Kourier - Kotlin RabbitMQ Client

The Kotlin RabbitMQ client built from scratch. Pure Kotlin AMQP 0-9-1 implementation with native coroutines support, Kotlin Multiplatform compatibility, and automatic reconnection. Not a Java client wrapper. A complete protocol implementation.

• Documentation: kourier.dev
• AI-generated wiki: deepwiki.com/kourier-amqp/kourier
• Repository: github.com/kourier-amqp/kourier

Motivation

Why we made kourier:

• Pure Kotlin Implementation with no dependency on the Java client or other library.
• Coroutines-first design, allowing better integration with Kotlin's concurrency model and asynchronous consuming.
• Multiplatform support allows compatibility with JVM but also Native targets.
• Robustness with automatic recovery and reconnection logic, making it resilient to network issues and protocol errors.

Modules

• amqp-core: Core AMQP 0.9.1 protocol implementation, including frames and encoding/decoding logic.

Most of the time you will only need the amqp-client module, which depends itself on amqp-core, or the amqp-client-robust module which depends on both amqp-client and amqp-core if you want automatic recovery features.

Installation

To use kourier, add the following to your build.gradle.kts:

dependencies {
    implementation("dev.kourier:amqp-client:0.4.6")
}

Or if you want the robust client with automatic recovery:

dependencies {
    implementation("dev.kourier:amqp-client-robust:0.4.6")
}

For OpenTelemetry tracing support (requires OpenTelemetry API):

dependencies {
    implementation("dev.kourier:amqp-client-opentelemetry:0.4.6")
    implementation("io.opentelemetry:opentelemetry-api:1.44.1")
}

Make sure you have Maven Central configured:

repositories {
    mavenCentral()
}

Usage

Here is a simple example of how to connect to an AMQP server, open a channel and do some stuff with it:

Alternative ways to connect to a broker:

// Configuration when connecting
val connection = createAMQPConnection(this) {
    server {
        // ... same as before
    }
}

// Configuration from URL
val config = amqpConfig("amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/")
val connection = createAMQPConnection(this, config)

// Directly using a connection string
val connection = createAMQPConnection(this, "amqp://guest:guest@localhost:5672/")

If you want to use the robust client with automatic recovery, you can use createRobustAMQPConnection instead of createAMQPConnection. This will handle reconnections and recovery of channels and consumers automatically.

val connection = createRobustAMQPConnection(this, config) // All configuration options are available as before

// Do stuff with the connection as before

To enable OpenTelemetry tracing for your AMQP operations, wrap your connection or channel with withTracing:

// Get a tracer from your OpenTelemetry instance
val tracer = openTelemetry.getTracer("dev.kourier.amqp")

val connection = createAMQPConnection(this, config)
val tracedConnection = connection.withTracing(tracer) // All channels opened through this connection will be traced

// Or trace individual channels
val channel = connection.openChannel()
val tracedChannel = channel.withTracing(tracer)

The OpenTelemetry integration provides automatic distributed tracing with W3C Trace Context propagation through message headers. By default, only message publish and consume operations are traced to minimize overhead. You can configure additional tracing options:

// Debug configuration with full tracing enabled
val tracedConnection = connection.withTracing(
    tracer,
    TracingConfig.debug() // Traces connection, channel management operations, and captures message bodies
)

// Custom configuration
val tracedConnection = connection.withTracing(
    tracer,
    TracingConfig(
        traceConnectionOperations = true,        // Trace connection open/close/heartbeat
        traceChannelManagementOperations = true, // Trace queue/exchange declarations and bindings
        captureMessageBody = ,               
        maxBodySizeToCapture =                
    )
)

More examples can be found on the tutorial section of the documentation.

Libraries using kourier

• io.github.damirdenis-tudor:ktor-server-rabbitmq: Ktor plugin for RabbitMQ messaging using kourier.

If you are using kourier in your library, please let us know by opening a pull request to add it to this list!