurred when publishing message {text}: {exception.Message}");
            }
        });
        await Task.WhenAll(publishTasks);
        // PublisherClient instance should be shutdown after use.
        // The TimeSpan specifies for how long to attempt to publish locally queued messages.
        await publisher.ShutdownAsync(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(15));
        return publishedMessageCount;
    }
}

Go

The following sample uses the major version of the Go Pub/Sub client library (v2). If you are still using the v1 library, see the migration guide to v2. To see a list of v1 code samples, see the deprecated code samples.

Before trying this sample, follow the Go setup instructions in Quickstart: Using Client Libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Go API reference documentation.

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"io"
	"strconv"
	"sync"
	"sync/atomic"

	"cloud.google.com/go/pubsub/v2"
)

func publishThatScales(w io.Writer, projectID, topicID string, n int) error {
	// projectID := "my-project-id"
	// topicID := "my-topic"
	ctx := context.Background()
	client, err := pubsub.NewClient(ctx, projectID)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("pubsub.NewClient: %w", err)
	}
	defer client.Close()

	var wg sync.WaitGroup
	var totalErrors uint64

	// client.Publisher can be passed a topic ID (e.g. "my-topic") or
	// a fully qualified name (e.g. "projects/my-project/topics/my-topic").
	// If a topic ID is provided, the project ID from the client is used.
	// Reuse this publisher for all publish calls to send messages in batches.
	publisher := client.Publisher(topicID)

	for i := 0; i < n; i++ {
		result := publisher.Publish(ctx, &pubsub.Message{
			Data: []byte("Message " + strconv.Itoa(i)),
		})

		wg.Add(1)
		go func(i int, res *pubsub.PublishResult) {
			defer wg.Done()
			// The Get method blocks until a server-generated ID or
			// an error is returned for the published message.
			id, err := res.Get(ctx)
			if err != nil {
				// Error handling code can be added here.
				fmt.Fprintf(w, "Failed to publish: %v", err)
				atomic.AddUint64(&totalErrors, 1)
				return
			}
			fmt.Fprintf(w, "Published message %d; msg ID: %v\n", i, id)
		}(i, result)
	}

	wg.Wait()

	if totalErrors > 0 {
		return fmt.Errorf("%d of %d messages did not publish successfully", totalErrors, n)
	}
	return nil
}

Java

Before trying this sample, follow the Java setup instructions in Quickstart: Using Client Libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Java API reference documentation.


import com.google.api.core.ApiFuture;
import com.google.api.core.ApiFutureCallback;
import com.google.api.core.ApiFutures;
import com.google.api.gax.rpc.ApiException;
import com.google.cloud.pubsub.v1.Publisher;
import com.google.common.util.concurrent.MoreExecutors;
import com.google.protobuf.ByteString;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.PubsubMessage;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.TopicName;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.util.Arrays;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class PublishWithErrorHandlerExample {

  public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {
    // TODO(developer): Replace these variables before running the sample.
    String projectId = "your-project-id";
    String topicId = "your-topic-id";

    publishWithErrorHandlerExample(projectId, topicId);
  }

  public static void publishWithErrorHandlerExample(String projectId, String topicId)
      throws IOException, InterruptedException {
    TopicName topicName = TopicName.of(projectId, topicId);
    Publisher publisher = null;

    try {
      // Create a publisher instance with default settings bound to the topic
      publisher = Publisher.newBuilder(topicName).build();

      List<String> messages = Arrays.asList("first message", "second message");

      for (final String message : messages) {
        ByteString data = ByteString.copyFromUtf8(message);
        PubsubMessage pubsubMessage = PubsubMessage.newBuilder().setData(data).build();

        // Once published, returns a server-assigned message id (unique within the topic)
        ApiFuture<String> future = publisher.publish(pubsubMessage);

        // Add an asynchronous callback to handle success / failure
        ApiFutures.addCallback(
            future,
            new ApiFutureCallback<String>() {

              @Override
              public void onFailure(Throwable throwable) {
                if (throwable instanceof ApiException) {
                  ApiException apiException = ((ApiException) throwable);
                  // details on the API exception
                  System.out.println(apiException.getStatusCode().getCode());
                  System.out.